Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 30 August 2012

30 August 2012

GTFC have extended the loan of Nathan Pond until January, BBC Radio Humberside is reporting. The Fleetwood central defender/midfielder arrived - as you will hopefully remember, as it wasn't all that long ago, but we have to do this filly-outy-context thing, or we'll end up as sparse and ridiculous as the NSNOS - on loan from Fleetwood 14 minutes before the start of the current season. After a less than impressive start to his career with the Mariners, Pond has started to attract more favourable attention for his performances of late. In particular, your original/regular Diary deems Pond's opening goal against Stockport the other week to be the best overhead kick seen at Blundell Park since Muzzy Izzet scored the best one by anyone anywhere ten years ago. And Town were playing with two left-backs, Tony Gallimore and Darren Barnard, in the same starting XI. You'd think one of them might have stopped that cross coming over.

Also from the local Beeb (we really need a new nickname for the BBC - Kenny Everett was great and everything, but nobody wants to sound like him 30 years later), Town have rejected a bid from a Football League club for Twitter's Anthony Elding. After skying a series of nailed-on sitters last season following his arrival from Rochdale or Bury or somewhere, the Marmite centre-forward went on to bustle his way into the affections of precisely half the Mariners' support. Some believe this was due mostly to a string of improved performances which kept Rob Duffy out of the team, but it's always been clear to me that the uplift in Elding's esteem coincided precisely with the moment during the Lincoln game when he turned around to the Pontoon stand, pumped his fists and bellowed a bit.

Similarly, it was perhaps Stuart Watkisseses's neglect of such important displays of completely unnecessary macho bollocks commitment which made him so unpopular a figure during his time as an assistant and caretaker manager at Blundell Park. So low was Watkisseses's stock among Grimsby Town fans, in fact, that the club's then majority shareholder and key decision maker, Councillor John Shelton Fenty of Five Star Fish and Topcon construction fame, issued a calm, masterful and in no way cowardly or panicked statement to the effect that, whoever the next permanent manager turned out to be, it wouldn't be Watkisseses (so please leave me alone). Disco Stu went on to a better job with professional football's King$ton Communication$ FC, of course. The Diary remains uncertain as to whether it's his improved CV that has Town supporters calling for his return to replace Robbie Stockdale as youth team coach, or he's just been snarling at himself in the mirror a lot.

And lastly today, as you've probably seen, the Grimsby Town fan charged with racially abusing Aswad Thomas on his visit to BP with Braintree last season has been given a three-year ban from Town games by Grimsby Magistrates Court. The club's response is at best evasive and at worst reads as if GTFC are basically on Karen Stevens' side, as the club continues to choose terms like "unfortunate" and "isolated" ahead of, say, "deplorable" or "repulsive". Club officials have raised another question by mysteriously claiming that the banning order was "stronger than any action that the club could take". Whatever that means, many supporters will look upon Stevens' three-year absence from GTFC matches and feel justice has been done. Many more will look upon Stevens' three-year absence from GTFC matches and feel pure envy.