Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 7 February 2012
7 February 2012
It seems to your original/regular Diary that there's not a great deal that can reliably be learned from the Daily Express. Except by reading between the lines and discovering, for example, that the Daily Express is full of shit. It remains to be seen whether the various Snowmageddon scenarios joyfully prophesied by the Express will come to pass later this week. But tonight's meeting between Bath City and Grimsby Town in the FA Trophy, for what it's worth, has certainly beaten the weather, even if the rest of global civilisation collapses around it.
(For more on tonight's encounter, the Cod Almighty match preview is back. Get a load of facts, form, and everything else here.)
One place the determined doom-mongering of the Express won't be striking a chord just now is Grimsby. And there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. With the Mariners' unbeaten run continuing over the weekend thanks to a wintry postponement, there's no end to the optimism around Blundell Park way just now. So much so, in fact, that the football club seems to have launched a 'Lets [sic.] Pack The Park' campaign to try and get 5,000 supporters in for the remaining home games this season as Shorty and Shouty's men push on for the play-off places. I say "seems to have launched" because I can't see a link to that campaign page anywhere prominent on the club's superb new official website. So it's more sort of slipped out than been launched. But even your original/regular Diary is prepared to contribute to the present air of insane positivity, so I won't labour the point, or go on about the missing apostrophe clanger on the campaign poster, or anything like that.
Much has happened in Anthony Elding's short Grimsby Town career thus far. He was singled out for abuse by a section of the club's 'support' almost before he stepped onto the pitch. He missed a few sitters. He scored a few goals. He pumped his fists and roared at the Pontoon when Town beat Lincoln, instantly transforming into him a cult hero and internet meme. Sensing the moment of a lifetime, Elding's agent placed some stories in the press about Swindon being interested, tapped Shorty on the shoulder, held up a smartphone following the #eldingfacts hashtag, and gently cleared his or her throat.
Today we've learned that the desired effect has been achieved. The player has signed the new contract he was offered, keeping him at Blundell Park to the end of next season. By the end of this year we now expect Elding to have captained the Mariners to FA Trophy and play-off glory, won the next series of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and achieved the 2012 Christmas number one. Town fans with a sensible view of squad development and player contracts are now planning to get #iansonfacts and #thanojfacts trending globally by four o'clock this afternoon.
It would have been nice, though, if the club had given the even the vaguest indication - through the SNOS or any other channel, that it was running a sport and social history project called Trawlers and Footballers. This information has come to light only because researchers have found evidence that the first women's football team in England may have emerged in Grimsby. The news was reported by the BBC recently and is repeated by the Grimsby Telegraph today. It's just a shame that the football club is so backward about coming forward sometimes, when there's such genuinely fascinating-sounding stuff as this that they could be telling us about.
Diary reader Matt Pakes is another, though, who's noticed that the recent upturn in form by the Town team has been matched by the club's communications. Last week, you might recall, the club's website was quick to respond to a question from Cod Almighty about the Parents Partnership Action Group. Matt says: Fair play to the SNOS, they've been pretty damn responsive with stuff recently! That PPAG thing, Cod Almighty asked the question, didn't get a response straight away but instead got a proper(ish) press release on the site. Genuinely slightly impressive!"
In reference to CA's tenth anniversary, Matt adds: "PS: Thanks for the last 10 years of uni/work distraction! It's been a joy." Thank you, Matt. We'll be doing a few things to mark the occasion later this year, so keep your eyes open for that.
Back to the week ahead, though, before we go, and it seems that the 'adverse' weather has had one happy consequence from a GTFC-centric perspective. The York Press is today reporting the postponement of their own FA Trophy game tonight and a reserve game yesterday. The Minstermen's top scorer Jason Walker - whose skill did for Town back at Bootham Crescent in October - was looking to the midweek programme as a chance to build up some fitness after missing eight games injured. And York midfielder Scott Brown won't now complete his three-match suspension tonight. Brown will be ineligible when City visit BP in a massive six-pointer this Saturday. And Walker, speculates the Press, "is unlikely to be risked from the start". Hey, I've been clutching at straws for ten years; it'll take more than three months to stop.