Cod Almighty | Diary
#fairpayinHE
23 January 2014
I'm a shopkeeper. Here's my shop window. Please take a look at what we have on offer. What's that? You're interested in something from my shop window? Great! Oh, wait. You've been telling someone you're interested in something from my shop window? How dare you! That's despicable! Go away!
This time last year the Diary had cause to poke fun at the then Bury manager Kevin Blackwell, who got angry with the Mariners because he didn't understand the transfer system. Today, your original/regular Diary has begun by paraphrasing Gillingham boss Peter Taylor, who has got angry with the Mariners because, um, things.
Now, it's understandable when a manager is annoyed if another manager uses the media to approach a player he wants to keep. Hell, we were all pissed off with Barry Fry when he adopted that methodology on Ryan Bennett. But Taylor is miffed at Paul Hurst for wondering aloud about signing Adam Birchall on loan. Far from being off limits, however, Adam Birchall is in fact listed for loan. Taylor has fallen a long way since making David Beckham the England captain, so perhaps it's the frustration of a career in reverse that informs his bizarre outburst.
Whether it's Birchall, AN Other, or NO Bugger, the new striker Town are nowhere near signing won't ruin everything like he did last season. That's the verdict of promising young entrepreneur and fridge magnate John Shelton Fenty, who has been speaking to the Grimsby Telegraph about it. "Unfortunately for us it didn't work last year," says the GTFC non-chairman. "But what Paul [Hurst] is working on at the moment certainly isn't likely to upset the apple-cart like last season." Why? Fenty won't say, so we can only surmise two possible rationales for assuming that the fruit trolley and the new frontman will remain in equilibrium. One is that there is no new frontman; the other, of course, is that there is, but he isn't Richard Brodie.
The Mariners Trust has a lot of stuff going on. It looks like good stuff too. Being a trust member and everything, I got an email about it the other day. I don't know whether it's on their website or not though, so I'll tell you about it here. There's an FA Cup prize draw tonight and you can still buy tickets. The race night that was postponed from December has been rescheduled for 6 February. They're having a FIFA night on 12 February. And there's a quiz night on 20 March. I'm guessing the FIFA night is something to do with a computer game, rather than a discussion about complacency, greed and corruption, but you never know.
A-ha-ha-and finally today, the FA Trophy. Your original/regular Diary, as you know, has always believed in treating every competition with respect. I think going around repeating the word 'tinpot' as a substitute for constructing a reasoned argument, because you think your club is too big to play in a particular competition, is as lazy as it is arrogant. That said, our lovable old English FA can be its own worst enemy sometimes. Click through to its FA Trophy fixtures page, scroll to the bottom, and look at that match you can apparently buy tickets for! If the Football Association won't take its own competitions seriously enough to leave a web page 10 months out of date, then the rest of us have really got a job on to persuade the tinpot army. See ya.