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Diary - Wednesday 12 January 2011

12 January 2011

In typically Town style, then, Neil Woodses's team have followed up the club's best back-to-back results in 121 years with two of their worst performances of the season. OK, so opinion is divided over the total number of shots on target the Mariners achieved during their defeats at Wrexham on Saturday and York last night. But only because we can't agree whether the number is one or zero. Now, what was I saying last Wednesday about not getting carried away with the Mansfield and Histon results? Always listen to your original/regular Diary, boys and girls. Your original/regular Diary knows best.
br> As for the manager's reaction, again, there is a lack of consensus. BBC Sport reports Woodses to be "angry" about his players reverting to type at Bootham Crescent. The Grimsby Telewag goes a step further, describing the manager's "fury". The Conference's official website, meanwhile, downplays Neil's response, suggesting merely that "Woods fumes" after his team's failure to turn up last night. One thing is certain: our variously angry, furious or fuming head coach has cancelled the players' day off today and had them in for extra training. Our undercover observer at the Mariners' Cheapside training base reports that the drills in their entirety have so far entailed the players sitting around on the ground while Woods and Dave Moore slap their hands against their foreheads and say: "Guhhhhhh!"

So if this lot aren't up to it, who is? In the absence of any transfer window activity thus far, attention turns to Town's reserve team, who are in action (of a sort) this afternoon with an away game against Middlesbrough. Our superb new official website has the GTFC team, which includes Steven 'Eh?' Watt, absent for three months with a knee injury. Also lining up for the stiffs - against his own club - is a fabulously named Boro left-back, Ashley Corker, who has joined the Mariners for a trial. Speaking of superb monikers, the match takes place at the home of Billingham Synthonia - which for many years seemed to the Diary one of the more beautiful names in non-League football, alongside Great Wakering Rovers and Swindon Supermarine. Or at least it did until I found out it was a contraction of 'synthetic ammonia'.

Phil Watson has emailed the Diary in response to a news item last week. In a clear pitch at the Nobel Prize for Irony, three times relegated GTFC chairman John Fenty (Con), you may recall, was offering advice to Lincoln City on how to stay up in the Football League. "A new game for us all to enjoy in this brave new goal-spangled decade," writes Phil. "Asking advice from John Fenty on avoiding relegation is like... I'll go first: asking Gordon Brown how to win an election." Oooh, my go! Asking advice from John Fenty on avoiding relegation is like... asking Ricky Ponting how to win the Ashes! Email your entries, readers, to diary@codalmighty.com, and the best one wins a pint in the Rutland just before the Crawley game.

All that remains for today, then, is to thank you for reading and wish you well for the rest of the week. Oh, and once you've strapped on your oxygen tank of positivity, don't forget your flippers of faith and your rose-tinted snorkel. See ya.