Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 21 November 2012

21 November 2012

I think it was the morning after we had lost 5-0 at Braintree that I half expected Deadly John (TopMan) to wield the metaphorical axe and bring an end to Shorty and Shouty's time in the Blundell Park hot seat(s). Obviously that didn't happen. Say what you like about our non chairman (and most people do) but this morning, in the light of Chelsea sacking their 26th manager in two-and-a-bit years, he's been made to look like he's got the patience of a saint.

In the 15 months since that Essex debacle, the Dynamic Duo have led Town from the relegation zone to the top of the table. They did put us in the relegation zone first, to be fair. It's all a bit too tight for your West Yorkshire Diary's liking - especially after Wrexham hammered Braintree last night. The fact that 36 points at this time last season would've only been good enough for fifth spot is not lost on me, I can assure you.

But I don't want to be a Debbie Downer about this. I'd much rather be beating Braintree 3-0 at home than losing 5-0 away. And if the standard required to win the Conference is lower than last year, then who really cares?

Being at the top is nice - if a little scary. After all, there is a generation of Town fans out there that have developed severe cases of league table vertigo as they've grown up. They see Grimsby atop the Conference and immediately feel queasy. It's just not natural.

To me, it feels more like being chased up the stairs when I was a child. We've got a head start, but we're scared of being caught (and in my case, tickled). I just hope that our coping mechanism amounts to more than the strange mixture of screaming and laughing that I used to produce whilst being pursued. Wrexham, Forest Green, Newport and Luton have got their pink feather dusters at the ready.

Today's Telewag interview is with on-loan striker Ross Hannah, who just loves scoring goals. That's a bit of a relief, what with him being a striker and all that. He's tried to lay claim to the goal scored by Andi Thanoj against Woking since those powerhouses at Sky and the BBC mistook Thanoj for Hannah. I'm not sure how easy a mistake that is to make. A lot of our fans - including John Tondeur, and Alan Buckley on the radio - couldn't work out whether it was Nathan Pond or Aswad Thomas who got booked for kicking the ball away last Saturday. But let's not go there.

While I'm on the subject of not being able to recognise our own players, I remember the many times between 1997 and 1999 that the GTFC video commentary team couldn't tell between Lee Nogan and Jack Lester. Lee Nogan was the one who rarely scored; Lester was the one who would win dodgy penalties. Lester was very popular on Twitter last night after he scored his 91st goal for Chesterfield in their win over Cheltenham. Even a few Forest fans weighed in with claims of "legend". They'll have to remind me what he did there because I can't remember.

Finally today - quite literally, as it'll be happening from 6:30pm in Freshney Place - "infamous" ex-Town boss Brian Laws will be signing copies of his book, Law of the Jungle, in Waterstones. Nice to see he referenced his time in Grimsby within the title by doing that quaint Grimbarian thing of dropping the 's' off his name. Ivano Bonetti won't be heading the queue - he'll probably be at home taking part in the Telegraph's Live Chat, which is experimenting with a 6pm kick-off this time.