Cod Almighty | Diary

Goole is not a typo

14 November 2013

Some football fans are buying some tickets for a game of football. Some more football fans have bought some tickets for the same game of football. Now a further group of football fans have bought more tickets for the same game of foo… wait! What's this? Some actual news?

Well, kind of. Away from the increasingly tedious build-up to next Tuesday's FA Cup replay at Plucky Scunny, your original/regular Diary notes a new utterance on squad-building from Mr John Shelton Fenty (Conservative). The Mariners' non-chairman has been reflecting on mid-season transfer activity, and warns that there may be less going on this January than in previous windows. Less, but still something. There remain "some small monies left," he confirms, instead of saying "a small amount of money", because he's got the idea from somewhere that talking like that makes him sound intelligent. This might be for the best anyway, reckons Sheltoman, given the catastrophic loan from Crawley, ten months ago, of Mr Potato Head.

"From Christmas time last season, we probably threw more money at it than we should have," he tells the Telegraph. "I personally don't know if that unsettled the side." Well, I personally have a pretty strong impression that it did. And I have a certain conviction, moreover, that Mr John Shelton Fenty could have learned that lesson back in 2006, when he parked a juggernaut full of £20 notes in Russell Slade's drive, added Curtis Woodhouse, Ben Futcher, Marc Goodfellow, Gary Cohen and Junior Mendes to a settled and consistent top-of-the-table squad, and watched Town's promising bid for automatic promotion unravel in much the same disastrous fashion we would see an uncanny reprise of in 2013.

Following his recent searing attack on Humberside Police (linked here by Miss Guest Diary on Monday), Plucky Scunny fan Max Bell is meeting the plod today to discuss what might be done differently for the replay. To his great credit, Max invited GTFC fans to chip in last night on Twitter, and received several potentially useful observations. The last time I went to Glanford Park was that rotten day in 2004 when Sir John McDermott was booked. I'm not particularly frightened of hooliganism but I was so sickened by the police telling me where I could walk and which pub I had to drink in that I just can't be bloody doing with it this year. All those of you who are off, fair play to you. Hopefully Max's efforts will do something to help everyone keep safe.

Lastly today, a heads-up on some new Mariners Trust stuff. Development of the trust's website continues, and there's a blog now as well. There we discover a host of forthcoming events this month and next, including the trust's AGM (hmm), a fans' and players' FIFA 14 tournament (ooh), and the regular race night (still not sure what that is). We urge you again to do your online Christmas shopping using the trust's Spend and Raise page, which is brilliant – you just link off from it to your favourite online retailers, buy stuff as you would normally, and Amazon or whoever give a percentage of what you spend to the trust. Ace. I've just ordered a new laptop from PC World using this, so there's a quid or two straight off. Also, if you haven't joined the trust, then once again we urge you to do that too.

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