Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Monday 18 April 2011
18 April 2011
Your original/regular Diary is now so disenchanted not just with supporting the Mariners but with football in general that I didn't even bother finding out who'd won the FA Cup semi-finals over the weekend. In the end, though, the outcome of one of the ties ended up coming to find me. Stoke City's 5-0 win over Bolton Wanderers started popping up so often in all the feeds and monitoring tools that I use to track mentions of Grimsby on the web that eventually I needed to click on one of these mentions and see what was going on. And blow me down if the Potters' win wasn't the biggest in an FA Cup semi since our beloved GTFC were thrashed by Wolves at Old Trafford in 1939!
This is the point, of course, at which every self-respecting Town fan is contractually obliged to point out that the game set a record attendance of 76,962 for Old Trafford which still stands today. We are also fond, of course, of pointing out that the Mariners' goalkeeper George Moulson came off injured early in the game, and with no substitutes allowed we had to play with ten men and an outfield player in goal. What we don't know, though, is the proportion of that enormous crowd that were supporting the Mariners. It may be that 76,900 or so had turned out to see the Black Country side, and that the population of north-east Lincolnshire remained as resolutely uninterested in football as ever. And, crocked keeper notwithstanding, doesn't it say something about the football club we love that the proudest moment in more than 130 years of history is getting a chuffing bloody enormous great tonking?
One or the other of Town's managers, as you've now come to expect, is to be found today in the Grimsby Telewag reciting the now-obligatory "grrr, all these players are shit, we're going to sack the bloody lot" spiel following said players' inability to turn a win from a two-goal lead against part-time opposition again on Saturday. Me, I still don't know which is Shorty and which is Shouty, so I can't be bothered to read it.
For all their spouting about the shortcomings of the players they keep selecting, though, the first two of many to be sent packing by S 'n' S are a pair of youngsters they will barely have seen play. Tom Corner and Mark Gray, graduates of Town's much-vaunted youth system, are already looking for new clubs, which seems to the Diary to be a case of misplaced blame given that it's all Deadly John (Topcon)'s fault.
And finally, how much do you want to pay to watch the Mariners? That's the question being asked today by the club's superb new official website. Before you present your cheque for 12½ pence and a mouldy conker at the ticket office be mindful that the club's superb new official website is just ushering you on to the club's superb new official messageboard to discuss it, rather than actually committing GTFC to any kind of innovative new Radiohead/FC United of Manchester-style pricing system. For those of you on a budget, though, this ought to be good news, as the age profile of the official messageboard community should ensure that tickets can easily be purchased out of pocket money and paper rounds.