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Diary - Friday 21 January 2011

21 January 2011

"With the ball we know he's different class, it's whether he still has his legs." With those words to the Grimsby Telegraph Neil Woods pithily summarised the dilemma surrounding latest Town trialist Bryan Hughes. Hughes has been a classy, cultured midfielder for a lot of years. Whether his slight frame is suited to the bully-boy rough and tumble of Conference football and whether his lower limbs can perambulate quickly enough and far enough has to be a gamble. But, boy, he used to pass like a dreamboat and chip in with goals in his long spell at Birmingham. And only a contretemps with that idiot Phil Brown at Hull kept him out of their team when they were playing in the top division.

So your Guest Diarist reckons this is a big decision for Mr Woods given that Hughes has only had 57 minutes of first-team football so far this season. Half-full - he should be as fresh as a daisy! Hughes played with some other unnamed trialists in a hastily arranged friendly fixture at Sincil Bank yesterday, by the way.

Tomorrow is a big game for all sorts of reasons. A chance to justifiably bait the crooked loudmouth yob Evans. A chance for Town to prove their lucky away win at Crawley can be repeated at home, or that at least they can hold the leaders. A chance for Town to continue their excellent home run and prove to fans that the dismal away games at Wrexham and York are behind them. The least stay-away fans should do is risk a Saturday afternoon watching them and getting behind the team. The crowd the other night was pathetic and if the team had continued in the same vein as the opening 20 minutes, deserved. But Town got back in the game and deserved their victory with two good goals - the second better than good. If you are a true Town fan there is no reason to avoid the match tomorrow - even if we get hammered by the expensive, too-good-for-this-league Crawley line-up you can still take it out on their manager rather than ours, can't you?

As for team news, well, Bradley Wood played with six stitches in his ankle the other night and Peter Bore missed training afterwards with a sore toe. This may demonstrate something about pain thresholds or maybe something about attitude. But Bore seems likely to be OK to play tomorrow, unlike Coulson and Ridley who won't be fit. Peacock, of course, is suspended. Which means new signing Makofo is highly likely to feature. His pace in the third goal shown in that clip is brutal.

Steve Evans has been talking about the game: "Grimsby Town is a hard place to go and play but we go there in terrific form. Without any doubt they are one of the very big clubs in the Blue Square Bet Premier and they have a fantastic support who simply live and breath (sic) Grimsby Town. They have a squad full of quality footballers and a chairman in John Fenty who has invested huge amounts of money to ensure that is the case, so we know this will be a stern test for us. Scott Neilson took a kick late in the match on Tuesday night at Bath City and he will be subject to a late fitness test. We had a number of impressive performances in a closed door match at Rushden & Diamonds on Wednesday and that has given us a lot to think about ahead of picking our team for Saturday."

So the least we can do as fans is live up to Evans's billing - turn up tomorrow and get behind the team. Stop barracking Bore, and give the new lad more than one chance to show us what he can do. We have agonised enough over the merits or otherwise of the manager and the squad. We are where we are with who we have got, so let's make the best of it. If Evans is an Abba fan let's hope tomorrow will be his Waterloo. I can't believe I just wrote that - I'll get me coat. See yer.