Cod Almighty | Diary

Canadian Parliamentary Cats

30 January 2014

Welcome to Thursday with your original/regular/weekend starts here if you're a slacker Diary. Truly this is a job that does itself on a day when John Shelton Fenty has been told he can't burn horseshit.

Andy Cook, Andy Cook, Andy Andy Cook. He gets the ball, he sometimes scores a goal, he sometimes doesn't, he's been in and out of the team this season with questions about his fitness and a lack of consistency which is disappointing given his prolific form last season, Andy Andy Cook. The exciting loan signing of Oumane Tounkare "will boost Grimsby Town's striking options", apparently, which is reassuring because I wasn't sure whether the arrival of a new striker would do that. And it pecks Cook further down the pecking order, of course, so Cook has been made available for loan. We'll assume Alfreton unless we hear otherwise. It's usually a safe bet.

Most football clubs routinely look round at young players in the local area to see whether any of them might have the makings of professional talent. It's called 'scouting'. At Grimsby Town, however, this is called 'Trawling the Town', and it's actually some kind of revolutionary brainwave which could transform the game as we know it.

GTFC and the Grimsby Telewag collaborated on this project a couple of years ago, and the local rag's pudding is duly overegged in reporting today that the scheme could make "a sensational return". "The fact that so many local kids were given the opportunity to train with their professional club, with some even being taken on, was fantastic," enthuses Town's wide-eyed academy manager Alan Lamb. Tune in again next week as club officials are astonished to discover, when one Grimbarian prodigy kicks a ball between two posts and under a bar, that a referee awards a 'goal'.

Now, it's Thursday and we're counting down to this weekend's fixture, so who are we playi… oh God. It's Tamworth, isn't it. Like all right-thinking Grimbarians, your original/regular Diary was rooting for Chorley in the last round of the FA Trophy, but it wasn't to be, as the Lambs eliminated their Lancastrian opposition in a lengthy penalty shoot-out. And when I say "right-thinking", obviously I mean bored out of my tiny mind of hearing about that Tamworth journalist churning out linkbait copy to order about a dull place being dull. Don't feed the trolls, don't click a Daily Mail link, and remember, don't have nightmares. Goodnight.