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Diary - Thursday 4 July 2013

4 July 2013

Pre-season training on Cleethorpes beach? Mm? Marvellous. Lobsters for goalposts? Wasn't it? This fine lunchtime your original/regular Diary has been greatly enjoying the Grimsby Telewag's crackly video of Town's players running up and down a grassy sandbank and carrying balls around flags. It reminds me a bit of being a sixer in the 3rd Cleethorpes cubs, I suppose. But there's something about a GTFC squad on the beach that will always evoke Lawrie McMenemy to Grimbarians of a certain vintage. Or perhaps Russell Slade if you're a bit younger.

So give the vid a watch – it'll make you feel good. But you'll have to wait for the director's cut to see the session taken by Deadly John (Flopcon), in which the Mariners' major shareholder optimises his employees' abdominal stretch capacity by ordering them to tear up a large area of saltmarsh.

Not joining the squad's sandy frolickings is Matt Clarke, the former Bradford centre-half who had trained with Town earlier this week. When it was discovered that Clarke was the erstwhile drinking partner of a certain Barry Fucking Conlon, formerly of this parish, the Fishy messageboard went into meltdown. The Fishy messageboard, of course, runs Grimsby Town Football Club, and so Clarke has been quietly ushered away to Halifax. Phew!

Young's Seafood, who once used to pay my dad slightly more than bugger all for getting up in the middle of the night and gutting fish on the other pontoon for eight or 12 hours at a time, has found some money to give to a football club for a ninth consecutive season. It seems a long time, too, since the well-known fish firm was drafted in as an emergency sponsor when its predecessor Jarvis prematurely withdrew from an arrangement in mysterious circumstances. Still, as the trippers say back on the beach, come for t'day, stay for t'decade.

Back to Town's search for a defender, and David Miller has emailed the Diary about the strapping six-footer linked with a switch to Blundell Park exclusively on this page earlier in the week. "Does Miss Guest Diary have a knitting pattern available for that defender she made at the weekend?" asks David. "Or have the club already put it on eBay?" I am unsure as to the destination of the woolly young hopeful in question, David, but hopefully MGD can enlighten you when she returns here next week. Maybe she'll even put it on eBay herself and raise funds to help Town buy a real one.

Last of all today, if you're still after some lunchtime reading material, I'll leave you with a florid but enjoyable preview of Town's and Lincoln's chances in 2013-14 from the Save The Mighty Imps blog. Repeated testing in the Diary's office has established that it works best read aloud in the voice of Alan Partridge. Cheerio for now!