Cod Almighty | Diary

This is our Grimsby

31 July 2013

Charming, isn't it, for the Sun newspaper to share with us its vision of what makes Britain great: essentially Spitfires and motorways. And strange that the editor chose not to include, say, the libel of dead football supporters, the hacking of a murdered girl's phone, or a teenager showing you her tits.

Here in the closeted environs of North East Lincolnshire, of course, 'our Britain' has traditionally extended little further than Barnetby-le-Wold. When your original/regular Diary was a lad, not only did people in Grimsby not know the dialling code for their own town: they didn't actually know what a dialling code was. The Dock Tower is our Angel of the North, the Humber Bridge our Channel Tunnel. And when we get to watch the Mariners at places like Winterton Rangers and North Ferriby United, well, that's as oddly satisfying as a rare glimpse of the wallpaper in your neighbour's hall when they open the door to a sales rep asking who supplies their gas and electricity.

For a while last night it looked a bit hairy for Town at Ferriby, who took the lead twice before the firepower of Liam Hearn and Lenell John-Lewis took the game to an eventual 5-2 romp. The Shop is thought by many fans to be enjoying an excellent pre-season (no, I'm sorry, I haven't been arsed to go to a friendly for years) and the management are apparently more impressed with last night's showing than the ostensibly more comfortable 1-0 win over a King$ton Communication$ XI last Friday. Taken alongside Shaun Pearson's interview the other day, it's starting to look like yer Mariners will be ready to sacrifice a soupçon of last season's defensive obduracy if it means getting more bodies into offensive positions. 'Romp', of course, means something entirely different in the Sun.

And the formation? Inevitably as a pendulum, Shorty and Shouty have opted to give 4-3-3 another go in 2013–14 – or 4-1-3-2, or whatever other fashionable set-ups they were trying out against Brigg and what have you. You don't need the Diary to remind you that no Grimsby Town manager in a generation has made a success of a three-man midfield, despite plenty of efforts. There again, no Grimsby Town manager in a generation has made a success of anything very much at all. So for the 2,058th time I shall try and keep an open mind about the formation. But I won't be very surprised if the managers dump it in September and revert to 4-4-2 after failing to win any of their first six games.