Cod Almighty | Diary

Once you get past Habrough, that's the end

13 July 2016

Wanted – scaffolding poles! There's an angry mob in town and after last night's pasting at North Ferriby United, they won't be satisfied 'til someone's swinging from the gallows. Not really. The club needs the poles "to be used at our Cheapside training ground", presumably in some kind of scaffolds-for-goalposts cheap option. And the ratio of "don't panic" tweets to "ffs Hursts out" tweets is about 12-1 – which, coincidentally, was the score when Town won a friendly against Winterton Rangers in 2009, shortly before being relegated out of the Football League.

One observer who's not best pleased with events at Grange Lane yesterday evening is CA's free-wheelin', fast-livin' match reporter Tony Butcher. We told Tony he could have the summer off, and this year he didn't need to go to the friendlies, but he's so badass that he's been to them both anyway. "I have never seen such appalling organisation, tactics, and morale," fumes Tone in an email to your original/regular Diary. He's been watching Town for 40 years, so you'd assume he must have seen such appalling organisation, tactics, and morale many times. But he does have this alarming characteristic of actually knowing stuff about football, so who am I to reject his terrifyingly bleak account and worldview.

Your brand new 4-2-3-1-shaped Mariners at least have the opportunity to respond quickly to last night's surprisingly unprecedented humiliation, as tonight they're off to Stamford in the Lincolnshire Cup. Craig Disley and Shaun Pearson – whose leadership qualities I suspect were strongly missed on the north bank last night – will be back in alongside others who, in Paul Hurst's wonderfully poetic phraseology, will need to be "getting minutes in their legs".

In the absence of any competition for their places, poor old Omar and Jimmy Mac will presumably have to put in another 90 this evening. Dave Moore will be on standby to provide emergency treatment in the event of a ruptured hamstring caused by their legs becoming overfilled with minutes, or indeed fracturing under the stress of excessive subcutaneous hours. The manager has performed the usual "I'll wait and sign a good player later rather than panic and sign a bad one now" riff, doubtless prompting his remaining detractors to point out that last time we waited and signed a player later, it was Anthony Straker.

If you're going tonight, remember that 4-1 defeats to non-League opposition are still very rare in this country, so please sleep well and don't have nightmares.