Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 9 December 2009

9 December 2009

If Danny North is presented with two chances to score a goal, and one of them is a sitter, you'd back him every time to fluff the sitter by snatching at a shot without properly sizing it up and whacking the ball straight into the goalkeeper's midriff. The way he's played in the past couple of seasons, you'd probably back him to fluff the other one as well. But in a return to form for Town's reserves yesterday, the much-maligned Grimsby-born forward made amends for fluffing an early sitter by scoring the winning goal against Newcastle United. "After I missed what was perhaps the easiest chance of life, if I hadn't have scored I'd be suicidal," an admirably honest North told the Grimsby Telegraph later. The Diary suspects that the local rag has missed out a word there, but there is always the chance that Danny's talk of suicide was a reference to the famous Poojah rant of November, and scoring goals really does mean a "chance of life".

Staying with the 1-0 win for first team coach who manages the reserve team Chris Caspers' reserve team, the other salient points are a bright showing as a substitute from on-trial Middlesbrough winger James Cronesberry (yay), a hamstring injury to midfield saviour-in-waiting Mark Hudson (gah) and a truly bizarre incident at the end of the match when referee Steve Ross awarded Newcastle a penalty after a 'strong challenge' from Mark Gray on Greg McDermott, only to change his mind and award a drop-ball just outside the box (ho ho ho).

Antony Chapman has become the first Diary reader to email on the subject of Tell The Telegraph We've Not Been The Best Lately But We'll Get Better Now, Honest - the exciting game played weekly by members of the underachieving GTFC squad for some years now. "How about a list of those players who have told the Telegraph that the Mariners will get better, with the result of the next match? Atkinson and McCrory this week [the email is from last week]... it seems like dozens so far this season. Best wishes from Bucks." Thanks, Antony. I really wish I'd started keeping track of all these when it began in about 2003. Some sort of detailed forensic analysis of what the players say and then what actually happens sounds like just the sort of thing Neil Woodses could introduce to his new super-scientific approach to coaching!