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Cod Almighty | Diary

Don't cry for me St Vincent and the Grenadines

23 July 2015

It might have been because of a shortage of other players at left-back. It might have been some plan to gauge the abilities of the youth team from a closer vantage point. But your original/regular Diary prefers a different interpretation of Paul Hurst's surprise cameo in last night's friendly at Brigg Town. I reckon he just did it for a laugh.

Whatever the manager's reasoning in returning to the pitch (perhaps for the first time since his swansong as Ilkeston Town player-joint manager against Nantwich in May 2009), it at least gives Hurst another option to approach matches should he ever receive a touchline ban. With that in mind, it's just a shame Rob Scott never thought of it.

Despite the 6-0 win at the oldest club in Lincolnshire (and one of the oldest in the world), the mood in the GTFC camp – if not among the fans – remains a calm one. In keeping with the management's characteristic reticence, Hurstses's second-in-command Chris Doig is "refusing to get carried away" despite his side's 100 per cent record in six pre-season friendlies so far. "It's not until the season starts that it matters," Doigy tells the Telewag today. "Many a team have won all of their pre-season games, but not won on the opening day of the campaign."

All perfectly sensible, of course, but just for a change I'd like to see a coach or manager agree to get carried away instead of refusing, let off nine truckloads of party poppers, scale the floodlights naked and regale the Humber estuary with a lusty chant of "we're going up as fucking champions" in response to a 1-0 half-time lead in early July against the Winterton Rangers youth team.

Speaking of the younglings, it was they in large part who mostly composed last night's victorious XI. Other than Hurst, Marcus Marshall, and the front two of JPP and Amond, it were all t' lickle 'uns. Pittman continued his excellent pre-season form with a hat-trick, and Podge added another goal to his weighty tally – but the name on all fishy lips today is James Wroot. Wroot is the late substitute who added Town's fifth and sixth goals, moving the normally implacable CA match reporter Mr Tony Butcher to describe him as "a calm finisher". Town's newly superb new official website, as you'd expect, is moved to even greater heights in its Wroot profile, noting lyrically: "He has scored a number of goals."

James McKeown and his devilishly attractive eyes, meanwhile, are out of hospital and presumably breathing again after that viral meningitis thing, and could even return to training in a day or two. All of which is entirely marvellous. I don't mean his eyes are breathing – that would be weird – but they will presumably be joining him in training.

Let's leave you, then, with this gem of a find on Twitter from @RetroMariners – because while Town move up and down the leagues, players and managers come and go, and the very culture of the game changes beyond recognition, our club's standards of communication are reassuringly timeless. T'ra for now.