Cod Almighty | Diary
And also from the Swedes, with their comedy series Oh, Where's My Volvo?
2 January 2014
So now that the league is over, can we concentrate on the cup?
Sorry, I'm still in Twitter mode.
Happy new year from your original/regular Diary. Now, shall we talk about the football, or shall we talk about what really matters? And by that I mean, of course, chips.
I have recently discovered an excellent blog called Non-League Chips. In keeping with the no-nonsense spirit of non-League football, it's about the chips at non-League football. And I was saddened but not surprised (how many times have I said that about being a Grimsby Town supporter over recent years, heh heh) to note the appearance of my beloved club in the site's Hall of Shame section, which rightly names and shames the non-League clubs where chips are not available.
That the visitor to Blundell Park cannot procure fish and chips has often struck me as a symbol of the complacency that has brought our club to its knees. It is by no means certain, I will grant you, that the availability of a fried potato and seafood meal would have directly inspired the Town players to beat, say, Walsall in April 2003 and stave off relegation to the third division. But thousands of away fans arrive every year in the full knowledge that the Grimsby and Cleethorpes area generally offers the best fish and chips in the world. The ongoing absence of a fish and chip facility in the stadium is a missed commercial opportunity of staggering proportions. Non-chairman Fenty has been banging on for years about his half-baked schemes for new stadiums and non-matchday income. But all the while his regime has spurned the open goal of bringing in tens of thousands of pounds more on matchdays by flogging prime Grimmo haddock to the masses at a proper healthy mark-up. Duh!
I call on the powers that be at Blundell Park, then, to make 2014 the year this all changes. End the shame now. Make the difference. Make it… chips at GTFC!
Football? Well, if you must. Oh sure, the league's still up for grabs. Insert the "look at Kidderminster/Mansfield/whatever from last season" narrative of your choice here. I ain't buying it though, not even in the January sales. Concentrate on the cups – that's the way I'm going this season. Non-chairman Fenty wants to get knocked out this Saturday, of course. But I'm like Han Solo. Never tell me the odds.
Sad to see, then, that big Lenell John-Lewis will miss this weekend's big tie with Huddersfield after his late dismissal in yesterday's big derby against little Lincoln. Was it his fault? No, says Paul Hurst. That's good enough for me. Can we cope without him? When LJL arrived at Blundell Park one year ago he became the eighth (count 'em) striker on the books. These days belts are tighter, of course, as the club's expenditure policies become marginally less unsustainable year on year – books balanced by 2042, folks! – and Town's 18-man squad starts to wear thin, and Andy Cook looks less and less like recapturing his excellent form of last season. Hmmm, maybe give Dayle a go. He does well in these cup games, doesn't he?
Still, if we get knocked out of the FA Cup as well as the league, we can always concentrate on the Trophy. I don't care what any of you say: I like the FA Trophy. But then I've always liked non-League football, even if I don't particularly like the fact that my club has become part of it. Surely the country can't be a foot deep in snow for the Trophy final in late March again, can it?
And finally today, Lincoln City are poised to dip into the transfer market during the January window after concerns that basically their entire squad will be suspended by the end of next week. More on that story later.