Cod Almighty | Diary

Mullen, Woolford, Robson, fans, and goals, goals, goals

10 October 2019

There is not a lot of news.

Ex-Town director Lee Mullen has accused the club of misrepresenting how the legal proceedings between the two parties were resolved. However, as Mullen does concede the upshot is that he has to pay Town £20,000, let's leave them to it.

After a short spell at Hyde United, Martyn Woolford has joined Boston United. He put in some valuable performances for us when it mattered towards the end of 2017-18. But the lack of resonance to that news confirms that he played for Town without being a Town player.

Trawling the rest of the news feeds, Domestic Diary is forced to reflect once again just how much 'content' nowadays is generated by trawling social media for other people's opinions. You will never find Cod Almighty resorting to such low practice.

And so to your emails.

Yesterday, Miss Guest Diary bemoaned the relatively high attendance for the boycott-worthy quasi-friendly between Sunderland and Grimsby XIs on Tuesday. John Kirk draws our attention to the Sunderland Chronicle: "Sunderland opened their EFL Trophy campaign with a win over League Two Grimsby Town in front of a record low attendance of under 7,000 for a senior competitive game at the Stadium of Light."

John adds that "even Sunderland fans treated the competition with the contempt it thoroughly deserves. But just not with our level of contempt. You see, we even do contempt better than any other set of fans in the country!" Does anyone ever suspect Town fans might top the table for self-regard as well? Probably not: that is one championship Liverpool really have got wrapped up.

Last week, Middle-Aged Diary asked which of Town's Football League goals might have been featured in a piece of street art for the Goals Worth Talking About campaign. Before West Yorkshire Diary could finesse that suggestion into less-celebrated goals, Martyn Wyburn had already jumped in with Cockerill's goal against Huddersfield: "Whenever Town have been particularly rubbish over the last few years l look at that goal again."

You probably know the goal Martyn means: it gets replayed on Twitter every now and again, the Dead Parrot sketch of Grimsby goals. It turns out you can sometimes have too much of a good thing, and it was almost a relief that yesterday passed apparently without anyone replaying a certain Phil Jevons moment. But yes, the Cockerill goal epitomises an era, a philosophy and a fine team confident in its own quality.

The very names Matt Tees and Bobby Cumming epitomise another, earlier era. They feature in Graham Plastow's goal suggestions. "If not one of Tees' towering headers or a cheeky tap-in then Bobby Cumming impersonating him as part of a hat-trick against Bradford City(?) at BP in a run of hat-tricks that season (Tony Ford was one of them and maybe Mike Lester the other)."

That's it from me. If you want more, have a look at the Grim Reality, Rich Lord's application of fantasy football rules to Town's performances over September. I'm probably not giving too much away if I say that Ethan Robson figures prominently. And in breaking news, you can vote for him as the PFA fans player of the month.

Bye.