Cod Almighty | Diary

We're on our way

12 July 2021

Miss Guest Diary writes: I'm quite pleased that Euro2020 is finally over. Yes, I've enjoyed watching England progress to the final and I'm disappointed they didn't win the tournament. But they were beaten by a better team on the night. That's sport for you: learn from it and move on. What I won't miss is all the media claptrap about it bringing the nation together.

Quite frankly, I don't want to be brought together with anyone who would make fun of a crying German child, who gets drunk and fights in Leicester Square, who has such a sense of entitlement that they force their way into a venue without a ticket, who wilfully mislabels an anti-racist gesture, who is proud to boo a rival team's national anthem and, finally, who takes to social media to racially abuse some of those very players they would have cheered had England won.

Rant over. Let's talk about Town.

Breaking their recent tradition of Transfer Tuesday, late on Friday Town announced the signing of Adam Crookes, a left-back recently released by Port Vale. Far be it from me to suggest these players are being indoctrinated but, in common with all the other new signings, Adam's introduction video mentions that he is hard-working, that he understands the disappointment of the fans in getting relegated, that Town shouldn't be at this level and he is on-board with the project of promotion back to the League.

What's more interesting is the comment from Paul Hurst where he mentions needing "another three or four players" and says that "one in particular is close". Undoubtedly to be announced five minutes after this diary is published.

With the fixture list out we can finally start planning trips for the new season – Stockport on Bank Holiday Monday is already beginning to look like a reunion for the team at Cod Almighty Towers. It's a shame the first game is away – a packed Blundell Park on the opening day of the season would have been awesome. Instead we travel to Bromley – not the easiest of places to reach from Lincolnshire – and now to be a 5.20pm kick off due to being shown on BT Sport. I have already seen someone on Twitter agonising about the lack of return trains to Grimsby. Really? Come on. This is the first competitive game for 'new' Town – if we don't sell our full allocation of tickets then we're simply not on-board with the project.

And isn't that project looking good. I am really enjoying all the behind-the-scenes
YouTube films, partly because it's interesting to get a glimpse of where the players spend most of their time and who looks after them and partly because I am desperately trying to familiarise myself with all the new signings. It would help if the players had their names on their training kit, and if whoever is taking the films didn't always seem to focus on Sean Scannell.

There did seem to be a hint in the Q&A with the new owners last week that the new training facilities which they have stated are a high priority may not be at Cheapside, which seemed to be endorsed by a passing comment in the guided tour by Oliver Cowling about the ease with which they could be moved elsewhere. Having already said that a new stadium is not foremost in their current plans, I hope I'm not reading too much into Jason Stockwood’s mention of redeveloping Blundell Park. Keeping my seat at the back of the Pontoon until I'm too old to climb the steps up to it would be perfect.

OK, what's next?