Cod Almighty | Diary

And the snow blows down St Peter's Avenue

19 October 2015

Writing the first diary of the week is quite a particular task. You have to cover the obvious stuff about the match that was played on the Saturday just gone. But since your original/regular Diary took up the Monday slot, I've also started looking back over the headlines from the previous few days. And more often than not just now, the stories from just before the match acquire an extra, mournfully ironic layer of meaning afterwards. So last Monday, just after Town served up a shocker down in Essex, we had the tragic Grimsby Town boss Paul Hurst wants side to prove they're among best in league at Braintree. Today we have the equally sad Omar Bogle targeting another goals bonanza at Torquay.

Of course, the other contenders continue to flounder, and our Mariners are now just five points off the top of the Conference despite having won only five of their last 15 games. But even Paul Hurst – a man who could find a glass half full in the middle of the Sahara – seems to have noticed that his team are not striding imperiously towards wrapping up the league title by Christmas. "My frustration is that, at the minute, we are getting a win and then a draw," he tells the Grimsby Telegraph. "We can't string successive wins together, and that would have really closed that gap."

I sometimes think about previous Town managers and the way their terms in charge seem to be defined, in memory, by a single incident or episode – a key signing, a particularly good or bad result. For Lawrie McMenemy it's the Exeter game that wrapped up the fourth division at the end of the 1971-72 season. For Alan Buckley's first spell, perhaps it was the acquisition of Garry Birtles. For Brian Laws, an altercation involving a certain high-profile signing and cooked poultry. You get the idea. For Paul Hurst I increasingly suspect it will be the kerfuffle over Ben Tomlinson being fielded ahead of Omar Bogle and Pádraig Amond.

Tomlinson, an unused substitute in Town's desperately disappointing draw at Torquay two days ago, has now returned to his parent club Barnet. He reminded me a bit of Laurens ten Heuvel, the Dutch forward signed by Paul Groves in 2003, who put a shift in and held the ball up well for a handful of games, without ever looking likely to score. Groves then managed to convince Sheffield United that he'd only signed the player on loan, despite the transfer seeming permanent at the time, and packed him off back to Bramall Lane, where his little brother had already bagsied his big bedroom. No, wait, that last bit was me in 1990 when I left my grotty bedsit on Suggitt's Lane.

Broadcasting news now, and Town's game at home to Lincoln at Christmas will be on the telly. BT Sport will screen the match on 28 December with an early kick-off time of 12:30pm. I'm going to call it the best derby in non-League, despite not knowing anything at all about any of the other derbies in non-League, because I support one of the teams involved. It's fine to be subjective in that way, and throw all my critical, rational capacity out of the window, because that's what football's like, and particularly because I'm a fan, and this is a fanzine. Sorry, did I say Lincoln? I mean, er… Linscumbumtitty! Where's Liam Hearn? Kick him up in the air! You see, it's all good fun.

Or it will be until the next day, when someone has to write the diary and they're looking back over the previous day's Telewag headlines and then find the one that says "Paul Hurst says Grimsby Town must take their chances in festive Lincoln City derby", and grimace ruefully at the memory that Omar Bogle only needed one chance to equalise after being brought off the substitutes' bench in the 87th minute.