Cod Almighty | Diary

Keeping track of a fallen robin

29 October 2013

On 26 August 2006, Grimsby conceded three very soft first-half goals at Bury. The game lost, Graham Rodger changed formation at half time, giving Peter Bore a role on the right wing. Quick, and with good control, he wriggled around and between defenders, creating chances for others and for himself. None were taken.

At full time, ten Town players performed the perfunctory and sheepish acknowledgement of the away support befitting a 3-0 defeat. The 18-year-old Bore, however, came right up to the fence, clutching the badge on his chest as he soaked up the adulation of supporters even younger than him, and such applause and enthusiasm as the rest of us could muster. Bore's performance had had no material impact on the result, but he was given a hero's reception.

Graham Rodger – a man who, in everything he has ever done for Grimsby, has always been far more sinned against than sinning – was in an invidious position. Bore was awarded a three-year contract which reportedly made him, after a handful of appearances, one of the best-paid players at the club. One can imagine the messageboard reaction had the club been unable to agree terms with the one bright spark of the start of that campaign.

A succession of Town managers were therefore presented with a challenge. Graham Rodger scarcely had time to consider how to get the best out of Bore. Alan Buckley tried talking to the player's parents. Mike Newell seemed ready to give up on the job. Neil Woods did least worst, converting him to a right-back, and thus negating Bore's tendency to stand around watching when he didn't have the ball. In 2009-10, he was Grimsby's player of the year, but Grimsby were relegated. It was the grown-up equivalent of being adulated after a 3-0 defeat.

in 2011, Bore rejected a new contract at Blundell Park in the hope of returning to League football. He instead found himself playing in the Conference North. He stepped up to the Conference Premier with Gateshead and Lincoln, but struggled to get a game. This summer he returned to the Conference North with Boston. Yesterday they let him go, to Spalding in the United Counties League, level nine in the English football pyramid.

Peter Bore will be 26 next week. If you are of Middle-Aged Diary's vintage, you probably wish you had made better use of your teens and twenties, but at least we didn't have a few thousand people commenting on our lifestyles. It is a season for melancholy, for poetry, but the line of verse that comes back – contemplating a footballer with the ability but not the character to play to a very high level – is almost the opposite of mellow fruitfulness. Leonard Cohen's hymn to a one-night stand with Janis Joplin seems most appropriate: "I remember you well... but that's all, I don't think of you that often."