Cod Almighty | Diary

Shankly panky

19 July 2013

Mardy Diary writes: It's no news Friday, and no bugger has bothered to email so I've not much to say today.

There is a game tomorrow as Town battled their way through many preliminary rounds to meet Football League opposition in the quarter-final of the region's premier tournament. Yes, it's the Lincs Senior Cup.

The only real team news is that Bignot will finally get a run-out with the team, alongside Doig, who is still on trial. By the way, does anyone know why the Telegraph has two websites now – one with cut-down stories from the other?

The Scunny website states that their trialists can't play in the match unless they sign non-contract terms before the game, but Town have made no mention of this. So either there's preferential treatment for Lincolnshire's premier team (that's Grimsby, by the way) or someone has got the wrong end of the stick. I couldn't possibly speculate.

Should Town end up playing ineligible players anyway, it's hard to see what could possibly go wrong, other than them getting kicked out of the Lincs Cup, or resigning from it for ten years in a huff like we did in the 19th century.

I know most aren't bothered by this cup, but I quite like the history and daftness of county cups. I wish they still did the tournaments between counties like in cricket. Admittedly Lincolnshire, despite its size, would struggle to field a team of local players, but this could be easily solved by a little repatriation of a few Scots in Grimsby – just as they used to back in the day.

Talking of back in the day, as we were, I was musing over the old Shankly quote the other day (you know, "pound for pound... best team..." etc.) and decided to check on its origin, having never sought to do so before. It turns out that it's in Shankly's autobiography in 1976 – of which I'm sure many of you are aware.

Obviously my first port of call for this information was the Wikipedia page for Shankly, and lo and behold there it was. However, what struck me was the qualification that came with it:

Shankly insisted in his autobiography that his Grimsby team was: "Pound for pound, and class for class, the best football team I have seen in England since the war. In the league they were in they played football nobody else could play. Everything was measured, planned and perfected and you could not wish to see more entertaining football". Stephen Kelly quotes the "pound for pound" analysis but qualifies it as "another slight exaggeration, but he meant well". Kelly went on: "that kind of talk could only boost morale at the club".

Hang on? What's that? Could only boost morale?

The second quote here is from Stephen Kelly's book on Shankly, published in 1997. I take the first point that perhaps it was a slight exaggeration, but why would Shankly want to boost the morale of the Grimsby team in 1976? Sure, if Shankly said it during his stint as manager of Grimsby, that would be a fair comment, perhaps. But he didn't. He's talking in the past tense there.

Clearly a certain person (that's Stephen Kelly, by the way) was targeting a Liverpool audience for their book in order to boost sales.

Of course Shankly's Liverpool team was his favourite of all time. Because hey, where's the harm in another piece of post-93 revisionism in football? It's what we've come to expect, right?

Have a good weekend.