Cod Almighty | Diary

Peter, you've lost the news

28 September 2015

Good afternoon and welcome to Monday with your original/regular Diary. I suppose today's big issue is whether the outcome at Southport on Saturday vindicates Paul Hurst's seemingly eccentric team selection. Not content with keeping six-goal Pádraig Amond on the subs' bench, Hurst opted to troll his club's supporters further still with the extraordinary decision to drop seven-goal Omar Bogle. In the event Town retrieved a comfortable 4-0 win from an awful opening spell – but who's to say that with their two leading goalscorers on the pitch, against such ineffective opposition, Town wouldn't have doubled that goal tally?

What if, what if. What silly. But the tinkering failed at Altrincham, of course. Still, the manager sounds happy enough to be seven points behind Forest Green Rovers. "There's a long way to go… nothing is won and lost at this stage of the season," says Paul. Apart from if you lose a game at this stage of the season and it's a game you should win and then you miss out on the league title by less than three points, obviously. But that would never happen. Nothing is won and lost at this stage of the season.

Good news! Scott Brown is on the comeback trail. Bad news! He won't get chance to progress along it with a run-out for the reserves today, as Rotherham have phoned in sick. Still, the absent midfielder is now in full training after recovering from what eventually turned out to be a piece of floating bone in his ankle. This good news means erstwhile loanee Matt Robinson, who only very recently seemed as inevitable as autumn, has returned to his parent club Luton, who are immediately ready to loan him out again to someone else. Lovely.

Away from the football now, but still on Cod Almighty, I wonder whether CA's old list of famous Grimsby peeps could use an update. Alongside the likes of Tommy Turgoose, Norman Lamont and Mrs Mangel off of Neighbours, should a place be found for John Bowers? Does the post of principal at Brasenose College, Oxford, coupled with a prominent career as a human rights and employment lawyer, make you as famous as them lot on the telly? Well, the list will probably need a revamp either way, because since we last revised it Grimsby has probably produced another half-dozen or so TV talent show contenders. "Growing up in Cleethorpes made me optimistic," says John, who probably deserves a knighthood just for that.

And finally today… the goals are coming, says Lenell John-Lewis.