Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 13 July 2010

13 July 2010

"A certain, a certain feeling, a certain love, a certain heart. A certain toughness. Mental toughness. And physical toughness. And, and, and some... something so beautiful, I can scarcely express it!"

If you've never heard the great Peter Cook in character as football manager Alan Latchley - "a Scunny man through and through!" - then download it and listen right now. It's a classic. The quality of mental toughness espoused by Latchley is also highly prized by Town's new forward Alan Connell, who can be found in today's Grimsby Telegraph, where he rightly points out: "We have to get our mentality right as well as our ability." But in adding: "Grimsby is a big club and it should be in a lot higher division. It is up to us to get the club back in the Football League," is Connell becoming the first Grimsby Town player in history to Tell The Telegraph We've Not Been The Best Lately But We'll Get Better Now, Honest before he's even kicked a ball?

Your original Diary, as regular readers may recall, has never held back from criticising Town's superb new official website. This is not gratuitous criticism: it's very seldom that we dish it out to sites run on an amateur basis (like this one). It's just that the SNOS often seems to falls short of the standards that might reasonably be expected of an organisation that employs around 300 people and typically records an annual turnover of two to three million pounds. But let's also give credit where it's due. Because the piece that appeared at the weekend telling us that 1,500 season tickets have been sold so far was really pretty good: clear and direct communication, with competent spelling and grammar, and almost entirely free from typos and literals. More like that please!

Diary reader Kevin Graham, I seem to recall, is a Scotsman rather than a Grimbarian, and adopted the Mariners as a second club recently because of some happy circumstance like Town having the third best online fanzine in the world or something like that. And not only a Scotsman, but one who lives in Stirling, where Woodses's battlers will be strutting their friendly stuff in a week or so's time. "While I'm looking forward to seeing the Mariners in the flesh for the first time on the 20 July (against the only fan-owned club in Scotland) I'm worried that my enjoyment of the football may be spoiled," writes Kevin in an email to the Diary. "Those banning orders dished out seem only to apply to England and Wales so does that mean I will need to phone the only fan-owned team in Scotland and tell them to increase the stewarding?" Well, if some accounts are to be believed, the banning orders were given only to decent fans who had a little rush of blood to the head, so if that's true then there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Our Stirling correspondent continues: "If any Diary readers are up for the game then I will be the lonely Scotsman, sitting in the away end." Aw, I wish I could make it now! Be sure to email again and let us know what you thought, Kevin - it's good to hear from you again. Thanks also to Matt Pakes and Felix Oliver-Tasker for getting in touch - I'll leave your emails to subsequent diarists this week in case there's no news to report!

So have you read the Non-League Paper yet? The Diary picked up a copy yesterday to read the Fenty (Con) interview trailed on the SNOS last week. I've bought it a few times now and again, just to find out more about grassroots football. It's a good read. If you've never seen it, get yersen a copy and get genned up on the non-League scene. Embrace it. This is where we live now, and anyone looking with disdain at next season's opponents and expecting to 'bounce straight back' without getting their hands dirty is in denial. And in for quite a rude awakening.

This isn't to say that Neil Woodses is doing a bad job. But Town won't be in the top five at the end of September. That's just the consequence of having to rebuild practically an entire first-team squad from scratch. You could put Vicente del Bosque in the dug-out and Town still wouldn't be in the top five at the end of September. Buckley mark 2 was a one-off. At least one season of regrouping a la Slade or Buckley mark 1 should be the very least we prepare for. And anyone saying "let's give Woods ten games of the new season before we decide he should be sacked" is just making the same mistake that Fenty (Con) made several times in getting us relegated to this level. Got that? Good. Thanks.