Cod Almighty | Diary
Not a quiet news day
19 November 2013
Tonight, we are in FA Cup action against a League team, local rivals, every available ticket for the away end, and a few more besides, sold out. It is, as they say, a day when the team talk writes itself. This is not true of the Diary.
John Fenty may have decided today is a good day to bury, if not bad news, then certainly another piece of poor public relations. Middle-Aged Diary's hopes did rise when I misread the headline as "Fenty urges councillors to work with Grimsby Town on new stadium". Unfortunately, rather than looking for a partnership with the whole council, Fenty is trying just to browbeat one councillor. The essence of the piece is that Fenty advises Andrew de Freitas to accept that a new stadium will be built at Peaks Parkway and enter negotiations to get the best deal for this fait accompli for his electorate. You may think this sounds arrogant; Cod Almighty could not possibly comment.
Fenty revives his description of the project as a "community stadium", once again without defining quite what he understands by this. I do not have the local knowledge to make sound arguments on locations, but if the concept is to mean anything, it would be valuable to have a statement detailing what efforts the club has made to work with North East Lincolnshire Council to identify a site for and develop a stadium that will genuinely bring benefits to the whole commuity.
It would also be good to have a detailed statement, as opposed to so many airy assertions, to prove that Blundell Park cannot meet our needs. There is a trick for closing down a debate by which those in authority will repeat as a mantra a convenient line, in the hope that once it has been spoken often enough, a repudiation will amount to a refutation. It is the way that good things, or potentially good things, disappear. We have all of us made too much of an emotional investment in Blundell Park to allow it to go before we are convinced it cannot be developed to meet our needs.
Back to football, and Paul Hurst is using words more wisely. Radio Humberside is reporting on Twitter that he sees no need to appoint an assistant manager. Given that, apart from Hurst, we have ex-managers running the youth team and providing physiotherapy, not to mention a player undertaking coaching, this feels like a simple statement of common sense.
Hurst also talks sense about the potential impact of our cup games on our league form. His prime motivation for this is our FA Trophy tie at Coalville.
Older readers will know what happened in this match, as it featured in a comic storyline from the early 1970s. Coalville v Grimstown was the match in which young Jimmy 'Skinny' Sykes got his chance, having been spotted running rings round older, bigger players in their lunchbreak. The early signs were not promising. The corrugated roof of the stand – not tall enough to mask the slag heaps – matched the corrugated mud of the pitch. The five-foot-six Sykes had no chance with the succession of high balls that came his way against his six-foot marker. When he finally had the ball at his feet, his perfect first touch and turn were negated when the gnarled central defender kicked his ankle away. "Play on!" cried the ref as Sykes went sprawling, then growled: "It's a man's game, son," as Coalville swept the ball upfield for the first goal of the game.
We'll leave that saga (not quite so long-running but more entertaining than Grimsby's relocation) there. Write in with your suggestions for what happened next.
The 'distractions' line has been quelled for the FA Cup by our derby draw. Interesting, if idle, to speculate what might have happened in 1997-98 had we not drawn Scunthorpe and Hull in the early rounds of the Football League Trophy. Had we put in a half-hearted performance against a faraway team of which we knew little, we might still have made Wembley for the play-off final. But would we have put in the dominant, professional performance against Northampton if we had not had the experience of beating Bournemouth?
Idle, as I say. Town can draw on our full squad tonight, with even Chris Doig fit for selection. Win or lose, let's do it with pride and dignity.