Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 10 August 2011

10 August 2011

Your original/regular Diary has three things to talk about today a propos GTFC: fitness, captaincy and Russell Slade. Town have a new captain - two new captains, in fact, as we shall see. But first: the players' fitness seems to have been subject to unprecedented scrutiny during Town's decade of decline.

It was back in June 2004, a month after Town's demotion to the fourth division, that Russell Slade told the Grimsby Telegraph: "We aim to have the fittest side in the division next season." Several seasons of failure later, Mike Newell took the side into an intense pre-season programme featuring about a game a day for two weeks as he sought to improve the players' fitness. His successor Neil Woods declared himself appalled, nevertheless, with the fitness of the squad he inherited. And Shorty and Shouty, of course, have done much the same since getting Woods's old job in March.

So there's the worrying revelation that the Town squad barely kicked a ball during the first month or so of pre-season, such was (we are told) the intensity of their fitness work. But just as interesting is the question of who's been telling porkies about their players' fitness. Because if they were all telling the truth, and every GTFC squad over the past seven years has been fitter than the last, then we can expect to see a side running out at Blundell Park this Saturday with stamina levels to make the Terminator look like Peter Sweeney.

Town's new captain, meanwhile, is to be Craig Disley, while Darran Kempson will be Town's new club captain. No, me neither. This brings me round, in turn, to the wider issue of captaincy. I'm intrigued by how fashionable it's become among pundits to say the job of England captain is meaningless. It's meaningless, they say. It's purely a ceremonial role. None of them ever say why though. The Diary suspects that this is simply because nobody is capable of doing the job in what is essentially a team of eleven Ashley Coles. Shrugging shower of gutless, bling-languid cretins that they are, it doesn't matter which of the England players wears the armband, because all of them would be equally fucking clueless at leading the team. You didn't get pundits scoffing pompously about the meaninglessness of the England captaincy when Stuart Pearce had the job, did you?

By a similar token, the identity of the player tasked with leading Grimsby Town on the pitch has been similarly insignificant of late. The last man to have fulfilled the role with any distinction was surely the admirable Justin Whittle; can you even remember who's captained the Mariners since him?

And it was Russell Slade, of course, who brought the Sarge to Blundell Park and built a team around the sturdy spine of Whittle, Mildenhall, Bolland and Jones the Lump. It remains to be seen whether they are right who suspect Shorty and Shouty of building a side on the model of 'Slade without the subtlety'. But for now let's hold the thought that Slade's mooted return in 2009 provoked some fans into such a fury that Deadly John (Topcon) appointed Neil Woods instead and thus got us relegated out of the Football League. And let's remember Slade's first season in charge of GTFC. This was the man who later built Town's only team in the last ten years that had the vaguest sniff at success. And yet, during his first season in charge, a section of the Pontoon was decked with banners reading 'Slade out'.

So will Deadly John and the Pontoon dickheads have learned their lesson when November comes around and Shorty and Shouty's Town team are wobbling in eighth or ninth place? Don't bastard well bet on it.