The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Ashes

1 August 2019

Michael Jolley telling the Telegraph he knows what team he'll put out against Morecambe would only be news if he went on to say what that team will be. Let's move on.

If Cod Almighty has ever published an article which has had such a huge response as Kelly Billings's, Domestic Diary doesn't remember it. It even provoked an email; usually the only emails Cod Almighty gets are from would-be spammers. Trev Wright writes:

What an excellent article written by long-standing Mariners fan, Kelly.

I am not a Mariners fan but I share her passion for the game. Clubs need to understand that they are nothing without their fans and they need to respect them and appreciate them according.

Your points were very well put Kelly. They need to engage the likes of you to sell the virtues of their excellent fanbase who I know follow them through thick and thin and in big numbers too

UTM

If you want to read more on how the club handles its stewarding responsibilities, Richard Hallam has dug this out.

Kelly pointed out that Town were fined as a result of these proceedings, following the trouble at the Port Vale game in 2018. Read the full report above and you may feel we got off lightly.

Glory be: two emails in one week. Thanks to Joel Wheatley, our New York correspondent, we finally have the score of Grimsby Town Women FC's first ever match, the news having twice crossed the Atlantic. The daughter of a friend of Joel's was in the team and reports that Town beat Barton 15 (Fifteen)-2.

Cod Almighty has a vacancy for anyone wanting to keep us up to date with the women's team throughout the season. You'll be on the standard terms for all Cod Almighty contributors: the pay is, frankly, non-existent, but the hours are good. And if a 15-2 scoreline proves at all typical, some of the actual minutes will be bloody wonderful. Contact us if you can help.

If you are looking for something else to read, the latest instalment of Pat Bell's series on 1925-26 is available. It is Easter 1926 and there's a record crowd at Blundell Park, the Mariners in touching distance of the only promotion place from Division Three (North).

As part one of the series explained, it was an outlook that had seemed unlikely a year or two before, Town having spent two decades in the doldrums after their first division years at the turn of the century. The club had even sunk into non-League at one time, progress hampered by in-fighting between the board, the fans and its first team managers. All of which is unthinkable for the 21st-century Grimsby Town of course.