Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 17 November 2010

17 November 2010

Grrr, Scunthorpe! How dare they be about 25 miles away from us? The rotters! Your original/regular Diary understands football well, and that means I take football's local rivalry thing very seriously indeed. However, Scunthorpe United are not just based 25 miles away from Grimsby. Sadly for us real fans, they are also, at least for the moment, about 84 metric fucktons better than Grimsby Town. And as a result, the two clubs are unlikely to play each other competitively for a very long time.

By way of consolation, though, there are always reserve fixtures. One of these happened last night. Significantly for Mariners fans, Kenny 'Gloves of Steel' Arthur played the first 45 minutes without rupturing his oesophagus and should now play for the first team against Barrow this weekend. Another run-out for Lewis Gobern will see the former Bastard Franchise Scum winger in contention too. Oh, those pesky Scunnies won 3-0, and Paris Cowan-Hall had a good game for them. So shall we go and throw something at a copper, or should we visit a public convenience in Bottesford and leave it in a fairly untidy condition?

What's that? Fans' forum, you say? Oh, well, if we must. Let's not sell Alan Connell, eh, because he's quite good. Oooh, that Mike Newell, his eyebrows were too close together. "By enlarge," said John Fenty (Con), being misquoted by the Grimsby Telegraph because Northcliffe Media thinks it's a good idea to enlarge its profits by using the Microsoft Word spellchecker instead of employing sub-editors, "every manager since I have been chairman has got what they asked for in terms of bringing players in." Most of these players, of course, then have their contracts paid up every time Fenty changes his mind about who should be manager, and the chairman goes on to explain that this has cost GTFC more than £200,000 in recent years. "Clearly we need to do better," said the chairman, in a late bid for the 2010 Yorkshire and the Humber Understatement of the Year award.

Oooh, but what about that evil Nick Colgan? Oooh, he's a bad man. You abuse him, and he abuses you! Oooh! The nerve of it! Happily, that nice John Fenty is on hand to clarify the situation. "He won't be playing for Grimsby Town going forward," explained the councillor. This is highly reassuring to the Diary, who always gets terribly nervous when a goalkeeper pushes up to the opponents' penalty area when his team wins a 92nd-minute corner. But why won't he be playing for Grimsby Town going forward? They won't tell us. It's another unsolved mystery to be filed away forever with the issue of why the three-year Jarvis sponsorship only lasted nine months. Still, why worry about genuine accountability to supporters, or the continued failure of Fenty's vanity-fuelled benefactor model of running the football club, when you can fret about the quality of the Blundell Park beefburgers?

A couple of emails have reached the Diary - the first from Chris Beeley in response to Idle Diary's outpourings here yesterday. "Enjoyed the Diary today," he writes, citing the "Burn after reading" header, "but where was the reference to Barry 'Coen man' Conlon? Ah, f*** it dude, let's go to BP." Those are Chris's asterisks, I hasten to add; Cod Almighty's style guide instructs its authors that "if you want to swear, just fucking swear".

Chris continues: "I am probably jinxing the whole thing here, but I am quietly optimistic at the moment. Let's face it, we have seen Town play sh.. er, sorry, poorly a lot this season but we're still ninth, there's a long way to go, and Peacock's not likely to be in the team for a bit. I think Woods has signed more good 'uns since the summer (Connell, Ademeno, Eagle, Wright, O'Donnell, Garner, Watt) than bad 'uns (Gobern, Kempson, Cummins); jury still out on a few (Hudson, Samuels, Ridley, Arthur), but there's a nucleus there. Bit of nifty business in January and we might just tiptoe into fifth place and then who knows?" Perhaps, though we ought to give Gobern, at least, the benefit of the doubt too: his excellent display against Luton showed the ability is there if he can stay fit enough to use it.

"Enjoying Humberside's commentaries at the moment too," adds Chris. "During the Cambridge game, after a Town player had raised his foot a little too high as a Cambridger stooped to head the ball, we were reminded of John Newman's old saying 'if he puts his head that low, don't disappoint him'. Keep up the good work, CA."

So, thanks to you all for reading, to Chris for that excellent email, and to Richard Lord for asking in another: "Has the Diary ever thought about abbreviating 'Tell The Telegraph We've Not Been The Best Lately But We'll Get Better Soon, Honest' to the simplified and more digestible 'TTTWNBTBLBWGBSH'? Ironically - well, incredibly - that actually means 'cry for help' in Welsh. Coincidence?" Surely not, Richard. Several of the CA team can remember Tony Rees making that very utterance in a phone call to Alan Buckley shortly after the latter joined West Brom and was replaced as GTFC manager by Brian Laws.