Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 19 July 2010

19 July 2010

Mardy Diary writes: Well, that was good, wasn't it? There seemed to be some nice partnerships forming between various pairs of players on the pitch, especially Peacock and Connell. Blimey, two intelligent forwards playing clever football, when did that last happen? And again, Bradley Wood was outstanding (we'll ignore the little mistake for Wednesday's goal, although it did look like a foul at the time). Garner looked experienced beyond his years, organising the backline. Ridley was solid in what he did and good in the air and the triallist looked neat, efficient and a good footballer. It was a strange experience seeing such a well organised defence. Biggest surprise for me though was the performance of Leary, or rather the debut of Leary 2.0. I thought he looked fit and lively and got stuck in well.

Ok. Yes. Back to earth. It's only one game, blah blah blah. But take the match out of the context of the forthcoming season and just look at it alone. It was a very enjoyable match. We looked good, we played well and we beat a team two divisions higher. It doesn't mean we'll storm the Conference, it doesn't mean those players will all play that well every week when the season proper starts. It doesn't mean anything like that. But as a match, it was a joy to watch and we've not had many of those over the last few seasons so I'm bloody well going to enjoy it, ok?

One thing that can be read from the performance though is fitness. With a couple of minor exceptions, we looked very fit already. Fitter (as a team) than we did at the beginning of last season and this is a 'good thing'. At the very least, the very, very least I expect my team to be able to run about the pitch for 90 minutes even if they're not contributing anything else to the match. This is a baseline as far as I'm concerned, and one which - for some players anyway - wasn't ever attained last season. This season I am convinced that we will be fit and active, injuries permitting of course. I can't be certain about anything else, but this I am very confident of. Even the "unfit" Connell put more legwork in during his 60 minutes than Sweeney did for most of last season. Although I suspect he was using some sort of teleportation device given that at one point he was helping out in defence and the next second he appeared in the opposition's box and almost got on the end of a good cross. Or is it just that Connell looks like Bradley Wood's older brother and I got the two mixed up? Either way, my enthusiasm will not be dampened you hear. Will NOT be dampened. At least until the season starts.

Oh, has anyone else noticed that www.gtfc.co.uk no longer seems to take you to the SNOS, but www.grimsby-townfc.co.uk does? Is this a domain name renewal issue? Have Gainsborough Trinity nicked our domain? Or is it some weird thing like PTV or the Football League own the rights to www.gtfc.co.uk and we can't use it anymore? If you've any idea about this, or anything in general, then drop us a line at the usual address.