Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 21 October 2010
21 October 2010
Everything seems to going part-time at the moment. Southport, they were part-timers, and in fact still are part-timers. The Mariners are part-time at best, although of course collecting full-time wages. George Osborne, he would love us all to be part-time: no unemployment, no welfare benefits, but still budget cutting - imagine the statistics he could present to us. Then we could all stay at home during our half-week off, saving money and watching the news of more budget cuts on our televisions, for which he has generously frozen the licence fee for six whole years. Sounds like our club a bit: hit us with the devastation of Conference football but at least we can watch the crisis unfold for the same price we used to. Ah, that must be the Tory connection in the boardroom. Oh, and Town are in the part-timers round of the FA Cup too. Even the diary was briefly forced to go part-time this week. Anyway, rather fittingly, and of course by absolutely no coincidence, this is your Part-Time Diary to bring you all your daily Mariners news.
The Telegraph runs with Neil Woods' reflection on his first year in charge of the club: an interview with Town's beleaguered boss. My personal highlight of this piece of investigative journalism was this admission from Woods; "My problem, analysing my first year as manager, is that I don't accept failure. I'll always take a win above a loss, but I don't particularly enjoy winning when we play poorly either." Well, Neil, my problem is that I support a team all too ready to accept failure both on and off the pitch; I do particularly enjoy winning regardless of performance, and I certainly hate not winning after a piss-poor performance, which has been a definite feature of this year you've spent in charge.
Lewis Gobern tells the Telegraph he is looking for a new start, back in training and hoping to get back to playing soon. He, of course, tells us that Grimsby are shit, but it might not be like that forever if they can start winning some games. This draws Gobern level with Peacock and Cummins at the top of the alliteration-friendly Tell The Telegraph Totaliser.
Andrew Wright joins Richard O'Donnell in being unable to play against Tamworth on Saturday because unfortunately he doesn't actually belong to us. Scunthorpe have denied Town permission to play him, so they have the option to use the midfielder in the latter rounds. Either that or they are determined to sabotage Grimsby's cup campaign, therefore avoiding a humiliating third-round defeat at the hands of their M180 neighbours. If only. There is still hope of reaching the promised land of the third round proper, 'til Saturday at least. Tamworth have made it to the third round proper twice in their history, losing a replay on penalties to Stoke after a 0-0 draw away at the then Championship side in 2006-07 and then losing 4-1 to Norwich at the Lamb a season later. To be honest I'd take progress to any round that had 'proper' mentioned after it.
Oh, and Town reserves lost 3-1 to a Hull City XI yesterday. Coulson managed 55 minutes as he continues his recovery from injury; former Aston Villa striker Tom Roberts played, as did Croudson in preparation for his pending FA Cup run-out. Kieran Smith was on target for Town. That's the only info the Telegraph has given me on that, no line-ups, Hull City scorers, analysis, nothing. Bloody part-timers.