Cod Almighty | Diary

Delight of a stick shift

4 December 2015

Retro Diary writes: In order to get into the Oxford English Dictionary, a new word must have spread to the point where it can be identified from a variety of different published sources. And so in recent times we have welcomed such neologisms as 'photobomb', 'crowdfund' and 'vape' into our already diverse lexicon. Unlikely to get in the next round of candidates, however, is 'Grimsbyitis'; but it's a shame, because it's a great word.

The birth of this super term went under the radar a bit, with there being so much else to talk about in the last couple of weeks. It was uttered, as you may remember, by Lincoln manager Chris Moyses, on the event of Liam Hearn waking up the other morning and, apropos of nothing, instructing his agent to tell his manager: "I'm off to Barrow on loan and there's nowt you can do about it, cock." Hearn had spent hours on the bus home from Boreham Wood just the day before, apparently happy as Larry, and not said a dicky bird to anybody, least of all his hapless boss.

Hearn's official excuse for the sudden move was lack of game time, but this argument falls down in the face of the evidence. For a start, he was getting picked, despite not really being properly fit. Technically the loan to Barrow is only for a month, and he won't be allowed to play against Lincoln on 19 December, ensuring that on at least one of the loan period's weekends he would get no game time anyway.

The player's dash for the Sincil Bank exit doesn't seem to have impressed either Lincoln's manager or players, who have declared themselves well and truly let down. A return to the Imps for Liam would now seem somewhere between awkward and impossible. Bradley Wood was particularly vocal on the matter, which started an unseemly Twitter altercation with his old friend.

"I feel a bit sore about it, to be honest," said manager Moyses afterwards. "I wonder if 'Grimsbyitis' got involved. Am I allowed to say that? I don't know."

You are indeed, Chris! Not only because it's a fab new word that we like very much, but also because nothing confirms Grimsby's stranglehold over your club more eloquently than being cited as an excuse for a loan move that has nothing whatsoever to do with us. What a lovely Christmas compliment from Lincoln there. If you've got any more, please don't be shy.

So what the hell is Grimsbyitis, and what are the symptoms? Is it catching? After ploughing through enough opinion on the subject to bore anybody normal to death, two feasible definitions seem to be crystallising from the muddy waters. One is that Liam has done the same to Lincoln as he did to us – that is, to let his employer pay his wages for an extended period while he gets back to fitness, only for him to promptly bugger off.

Or the definition we prefer: that he has tried to avoid playing against Town at all costs, because he is still in his heart more a Grimsby player than a Lincoln one. If you remember, he was missing from the first of this season's Lincolnshire derbies because of 'illness', and with the rematch fast approaching at the end of this month, he has now baled out in favour of a team whose fixtures with us have both been completed. Thanks, Liam – you would have scored against us, we know that.

The definition of the word could even be widened to encompass any team; so you could have:

Grimsbyitis, noun. Obsession with a football club bigger than the one you're at.

With the absence of a game tomorrow, Paul Hurst can't experience the manager of the month kiss of death until at least Monday, and as fans we will no doubt be relieved to be able to catch up on a bit of exciting tidying-up or DIY. Or you can do what I'm going to do, and tell the family there is football, go out at two o'clock until quarter past five as usual, but go and toss it off somewhere out of the way and avoid being lumbered with the job of putting up the Christmas tree.

So it will fall, refreshingly, to next Monday's diary to preview the visit of our old friends from Shropshire in the FA Cup. All I'll say is that we'll know the third round draw just before we kick off that game, so the stakes could be higher than you think. The ticket office at BP is open from ten 'til two tomorrow.

This weekend, then, we can watch events in the world of football unfold with calm neutrality. Well, almost. Up the Brentford!