Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 5 November 2009

5 November 2009

With two days to go until the first round of the FA Cup, football epidemiologists are looking in vain for the first outbreaks of cup fever in Grimsby this season. The Mariners' opponents this Saturday, Bath City, however, are at least experiencing a few mild cases of cup bit-under-the-weather and an unconfirmed infection of cup one-of-those-24-hour-virus-things I'll-probably-be-alright-tomorrow-morning. So rare is it for Town to be the favourites in any kind of competitive fixture that chairman John Fenty (Con) has got his clichéd football terminology all wrong and described his club's meeting with Conference South opposition as "a big banana" - unless, of course, he didn't mean 'banana skin' at all and was instead intending simply to emphasise the tremendous significance of the match in terms of how Town's season might unfold from here on in. Hang on, no - if he'd meant that, surely he'd have called it "the biggest banana in the building".

But are the Mariners, in fact, favourites to win on Saturday? Anyone in any doubt as to the plight of Mr Fenty (Con)'s club must turn immediately to the Bath Chronicle, where proof abounds that GTFC are in their worst long-term run of form in the club's 130-year history. "We will be going there to win. In our minds, certainly in mine, it will disappointing if we don't win. No disrespect to the opposition but we have to go into the game with that frame of mind," says Adie Britton, and the Diary defies any living Mariner to show that our club has ever sunk lower than being patronised by the manager of Bath City. Not that he doesn't have a point, of course. Britton concludes: "If we play exceptionally well on Saturday and Grimsby have a bad day then we have a big chance." Grimsby don't have any other kind of day, Adie.

A year and a half or so ago we were hearing that Matthew Bird was going to be the next big thing, the new Ryan Bennett, as the young left-sided defender was given a pro contract and various clubs with the ability to get Jack stood watchfully by with their great big player hoovers that hoover up all the little clubs' good players. It's not quite worked out that way so far, as Bird seems to have been overtaken by Mark Gray on the grand highway of maturity between the Myspace Mariners and the shower of shit that calls itself the first team - and this week the player has followed his fellow promising youngster Grant Normington to a loan at Frickley Athletic of the Northern Premier League. Frickley are expected to field their Town twosome in both full-back slots. Good luck to both players - it must be as daunting as it is inspiring to see Bradley Wood slotting in brilliantly as right-back in the senior XI, but if Bird starts looking the part then a few sleepless nights would do Joe Widdowson no harm at all.

Lastly today - and lastly from your regular Diary for this week, as Guest Diary will be in his usual place here tomorrow - a long shot but it might just work. Former Town favourite Jack Lewis, currently recovering from a hip operation, is gutted at having lost a video while he moved house, featuring the match when he returned to Blundell Park with Doncaster and scored a hat-trick in a 4-3 win for the visitors at the end of the 1978-79 season. So if anyone has a copy, or indeed any other footage of Lewis in action, please get in touch and we'll join you up with the right people. The Diary knows how poor Jack feels, as my framed print of four team photos of various GTFC sides of the 20th century got broken by the removal men last time I moved house. Why couldn't they have stolen my season ticket instead?