Cod Almighty | Diary
Jalapeños with everything
26 April 2017
Everywhere we go (everywhere we go)
People wanna know (people wanna know)
Who are are (who we are)
Where we come from (where we come from)
So at this point we usually introduce ourselves – this is my sister Kate and her son Archie, they live in Newark, our next-door neighbour Bob, we're on Queen Mary Avenue, and that's Ian and his kids Emily and Ryan, I was at school with Ian, they've just moved out to Wybers
So Barnet deflated the inflatables but Operation Mariachi is go – so long as the instruments are allowed in. The money has been raised, the media have climbed on board, but there's no word yet from north London as to whether the trumpet and the vihuela mexicana are deemed "inappropriate for live football". If we don't make it through this alive, then at least Look North has saved western civilisation and morality, and we'll always have the mental image of a member of the programme's production team picking up the footage from the away terrace last time Town visited the Hive and painstakingly blurring out a giant inflatable cock and balls.
What else do we have? We have a 3-2 win over a Barnsley XI in yesterday's private friendly, with goals, your original/regular Diary seems to recall, from McAllister, Yussuf and Bolarinwa. At least one of Sort It's two early trialists played an influential role, if the official Twitter commentary is anything to go by. Surely only a cynic would remark that if the best way to watch the Crazy Gang was on Ceefax, then the best way to watch a reserves friendly against Barnsley in the last week of April is the official Twitter commentary.
We have the bookmakers' installation of Smiley Marcus as favourite to take over as manager at Hartlepool, who have just sacked Dave Jones. It won't happen, obviously, any more than Curtis Woodhouse got the Town job he was made favourite for at one point, immediately before Dave Jones and Smiley Marcus became the final two candidates for it. Keeping up? Good. There's a part of me that hopes it does happen, mind you, if only to see whether Smiley Marcus would start referring to his new home stadium as "the VP".
We have Smiley Marcus's predecessor Smiley Paul looking back with something less than unalloyed pleasure over his spell in charge at the BP. "At my previous club there was always an element of feeling like you're fighting for your job," Hurst has told the Shropshire Star newspaper, by way of celebration at keeping Shrewsbury in the third division. There you were thinking if John Shelton Fenty deserved credit for something, it was sticking by the sixth-choice manager who finally came good – but only just, by the sound on it. And you don't have to be wearing a tinfoil hat to suspect something went wrong somewhere if Hurst can't even say the word Grimsby.
We have an advert for a job in the following post: head of coaching. This involves the following work: developing the other coaches at the club so they get better at coaching, so the players they coach get better at playing. The salary is the following: £25,000, which seems more than a little remarkable for a full-time senior position, and makes you wonder how little the actual coaches are on. Unusually for a post at GTFC, the successful applicant "will possess strong communication skills", so maybe the head of coaching will also be expected to help out in one or two other areas too.
Finally, we have a bit of confusion over Jack Keeble's first-team debut, which the club tells us was "in the Lincolnshire Cup at Grantham Town in the summer". The last such game against Grantham that I can find was in July 2015 (OK, they didn't say which summer) but there was no mention of Keeble as either a starter or a sub. The most recent game against Grantham I can find before that was in 1996, which I'm assuming was a little before Jack's time. If you can point me to the match I've obviously overlooked, please do get in touch. Cheers!