Cod Almighty | Diary

The future is now

27 April 2015

Miss Guest Diary writes: Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that I was disappointed at the absence of Carl Magnay from Saturday's line-up: he has been by far the most exciting player in a Town shirt this season. I fully appreciate that it was his turn to have a rest, just as Toto and Disley did last week and Shaun Pearson also did yesterday. But I still couldn't help thinking: no Magnay, no party.

So it was a pleasant surprise that the game was open and attacking and turned about to be one of the most enjoyable at Blundell Park this season. There were two splendid goals from Ross Hannah and another from Jon-Paul Pittman. And it's great news that Hannah may now get a chance to feature in the play-off games after waiting so patiently in the wings for much of the season.

Of course, the manager wouldn't want us to get too carried away with excitement, so he calmed things down by swapping Pittman for The Shop in the 65th minute. After that several goalscoring opportunities dwindled to nothing.

The buzz around the ground was to the effect that if Town had played a similar attacking style in earlier games we could have secured that automatic promotion spot. As a counsellor, I am well acquainted with the futility of dwelling on 'what if' and 'if only'. We are where we are and must accept that.

So where are we? It went almost down to the wire for Forest Green and Eastleigh but it turned out that our play-off semi-final opponents are Eastleigh and that's where Town will be headed on Thursday. Having done a rough calculation of train fare/car parking/hotel and match tickets, a trip to Hampshire for my partner and me will come in at about £250. We do fortunately have the money and the free time, but do we have the inclination? On balance, I think we do. No least because virtually the whole squad is out of contract this summer and the next two (or hopefully three) games will be our last chance to see some of these players in a Town shirt. Naming no names, there is one player in particular I would not expect to see again if Town don't get promoted: he's simply too good for non-League.

The ticket news is that Town have been given an allocation of 1,015, most of them seated. Very sensibly, some of that allocation will be held back at Eastleigh so that southern-based fans will be able to get their hands on them.

Tonight is the opportunity for Grimsby-based folk to go along and show their appreciation to the players at the player of the year event, starting at 7pm at the Beachcomber. In honour of this I have been looking back over Tony Butcher's nominations for man of the match to see who is Cod Almighty's player of the year. No surprise that Carl Magnay featured very heavily – so much so that halfway through the season he was ruled out of contention when it became 'man of the match who isn't Magnay'. On that basis, the award (if there was one) would go to Shaun Pearson.

I'm sure everyone has seen this already but, to get you in the mood for tonight and the match on Thursday, have another look at Lloyd Griffith strutting his stuff to the new Orphan Boy track. Mariners... Mariners.