Cod Almighty | Diary
Who took the ram from the ramalamadingdong
30 July 2019
It's not exactly unheard of for the GTFC hierarchy to get things wrong. It is almost unheard of, however, for them to apologise afterwards. Credit is due, then, I think, to Nick Dale for holding his hands up today with a big sign in them which says "you're right, I massively dropped a bollock and I'm very sorry".
For a high-profile official at a professional football club, there's probably never a good moment to give a lengthy interview to the local paper playing up the tendency of your supporters to act like dicks en masse when there's a match on. But as yesterday's diary suggested, the eve of the new season is not even in the top 25 least bad moments to do it. The club's stadium manager has now responded to widespread criticism of his remarks and his apology is solid. So well done to him for that. What's needed next is a review of the approach to policing Grimsby Town fixtures.
Your original/regular Diary is not being starry-eyed about this: Town's support probably does include a larger than average proportion of men being dicks. But work should be undertaken with young people to address this, way in advance of match days, for the deep-seated socio-cultural issue that it is. And on match days, intelligent policing should lessen rather than exacerbate the risk of disorder. If you start by assuming there'll definitely be a knock, and holding every fan in a crowd of thousands personally responsible, then you're not part of the solution, officer: you're part of the problem. And if a club official is encouraging you to do that, then they're part of the problem too.
Sadly, no apology appears to be forthcoming for the club's decision to report the first ever match played by its new women's team without mentioning the result. It's good to know that Sophie Bartup scored the team's first ever goal (as part of a hat-trick) against Barton Town and has been named captain for the season ahead. And it's true that the result of a friendly is less important than fitness and cohesion and all that. Isn't it a bit surprising, though, that Town's newly superb new official website doesn't even deem the actual score worthy of a mention?
The fashionable thing to say about captains these days seems to be that leadership should come from all over the pitch and who's wearing the armband doesn't really matter very much. Personally, I'm a bit unfashionable, as is my football club, and so I still find it vaguely reassuring to see a man clapping his hands and roaring at his teammates after they've just defended a corner. James McKeown, who has been given this role for the 2019-20 season, probably has too good a complexion to perform it absolutely in the classic mould, and isn't really gnarled and scary enough, but we love him and he deserves all the good things.
And finally today, Paul Hurst says he's looking forward to coming up against the Mariners next season. "I certainly want there to be a rivalry. When those games come round, we’ll certainly be looking forward to them and the atmosphere it creates," explains the Plucky Scunny boss in a BBC Radio Humberside interview.
More interestingly, though, there's further confirmation that Hurst left because the club failed to build structurally on its return to the Football League in 2016, and there's a word or two on the reception he expects on his return to Blundell Park with the Irons. "I’m sure there’ll be some people wanting to let me know what they think of me, and I think there’ll be others who are a bit more balanced and understand what we put in while we were there and did get that promotion," says Hurst, the only manager other than Alan Buckley to have got Town promoted since George Kerr did it 40 years ago, who remains perversely reviled by gurgling plum-faced men who wanted Buckley sacked in 2008 and 1997.