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Diary - Wednesday 17 October 2012

17 October 2012

Following all the local excitement of two Grimsby Town players facing each other in a genuine international football match, the Andi v Aswad battle didn't get to take place yesterday when the stadium's pitch in Albania became waterlogged. A similar story took place approximately 1,000 miles north in Warsaw where England's World Cup 2014 group qualifier against Poland was postponed after a heavy downpour knackered the pitch. I'm still waiting for Polish meteorologists to explain how the unpredicted "heavy downpour" would have been sufficient reason to close the stadium's roof, but the thoroughly predicted "torrential rain" was not.

The issue of postponements makes your West Yorkshire Diary remember Boxing Day 2009, when me and a friend left Grimsby in the morning feeling absolutely certain that the game at Notts County wouldn't be frozen off because they would have at least covered the pitch with a massive patchwork quilt or something. They didn't. We got as far as Scunthorpe and discovered that the game had indeed been postponed. Still determined to watch a football match, we drove down to Lincoln instead and watched Jack Lester miss a last-minute penalty for Chesterfield in a 2-1 defeat. All in all, it was a shit day. It was a thoroughly shit season, really.

Back in 1993 a friend of mine was a mascot at Blundell Park in a live televised game against Sunderland. The pitch looked much worse than the one in Poland last night, but back in 1993 people didn't really give a toss about player safety and the game went ahead. I think it lasted six minutes before it got abandoned. Livvo fell over on the edge of the area and didn't stop sliding until he was off the pitch, but it was only when Paul Groves got some sleet in his eye that the referee decided to call the game off.

I was also present at Rochdale on new year's day 2005, when the Mariners and Dale somehow managed to complete 45 minutes of football on a waterlogged pitch that had no grass either because it was Spotland. The rain was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I remember the referee talking on the radio, after the abandonment, praising the players for trying to play 'good football' in the abominable conditions. Incredibly, the Mariners managed to play no good football in the rearranged fixture and lost 2-0. I froze my bollocks off that night.

I suppose I should do some Grimsby news now. The club's top scorer and on-loan centre-back Nathan Pond is eligible to play in this weekend's FA Cup fourth qualifying round match against Kidderminster, as is Scott Neilson. Both players were granted permission to play in the competition by parent clubs Fleetwood and Crawley, but big bad Bradford have said no to Ross Hannah doing such a thing. The door is wide open, then, for the rest of the strikers in Town's squad. Greg Pearson played in the stiffs' 3-0 defeat against Burton yesterday, as did Dayle Southwell and Andy Cook. But, at the moment, it looks like Anthony Elding will be the first striker's name on the team sheet.

I'm really sorry about this but I'm going to mention Anthony Elding again. I know. It's one of the drawbacks of CA's multiple diarists disorder. The best thing Anthony Elding can do, right now, is to withdraw that written transfer request. If he really loves the club and wants to play week in, week out, kiss the badge and all that jazz, then he should tell Shouty and Shorty to rip up that piece of paper and explain to the fans via the Telegraph the emotions he went through at that time. He needs to be honest. Fans appreciate honesty, because there's not a lot of it in football any more. And if he did that, I think he'll find the fans will be a lot more forgiving when he shanks a six-yard effort wide of the post on Saturday. It's kids for a quid, remember!

Lastly today, there's a nice piece by Cod Almighty contributor Richard Lord, whose article explains how this weekend's visitors Kidderminster Harriers ignited his passion for the FA Cup. Let's hope they don't douse Town's cup flame this weekend, eh.

Ciao!