Cod Almighty | Diary

Everybody get fat on cream

6 December 2019

Ding dong merrily on bloody high! It’s Saturday tomorrow and the Mariners have only got a bloody game to play! Your West Yorkshire Diary sold himself short last Friday when I wrote a fair bit about our record against Swindon so, with that covered — and precious little else to report from the ever-shrinking world of Grimsby Town — this is going to be a short diary.

One or both of Max Wright and Luke Hendrie will be on the bench for the visit of the Robins, while Jordan Cook is out, James Hanson is fit to start and we’re definitely going to play 4-3-3. We know that much — almost as much as we know that Town are, once again, desperately short of goals.

Charles Vernam has been finding the back of the net regularly on loan at Chorley. Anthony Limbrick is keen to get him back and involved in the first team but, remarkably, he doesn’t seem to know when the loan spell will end. But is that so remarkable for a football club that watched Danny Butterfield disappear to Palace for nothing in the summer of 2002 because it didn’t understand the Bosman ruling?

With team news and recent records covered, let’s turn our attention to the git in the middle for tomorrow’s game. His name is Peter Wright, he’s taken charge of two Town matches before and yes, you’ve guessed it, he sent a Town player off. But he probably did us all a favour in flashing the red card at Paul Dixon for his two-footed lunge in last season’s game at the club we don’t like to name.

After serving his suspension, Dixon only made two more appearances for the Mariners in that shambles of a trophy competition before he joined Scottish second division side Falkirk in January. He’s been a regular starter for the Bairns and even scored his first goal for them a couple of weeks ago against Linlithgow Rose in the Scottish FA Cup. You don't care? Oh.

Mr Wright also took charge of our annual defeat at Crewe just a few weeks later, when no cards were shown — and the Cod Almighty match stats even claimed he was ‘fairly invisible, in a good way’ before issuing him with a rather lofty score of 7 (“for just doing his job, albeit fairly well”).

If Max comes off the bench to score a late winner and the ref does his job then, maybe, everything will be all Wright. UTM!