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Diary - Wednesday 16 December 2009

16 December 2009

His arrival on loan from Southampton immediately rang alarm bells after the disastrous short-term acquisition of Tommy Forecast from the same club, but Oliver Lancashire's term at Blundell Park has been a fair bit more successful than that of his predecessor. That's if you don't count that red card, and the own goal against Leeds, but the latter was more unlucky than anything, wasn't it? Any old how, the 21-year-old centre-half has followed his fellow loanees Damien McCrory and Michael Coulson in committing himself to another month with the Mariners, which is nice, what with that Hectic Festive Schedule in the building and everything. What I didn't realise until I read it on Wikipedia just now was that that sending-off against Accrington was the player's third in his senior football career, which at that point comprised only 15 games. This is where the Diary wishes to high heaven that there were some sort of pun we could do whereby 'Lancashire hotpot' sounded a bit more like 'Lancashire hothead'. I suppose if he were a prolific centre-forward we could call him a 'Lancashire hotshot', but he isn't, so we can't.

One cause of Town's abject form over the past couple of years is the failure of a succession of managers to fill the huge vacancy at the right-back slot created by the retirement of Sir John McDermott in 2007. Notwithstanding the emergence this season of the excellent Bradley Wood, the closest any GTFC boss has come to replacing the Mac was Lord Alan Buckley's signing of the experienced Robbie Stockdale, who has been troubled by injuries and started only 30 games in his year and a half with the Mariners. According to today's Grimsby Telegraph Stockdale "is unlikely to play again this year", which sounds considerably more dramatic than saying he's unlikely to play in the next two weeks but means exactly the same thing. The local rag quotes Neil Woodses to the effect that the player's recovery from a hernia operation is taking longer than expected (and the manager adds some words that are sure to warm the hearts of The Jarman's many admirers), which must be true because nobody could actually remember that it was a hernia operation that had put him out of action in the first place.

So is there a positive to take from the Stockdale sitch? Yes, there is. "The only plus point is that when he is OK to start training fully again then it won't be long at all before he can play because his general fitness remains good," adds Woodses, which all sounds very John McD to the Diary's happy ears. Stockdale's susceptibility to medium- to long-term injuries, in fact, further strengthens his claim to the throne of McDermott, who would surely have exceeded his club record 754 games by some margin had he not been sidelined half the time with shin splints and sciatica and what have you.

"A toe-poke from 25 yards that flew into the top corner" weaves all sorts of connotations. Schoolboy dreams. Roy of the Rovers stuff. Or just a footballer with remarkably strong toes. But it is, apparently, the way Town's youth team equalised in a 1-1 draw with their counterparts from King$ton Communication$ FC. The description comes from the Myspace Mariners' acting manager Adam Smith, who is telling the Telegraph about a goal from the team's Albanian-born midfielder Andi Thanoj. Given that their opponents have "the ability to get Jack", of course (the phrase used by John Fenty (Con) to explain that GTFC had to allow Jack Barlow to move over the Humber Bridge whether we liked it or not), the result must count as some sort of moral victory or other, probably by at least eight goals to nil. What with Town being moral winners of the 2008 Football League Trophy by being the last legitimate football club left in the competition, and paying off their relatively modest debts rather than entering administration to cheat their way out, someone really should get round to drawing up a moral league table one of these days.

Lastly today, a quick dip into the Diary's inbox pulls out a plum email from John Harding, who asks simply: "Any Grimsby historians know anything about Jackie Bestall and the accusation that Arsenal players deliberately injured him in the FA Cup in 1937?" The Diary certainly doesn't, John, but we might know someone who does. Readers, please email diary@codalmighty.com with your answers to this fiendish query and your questions and comments about anything else. Ta for reading, as always, and I'll see you tomorrow.