Cod Almighty | Diary

2pm. Stay tuned

1 March 2016

So you come from a small, out-of-the-way coastal town with a funny name which makes it the obvious go-to for lazy comedy writers in need of an off-the-peg stereotype, and you grow up socially crippled because you assume everyone you meet is going to take the piss. What are you going to do about it? I don't know. Shall we ask Bognor Regis?

OK, so when we meet our FA Trophy semi-final opponents later this month, they may not be living in fear of becoming the butt of the next slapdash comedy film by a public school- and Cambridge-educated millionaire who has built a lucrative career from jeering at poor people. Come on though. We'll still have notes to compare. It may be grim up at least some of the north, but who put the bog in Bognor Regis?

Your original/regular Diary is a bit torn about this Grimsby film. I don't want to write about it, but how else can we defend the name of our town against it? I don't want to sound like one of those kneejerk moralists who never actually look at the things they invoke hellfire against, but I won't be going to see it because I don't really watch films.

And I don't want Cod Almighty to enter that weird symbiotic relationship which the Grimsby Telegraph and the film distributor's publicists seem to have embraced. It's the same when a book or a film or any other cultural artefact blackens the name of a small town that doesn't otherwise get much attention. We'll give you some content about the film, you run clickbait inviting the locals to be outraged, we'll lap up the box office, you lap up the ad revenue.

Bognor Regis I can cope with – indeed, I'm quite looking forward to – but I'll be delighted if Town never play Guiseley again. You may remember them from such matches as the new year non-derby at Blundell Park, where our visiting Leeds-botherers eked out an infuriating draw by parking not so much a bus as an entire fleet of double-decker coaches, stretching out the preparation for every goal kick and throw-in to a duration roughly equivalent to the deliberations of the Chilcot inquiry, and faking an injury every nineteen seconds.

Generally speaking I disdain the convention of putting the ball out so the physio can attend to an injured player and then the other team giving it back. For one thing it's ripe for abuse – an injured player may turn out to be only an 'injured' player, and the whole thing can be a ruse to break a spell of dominance by the other team. For another, it's for the referee to decide when play stops – not players, fans, managers or pundits.

So finally today, here's another thing I'm torn about. Last weekend, when Braintree's opponents refused to give the ball back, and went on and scored, normally I'd shrug and say whatever, probably making a W with my fingers in a forlorn and increasingly ludicrous attempt to defy the encroachment of middle age. The opponents in this case, however, were Guiseley.

Whose side, then, am I to take here? I've got no beef with Braintree, but that convention needs to end. And Guiseley are the most cynical bunch of bastards to wash up at BP in an entire generation of Towndom. It's like when Wolves play Leeds and you wish both teams could lose.