Cod Almighty | Postbag

A toast

24 October 2013

It's been a while. Almost too long. Almost. But clearly lots has happened as we've got a massive 16 letters for you below. Yeah, OK, that's six weeks worth of letters, but still a good haul. Easily enough to keep you going while you eat your toast.

Fen Tee

I've a great idea for a new T-shirt. It simply says "Fenty Out".

from Ben Gresswell

The king is in the building

I think you are flattering yourselves by assuming John Fenty comes on this crap web-site. The King is alive. Long Live the King. Ha Ha Ha.

And you cant do anything about it.

from Mighty Mariner

Letters Ed responds: Thanks for popping over John. You say I can't do anything about it, but I've just left a 'benign' turd in your front garden.

Baggy

West Brom are the new Town! Just heard on Radio 2 that following DiCanio's sacking that it's now five Premiership managers to lose their jobs immediately following a defeat to West Brom.

from Rich Mills

Letters Ed responds: Forest Green best not draw them in the cup then, eh?

A list of depressing things

Yes it is depressing walking up to Blundell Park these days, but the whole central area of GY/Clee is. I trundled down Welholme Avenue/Durban Road and parked near the cobblers on Lovett Street. What sights to behold: teenage girls with their upper torsos covered in tattoos; families in their front gardens supping cans.

Of course it's a pain dodging the dogshit everywhere, especially with two kids in tow. Watch out for the bike riding druggies...

Now while I'm on my soapbox: Grimsby Library shut till January; Scaffa Baths closed; Clee Leisure Centre ditto. The largest venue we have with potential to show decent live music concentrates on bloody tribute acts! Scunthorpe Baths gets better artists!

The recession is hitting the area culturally. Whitgift Film Theatre to close again?

Glad I have got that off my chest. Peoples Park's nice, mind.

from Martin Robinson

Letters Ed responds: And you didn't even mention events inside Blundell Park...

Brilliant!

Brilliant.

from Rob McIlveen

How I left the Villa

There has been a lot of time and angst directed toward glory hunting supporters of bigger clubs over the years, which in many cases has been given as one of the many reasons we now languish in the Conference. My own experience of this not particularly Grimsby phenomenon should serve as a beacon of hope to dyed in the wool Town fans whose offspring cannot even name two or three players from the semi final side of '36.

As a youth I attended the floating supporter matches that were obligatory in the early 70s: a smattering of League games under Big Mac; Norwich in the League Cup; and of course Exeter at home. But, I was never smitten. I had pictures of Aston Villa plastered over my bedroom walls and on joining the RAF in '73 found my trade training to be at Cosford – just a 30 minute train ride from Villa Park. Bliss.

Numerous League games were attended over the early part of the '73-74 season. Villa drew away at Arsenal in the third round of the FA Cup and I attended the replay on a wet Tuesday night at Villa Park. There were around 42,000 at the match, which villa lost, with the great Bob Wilson playing a blinder in goal for the Gunners.

As I was trudging from the ground toward the station listening to people chatting and laughing and moaning a realisation of biblical proportion dawned on me: I had nothing in common with the thousands around me. Their pubs, eating places, cinemas, schoolday memories – in fact most things – were alien. I did not belong. The fact I followed the same team meant nothing – it was not part of me. My genetic makeup bore no resemblance to any of the forty-odd thousand others.

Two weeks later Town were away at Cambridge in Division Three. My father arranged a ticket to be waiting at the ground so I grudgingly went – more from courtesy to my dad. We won one-nil, Harry Wainman saved a late penalty and there was the usual early '70s re-enactments of sealed-knot skirmishes on the terraces.

I didn't know anybody at that ground but they were all part of me. I was hooked. I walked ten feet tall coming from that ground.

Home on leave a couple of weeks later my late father and grandfather asked about the match. I said how much I enjoyed it – they probably exchanged a wry knowing glance. I was now part of their world of the ups and downs and occasional sheer euphoria of being part of something that is so hard to define, but once under you skin, stays with you for life.

from Rich Jones

Letters Ed responds: Glorious stuff. Cheers Rich.

Reap what you sow

Surely worth refreshing the list of managers to lose their jobs following defeat to the Mariners now that Hockaday has parted from Forest Green?

from Rich Mills

Letters Ed responds: Ask and you shall receive. Unless you ask for a weekly Postbag – in which case, give over.

