Cod Almighty | Diary

Are they the lemmings, or are you, Cliff?

14 August 2014

Here at Cod Almighty we try not to get carried away. It is possible to be too optimistic, and to be too pessimistic. We try to keep an open mind about our team's prospects, and look for positives where we can. But we have never gone into a season shouting things like THIS IS DEFINITELY OUR YEAR, PROMOTION, I CAN FEEL IT! And while, generally speaking, we have not seen much to celebrate in John Shelton Fenty's stewardship of GTFC, we do not side with the borderline mental conspiracy theorists who believe Town's major shareholder is somehow in it for the money. Let's face it – if you were in it for the money, you wouldn't be at Grimsby Town.

The trouble with all that #UTM #BELIEVE hyper-optimism is that when the Mariners let you down – which has been known to happen from time to time – you tend to swing from one extreme to the other and end up with hyper-pessimism. And the trouble with hyper-pessimism is that you can find absolutely no pleasure in football at all and enter a state of perpetual catatonic joylessness, where the lights have gone out on your world and life itself loses all pleasure and meaning forever. You know, like Mark Lawrenson.

Last Saturday's 0-0 away at Bristol Rovers was a decent result. Tuesday night's 0-0 at home to Nuneaton was awful. Can you meet with triumphant and disastrous goalless draws, and treat those two imposters just the same?

Paul Hurst has said some things. Your original/regular Diary has been having a look at them. None are particularly interesting. But at least he isn't Steve Evans. There, you see – balance.

Oh, you want to know about all those injured players, don't you? Who's going to be back in the team for Saturday's game against Dover, and such like? Well, the Manager Formerly Known as Shorty has told the Telegraph: "Jon-Paul Pittman should be training tomorrow and Nathan Arnold is a slight possibility, but I don't think Ross Hannah will be." It's looking alright for Jack Mackreth too. And Shaun Pearson is back from suspension as well, which is nice.

So there you are. Dover. It's not a must-win game, but it's a winning-would-be-quite-important-and-certainly-very-nice game.

Before I leave you, what a rotten bit of luck for Liam Hearn – substituted with a new injury just a few minutes in to his full debut for Mansfield last night. Hope it's nothing like what he suffered before. All the best, lad.