Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 15 December 2010

15 December 2010

Sorry there was no diary yesterday. Idle Diary forgot to write it!

"Rob Eagle hopes Town can keep the momentum going," is the headline of today's lead story from the Grimsby Telegraph sports desk, which seems to your original/regular Diary a little presumptuous, given that you have to have momentum in the first place before you can keep it going. Oh, right, sorry - he means the momentum generated by the Mariners' win over Redditch United in the FA Trophy last Saturday. That's the one. Town's first game in three weeks and their second win in the last ten games. That momentum.

What Rob is doing, of course, is playing Tell The Telegraph We've Not Been The Best Lately, But We'll Get Better Soon, Honest - the fun game enjoyed constantly by Grimsby Town footballers of all ages and abilities over the past eight seasons of relentless failure. Yer man Eagleses, though, has been one of the Mariners' better performers this season, contributing five goals and lending creativity to the attack, despite many messageboard pundits having written him off as another useless waster within roughly twelve seconds of his first touch in a pre-season friendly. Obviously, it wouldn't be fair to judge Eagle and his current teammates all the more harshly for our frustration at the failures of, say, Peter Sweeney, Adrian Forbes, Terry Cooke, Anthony Williams, Mickaël Antoine-Curier and Barry Fucking Conlon. A fair proportion of Town fans will do it anyway, naturally, but it still wouldn't be fair.

So, anyway, Chasetown. For those of you who weren't aware, Town couldn't play Kettering in their rearranged league fixture last night because Kettering were replaying Chasetown in the FA Trophy - a game for which the winners had been drawn against Town in the second round. It's neat circularity rather than dramatic irony. The drama came in extra time, when Kettering scored the first goal of the game only for Chasetown to equalise, then miss a penalty, and finally bring on a substitute who scored the winning goal in the 120th minute with his first touch of the ball. Saturday 15 January will see the Mariners visit their Staffordshire opponents, who play in the top flight of the Northern Premier League, two divisions below Town, after being promoted last season through the play-offs. We may not yet know a great deal about Chasetown, though that will change over the course of the next month, and we can at least agree in the meantime that they have an awesome name.

Lastly from me today, if you're looking at buying a copy of Kevin Drinkell's autobiography for the Town fan in your life this Christmas, you might want to buy one of these off of Ebay. They're a couple of quid cheaper than the RRP and they're signed by the actual Kevin Drinkell who wrote it and everything. Speaking of Christmas shopping, does the supporters' trust still do that affiliate linking thing whereby it gets money if you click through from the GTST site to Amazon and all those other big online shops? I can't find the link now. Answers on an e-postcard, please - and while you're about it, please do email diary@codalmighty.com with your other festive gift suggestions for Town fans. There are only nine shopping sessions left until somebody has to figure out where we're playing Mansfield on Boxing Day.