Cod Almighty | Diary
Leo Messi is good but he's no Kevin Drinkell
11 July 2017
Wicklow Diary writes: "I don't care if it's Galmpton or Grimsby - I want to win" snarls Bideford boss Sean Joyce to the North Devon Gazette. Woah there, Sean. We've got Stamford and Barnsley and maybe even Scunny before we can start looking that far ahead.
A semi-final tie with Scunny on Thursday evening is the reward for the winners of our Lincs Senior Cup quarter final at Stamford tonight. A quick Google reveals our opponents to be in Division One South of the Northern Premier League along with Cleethorpes Town. Eighteen players are in the squad but there is no news as to whether that number includes Ahkeem Rose and Harry Clifton, both without a start this preseason. The Telegraph reckons there will be a 'mystery trialist' though.
Is there any point in mentioning Dean Henderson signing for Shrewsbury? Probably not, unless we can somehow make fun of it. Which I can't. Hursty leaving still makes me a bit sad. I might have rejoiced briefly at Smiley Marcus and his willingness to talk shite but I soon grew tired of that. I'm trying not to scribble 2+2=5 and conclude that Slade's slow squad building isn't a symptom of tightwaditis, the ill that finally did for Hurst. When we gripe about Hurst signing York rejects we might pause to consider perhaps that's all we could afford or were willing to pay.
If you haven't had your fill of youth development academy conditioning coach announcements, there's another one on the official site today. Michal Pujdak is the Academy’s new Youth Development Phase Lead Coach and the club commit the sin of referring to Michal's ex-employers as Hull City Tigers. FFS, sort it out Town.
The Football League continues to trundle along with Trump and Tory-like levels of bizarreness. After the fanfare farce of the league cup draw in Bangkok, the Chunk-a-Trunk Trophy groupings were rigged and pushed out t'other day in a hope that no one would notice. We've been thrown in with Scunny, Donny and a TBC team of Sonny Jims from the Best League in the World. It's 25 years since we played Plucky Scunny six times in cup competitions in a five month spell. Historians refer to the sequence as "like that time Real Madrid played Barcelona six times in one season, only better". A win tonight and we could be a third of the way to repeating that.
While we're in Spain, Josh Venney and Max Wright's hopes of an unlikely port side cabin in the Town defence have received a boost from Madrid. Newly-signed left back Theo Hernandez's attempt to use his left foot highlights the worldwide shortage in the position. Thanks to Irregular Diary who gets the spotter's badge for that one.
Back at home and "Will we reach 3k?" muses the official site. You are probably expecting a lofty rumination on the future of mankind and our planet and whether we'll make it to the next millennium but it's actually about the equally unlikely feat of selling 900 more season tickets. On a brighter note, the club have also posted a YouTube video featuring the creation of the diversity mural behind the Pontoon. It was mentioned by Middle Aged Diary already but it really is a beautiful piece of art. The amazing skills on show in the video apart, the mural is a reminder to me of what I take for granted as a Town fan.
Home or away, games can take on a wedding or family gathering vibe. A ritual. All sorts of familiar faces, even if some are distant cousins and some you'd rather not be stuck with for the next three hours. One of my favourite Cod Almighty diaries ever was written by Retro Diary prior to the 2015 playoff final:
And we'll be there. Getting on for twenty thousand people who nearly all went to the same nine rough-arsed schools under the huge skies of north Lincolnshire's freezing outmarsh, gathered on a single artificial hillside in balmy, distant London. As a concept, that's both bonkers and beautiful. We'll remember it all our lives.
You're one of the Town. I regard myself as lucky to be part of it but the odds were stacked in my favour. As part of the white male demographic with an older relative that liked football, I've always felt part of the tribe.
Grimsby has changed a lot since I started going to BP but even in the last census over 95% of the NE Lincs population were classified as white British. The same demographic in schools was 90%. Even still, with the ratio so skewed, that's when you need to make an effort to be more inclusive. To ensure that the community, the tribe, includes everyone, no matter how small their take in a census report. So thumbs up again to the club, the trust and the Equality Practice.