Cod Almighty | Diary
In summary, bollocks to everything
10 February 2021
Due to reasons I won’t bore you with - don't worry, I've got lots to bore you with later - I'm starting this diary on Tuesday night. As I write, the useless chumps of Tranmere Rovers and Newport are failing to beat Stevenage and Southend respectively. My opinion of them may change in the next 40 minutes or so. I'll keep you informed, pointlessly, because by the time this diary is published you'll know anyway. Bottom Of The Barrel Diary, setting new standards of diary futility. You're very welcome.
Are you over Saturday, yet? It's sometimes hard to remember that a lost game is just a lost game, however crushing the circumstances. If we had lost to eleven men at Newport, it would have had the same effect on the league table, as would the Stevenage result if we hadn't bothered to equalise in the last minute and just lost by the standard 1-0. There are still plenty of games left for us to escape, and the apparent catastrophes of the last two games were in reality just a couple of opportunities to progress wasted.
The trouble is goals, though. We're still not scoring and a team that doesn't score goals is a bad football team that will finish bottom of whichever division it finds itself in. I must admit to narrowing my eyes and giving a certain kind of look to people who suggest that "playing better football" or "looking better defensively", while good things in themselves, are going to make any damn difference if we don't stick the pill in the onion thingy.
Still no score at Newport or Tranmere. Come on you prize tossers!
As everyone knows, your brain seems to record parts of your life for you to watch in your imagination later, while wiping other parts of your existence completely. Ask me what happened when we played Port Vale last season, in either game, and I will give you a blank look. But when we won 6-0 at Boston back in 2007 - oh my god, 2007 - every thing I did that afternoon is etched on my memory. I couldn't attend the game for wiped reasons, but I can even remember the chores I was doing before kick off, where I went for a walk during the match and exactly what the weather was like.
The reason I mention it is that it was in early February, I was rather depressed about our seemingly imminent departure from the league, and we couldn't score to save our lives. Our crapness, was in fact, getting to me, just as it is now. Remember this particular afternoon, my brain seemed to say, and learn that things in football can change quickly and spectacularly. We did of course get relegated two seasons later anyway, but it's best if you forget about that, because it ruins the impact of the story.
Newport and Tranmere, you despicable muppets. 0-0. Nil-bloody nil still.
Oh no, hang on. Southend have scored at Newport. Try being jammy bastards like you were against us, Newport, you bunch of flea-ridden camel's bottoms.. So as things stand we are the bottommostest team in the league. Great. Marvellous. I'd cheered myself up with the Boston reminiscences and now Newport's utter shitness has brought me down again. Oh well, at least we are in a never-ending lockdown and the weather is a bastard.
Oh, and now Stevenage have scored at Tranmere! Tranmere, you completely useless assortment of cockwombles! What the hell is wrong with you? Good job I like Half Man Half Biscuit or you'd be on my Serious Miff List.
So, in summary, bollocks to everything.
Hello. It is now Wednesday morning, but looking at last night's efforts I think there is little more that needs saying, apart from this: Retro Diary kindly sent me a league table from less than 10 years ago. It shows us at the bottom of the Conference. Our companions in crapness: Lincoln and Luton, Fleetwood, Mansfield, Cambridge and little Forest Green. Things change in football and even though we have no option than to suffer whatever indignities are thrown at us, it is never the end of the world. We are Grimsby, and this season we have been robbed of one of our biggest assets - our support. When that returns we will be a force for the football world to reckon with once again.
UTFM.