Cod Almighty | Diary

Whatever happened to Martin Paterson?

23 February 2017

The news is not new. The olds is that on Tuesday a strong reserve side beat a Mansfield under-21 team 2-1, our goals coming in the first half from Sean McAllister and Scott Vernon. Vernon further burnished his claims to be the new Ross Hannah in the second half, having two goals ruled out for offside.

Afterwards, Marcus Bignot, Craig Disley and Gavin Gunning took part in a press conference featuring questions put to them by junior Mariners Trust members. The clip of the event suggests that everyone – the adults rather more than the children, if anything – had a very good time. It also confirms that Gunning has that sly, cussed streak you want in one player, and one player only, at the club. What was said is really less important than that the event happened. As organiser Kristine Green said: "The kids are the next generation of fans and it's important that they get to see the human side of the football club."

Later on Tuesday, Rhys Browne showed excellent control to score Macclesfield's winning goal at Eastleigh. Let's hope we get to enjoy those skills first-hand next season. Omar Bogle was also on the scoresheet on Tuesday, from the penalty spot in Wigan's defeat at QPR. Will we be tracking his career the way we did players who moved on to supposedly better things in the past?

Middle-Aged Diary once almost came to blows in a pub on the Wandsworth Road with a Blackburn fan who spoke slightingly of Gary Croft. I could also give you chapter if not verse on the tactical foibles and variations of form and fitness that restricted the post-Town careers of Marc North, Shaun Cunnington and John Oster. And if the weekend of 25–27 May 1998 was one of the finest ever to be a Town fan, it was in small measure because after Kevin Donovan's goal against Northampton, we had a hat-trick from Clive Mendonca for Charlton. I still admire my own self-restraint at not gloating before the Sunderland fan who had dissed Clive.

It's a bit different now. I can tell you Ryan Bennett has made 27 appearances for Norwich so far this season, but only because I took the trouble to look it up. There is a wealth of data about football at most levels out there, but you have to go looking for it. It is no longer presented on a single page of a newspaper, so that when you have finished calculating how many more wins Town need to be mathematically safe from relegation, your eye naturally drifts to check out whether Jack Lester scored on Saturday.

Of course, Omar is the first Town player in some time to leave for supposedly 'better things'. Even Ryan Bennett only left for Peterborough.

More fundamentally, we don't build the same relationships with players when we know they are only passing through on one- or two-year contracts. Nor do they build the same relationship with us. They no longer leave as ambassadors.

There is Kristine Green's "human side" of the club again. So let's not finish on the players who have gone but on one who has stayed, growing with a club he joined at a low ebb and by his work in the community giving every evidence of understanding what being a professional footballer at Grimsby Town means. On Saturday, Shaun Pearson made his 250th appearance for the Mariners. Tommy Bryan provides a thorough review.

Now let's see how far we can rise, together, over the next 250 matches.