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Diary - Wednesday 10 October 2012

10 October 2012

Town's impressive away form continues, then, with a win away against an Alfreton team that's clearly improved on last season. The Cod Almighty team will be unable to publish a report on this match, but we'll try and get a factfile out later on, once we've finished throwing the ball back onto the pitch.

Your original/regular Diary notes that the Grimsby Telegraph has updated us on its much-vaunted 'Trawling the Town' campaign. Apparently a Trawling team of local youngsters is now playing matches, coached by Mariners defender Shaun Pearson and Cleethorpes Town's 20-year-old ex-GTFC trainee Lawrence Heward. Any coaching qualifications held by this duo are not mentioned by the Telegraph, though at least Heward looks older than Town's youth team coach Adam Smith, who himself appears barely eligible to vote.

For one thing, we might wonder about the message sent out to the most talented local youngsters by giving them a coach who's only just out of his teens. For another, we might very well ask why Town weren't busy Trawling anyway, before this scouting scheme was conceived by the Grimsby Telegraph. I was particularly troubled by this report from last month:

[Vice-chairman] David Mann of Cleethorpes Town, has praised the project, which was launched earlier this year to give local young footballers the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sign for Grimsby Town...

"We've sent kids to Doncaster Rovers and Hull City in the past, but not that many to Grimsby Town, until Trawling the Town was launched."

Why on earth should "local young footballers" only have a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to join their local club? If it's only the intervention of the Telewag that's given them this chance, then hasn't Town's supposedly first-class youth system, in fact, disgracefully and completely failed? What this means, essentially, is that until the sports desk at the local paper started doing GTFC's job for them, talented kids from Grimsby and Cleethorpes were getting cherry-picked by Donny and bloody King$ton Communication$ FC, because Deadly John (Topgun) would sooner sink his millions into contract compensations than into the youth system that should be the bedrock of the club.

Diary reader Phil Watson emailed after last Saturday's home defeat by Dartford to claim this season's Jonah title. Phil begins, however, by explaining why we didn't see him in the pub before the game. "My train only got to Cleethorpes at ten to two, so there was just time to drop my bag at my Mum's, queue for a ticket and get into the ground five minutes before kick-off. I'll make it to the Rutland next time, honest. There, my defence is more convincing than Town's in the second half, I think you'll agree. P.S. First Nuneaton then this. I sense another Jonah run beginning. I think my personal best was just under two years without seeing a Town win."

Well, at last night's game I mentioned a lousy run of my own, about ten years back, which took in 20-odd games without seeing the Mariners prevail. What's your worst ever run of watching Town, readers? Email diary@codalmighty.com and tell us. If it's just the Neil Woodses run the other year, we don't want to know.

Lastly today, a word from Sibbo adds to the recent debate about the Mariners' new-new stadium, also known as Fentydome II. "As a boy going to Town games, one of my lasting memories is of the Dock Tower on the front of match programmes. Grimsby is synonymous with the fishing industry and many a mariner will have sailed from the docks, some never to return. Somehow it seems fitting to build a new stadium within sight of the Tower." Amen to that, brother.