Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 9 October 2012

9 October 2012

Many, many years ago, long before I was Middle-Aged Diary, I was persuaded to spend much of my half-term holiday in Cleethorpes because the Playfair Football Annual had it down in black and white that the Mariners would be at home while we were there. The day dawned. Coverage of the putative fixture in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph was non-existent. I made a pest of myself at the nearby newsagents, asking the proprietor (who, the aunt we were staying with assured us, was an authority on these things) if there would be a game. All he knew was that there was no local coverage, and therefore that there would be no game.

There is a game tonight, but look for coverage and you might not know it. The NSNOS has put its preview on video, and made it subscriber-only. Midweek matches are too much for Cod Almighty's highly talented, highly stretched and completely unpaid team of match previewers to cover. The BBC has a snippet in which Paul Hurst gets all counterintuitive (Alfreton "are six games unbeaten, but I like the fact they are on that bit of a run") but doesn't give anything away about team selection. The no-longer-Evening Telegraph does run an interview with Darren Kempson, now captain of Alfreton and displaying a certain self-deprecation about his use of Twitter, beneath the headline prescribed by law for interviews with players facing their old clubs: he "hopes to haunt" Town.

The Telegraph website also finds space for Paul Hurst's statement of satisfaction with the FA Cup draw: an odd statement given that a random draw is not something you can appeal against. There are some in the twittersphere trying to foment a conspiracy theory about the eight all-Conference ties in the final qualifying round. If anyone has the statistical know-how to prove this is not so freakish as it might at first sight appear, it would be good to hear from you. In the meantime, let's all give the FA a break. Their forensic skewering of John Terry, Ashley Cole and Chelsea FC should gladden Town hearts almost as much as the Mariners starting up another unbeaten run this evening.