Cod Almighty | Diary

From the Buckley School to the University of Law

25 September 2014

Once the filmmaker Sacha Baron Cohen globally traduces the name of our glorious hometown, it will be pretty nigh impossible for most Grimsby Town supporters to reveal our geographical origins in polite company. Even before Grimsby goes on general release, though, the dick contingent among us is already doing its worst. To draw a random comparison, Fulham have about five times more fans than Grimsby, and Grimsby have about ten times more banning orders than Fulham. The numbers tell their own story.

Town's stadium manager Nick Dale has told the BBC, though, that the club is hoping to make things less rubbish by working with the local youth offending service. A planned project, he says, would "try to eliminate, or to help those who have been involved in disorder to move away from it". Leaving aside the ambiguous sentence structure, it seems a little curious that this snippet is being reported by the BBC without a sniff of it on Town's own website. Perhaps that tells its own story too.

When he's not motoring across Yorkshire to frighten the bejaysus out of his Twitter trolls, there's nothing Curtis Woodhouse enjoys more than changing his mind about whether he's still a boxer or a footballer or a football manager or whatever. The former GTFC midfielder and current Goole Town manager has announced what seems to be the 89th change of heart over his career in the ring/pitch/dugout, revealing: "It's impossible to walk away when I still think I've got a few big nights left in me." I'm going to stop with the facetiousness now and just remind you what an excellent footballer he was, and great fighter he is, in case he rocks up at my house to smack me one.

And last up today, it has not escaped your original/regular Diary's notice that another FORMER Town type is in the news – this time Russell 'Sort It' Slade, whose excellent spell at the helm of Leyton Orient has put him in pole position for the vacant post at the club formerly known as Cardiff City. Slade seems so certain, in fact, to be given the job of returning the Reds to the Premier League that he's handed in his notice at Orient. Still, what a good job Town fans got their knickers in such a twist when Slade was in the running to return to Blundell Park in 2009, prompting John Fenty to give the job to Neil Woods instead, because that ended well, didn't it.