Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 5 October 2011

5 October 2011

Your West Yorkshire Diary is a big fan of those Grimsby Town highlights videos and I'm disappointed that they appear to have stopped making them in recent seasons. I suspect the producers will be concerned about the lack of highlights and wish to avoid the embarrassment of releasing a video that shows the Mariners being rubbish in a variety of ways. So they just thought it'd be easier to forget about those drubbings against Dagenham & Redbridge by not putting them on a format that gives us the option to see them over and over again.

The last video I bought was of the 2007-08 season, when Town did OK in the league and made the final of the Dulux Cup. After that the videos disappear. I say videos - since about 2005 they've been on those digitally versatile disks, but I'm a man of tradition and so they will always be videos to me. Just in the same way that it'll always be Emmerdale Farm to my dad. The only reason why I intend to keep the small television set that got me through my university days (despite the digital switchover making it useless) is because it has an in-built VHS player - through which I'll be able to watch all those old videos from when we used to be good.

But my point is this: win, lose or draw, the videos have a certain charm about them, and that's down to the excellent commentary team. I want to hear "crikey - look out!" exclaimed at the top of John Moore's voice. I want to know what adjectives he chose when we lost at home to Torquay. I crave the cries of "chance on!" and "no marking!" The video crew - or should they be called the DVD crew now? - offer entertainment through the heartache, and that's why I buy them. I also buy them to see which room of his house John will introduce the action from.

In order to fully enjoy the 5-2 victory over Alfreton last weekend I'm going to ignore the boardroom kerfuffle, GTST's acquisition of Mike Parker's shares, the implications, what Deadly John (Topcon) might say next, our financial position, our league position and the standard of opposition, and just look at it as the excellent victory it was. If I start clouding the result with context then I won't feel any more excited about our future prospects than I did last week. My club won 5-2 on Saturday and I'm happy about it.

A mixture of players who aren't good enough for our starting XI and who are on their way back from recurring injuries lost 3-2 in one of those behind-closed-doors friendlies against King$ton Communication$ FC yesterday. Robbie Stockdale's salt and vinegar crisp-crunching yoofers travel to Brighouse tonight for an FA Youth Cup qualifier but the superb new official website near the top of Google listings says the team has a lot of injuries. The end of the article tells us to "Logon to gtfc.co.uk" but doesn't say why.

Finally today, we'd like to send our best wishes to Tom Bender who was involved in a nasty collision during Accrington's game against Tranmere last night, which led to the match being abandoned. Thankfully it seems he only suffered severe concussion.