Crash

I love your website and visit it every day. But please, please, please stop sending me to that Town site with all the ads, they crash my pc every time.

from Dave Bell

Letters Ed responds: Which one's that then Dave? Shurely not the SNOS?

Tommy prediction

Bit too close to home when you mention Chelmsford City's keeper Tommy.

Later rather than sooner, if they ever get out of the Conference South (manager Dean Holdsworth – yeah, him – is doing a grand job of keeping them in quite a lowly spot at the moment) he will no doubt have a blinder against us and probably rob Ross of a hat-trick saving two pens into the bargain.

We now need to get into League 2 as a matter of urgency!

from Alan Dickens

Letters Ed responds: I hear he's just signed for Dartford so it could be sooner than you first feared...

Tommy's spuds

re: Forecast memorial. No doubt it should be a 'Hot Potato'.

from Ray Drury

Bizarre

It seems Town has a rich history of financial mismanagement. If only the club's debt could be paid off with a town hall bazaar as it was in 1895 (right).

from Richard Bedwell

Why move?

re: revamping Blundell Park. Spot on!

I love the place too, but the most important reason to stay there is surely this: when was the last time we regularly had gates to justify a move? It's not lack of parking or shops stopping fans turning up on a Saturday!

from Rich Mills

Man, Chester

Just a quick email (before I have to start work) about the Chester game.

It's the first time I have been this season and I really cannot understand why we let Miller and Wood go. Their replacements, on this evidence at least, are not up to it. I thought McLaughlin was awful and Colbeck stupidly got himself sent off. Things only improved when it was too late to win the game and we were down to 10 men. Cook and subsequently Hearn came on and showed a bit of fight.

On the plus side a good turn-out for Town in the circumstances (although very subdued) on a lovely sunny day.

from Chris Beeley

Rick Spondoolicks

Greetings from north Norfolk. If my memory serves me right, Richard Money was manager at Walsall for a time. His nickname was Dicky Dosh.

Thanks Diary team for mentioning the Humberside show from BP last night. I listened on the web and enjoyed it.

from David Elvidge

Smokin'

Today's diary (11 October) misses the point. Footballers haven't had to become better athletes to 'improve the game', however you define that. They've done so under the relentless Darwinian pressure to survive against competitors who are themselves bigger, faster and stronger with each passing year. Biologists (who have read their Lewis Carroll) refer to this as the Red Queen effect: running to stand still. How many Town teams have you seen muscled and run out of games by inferior technicians who just got to the ball faster, time after time for 90 minutes? The result (I think) has been to make the game worse as a spectacle by effectively making the pitch smaller. But a lot of those clubs are in the Football League now.

Yes, there have been footballers whose talent was sufficient to compensate (just about) for a poor lifestyle, but think how wonderful they would have been had they been still fitter. Think how different the world would look to us all if Gascoigne had got a toe to that late cross in front of an open goal against Germany instead of missing it by three inches. Think how different the world would look to the same Paul Gascoigne if he hadn't pissed away his health (mental and physical). And do you think Macca would have played so long, or Paul Groves would have been able to run between the penalty boxes for 90 minutes, 60 games a season, if they hadn't taken their fitness seriously?

As for Wilshire, smoking is for fucking retards. That's all there is to say.

from Phil Watson

Letters Ed responds: Well, football is all about those near misses isn't it? They're the talking points – which is why you raise them now. What if. What if Livvo had been a bit fitter and a bit leaner and the one-inch difference to his arse meant that he didn't connect with the ball against Leicester in the cup? It works both ways, see.

Every Whittle helps

Was that a Harry the Haddock I just glimpsed on a Tesco TV ad? It could even have been filmed at the back of the Pontoon, but it was on for just a fraction of a second so I couldn't be sure; it's rare for me to pay any attention to an advert. If so, do you suppose the commercial geniuses at BP have negotiated anything for the club from a supermarket giant filming on their property?

from Phil Watson

Letters Ed responds: I expect Fenty has used his best business terms to hoodwink them into pumping some football fortune into the building, accordingly. Either that or they're just piggy-backing on our years of glorious success. The bastards.

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