The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Shoot that poison arrow

21 July 2021

"Behind closed doors"? In front of open fields more like. Another term in the football lexicon dies for Daubney Diary. It joins hearing rumours as a youngster that Mick Lyons had "lost the Blundell Park dressing room" (where, down the back of the couch?) and more recently the frequenty used misnomer "Grimsby Town striker". Idioms aside, Town's victory at Mansfield yesterday was another run out for Paul Hurst's supermassive squad, which despite some pruning still rivals in size the Broadley Legends or a combined Steve Evans/Barry Fry's fantasy football team.

Town's winner came from either a new signing, a youth teamer or a trialist (I'm sorry, I didn't recognise him as I got distracted by his teammate with no name or number on the back of his shirt. This hideous and dangerous sight highlights the need for proper stripes on the back of our shirts. What if I'd been crossing a busy road when I'd seen it?), with an assist from the Mansfield back four. Their faffing about with the ball concluded with the type of square pass across your own box that in a certain 1985 PE class earned you a swift subbing and a hard caning. 

The faffing about at the back trend has become such an integral part of football that it's only a matter of time before it has its own stat. I'm talking about xF, Expected Faffs. We'd have had a solid xF rating in the early part of last season, indeed, we went out of the cup with a classic of the genre. The bit that tips me over the edge when it comes to xF is teams that pass it about at the back until they realise they're about to lose it and then hoof it. Why not hoof it first instead of wasting everyone's time? No faffing. Lump it forward and then pass it about in the areas where your division four or five centre half treading on the ball isn't going to cost you the game. Stick that on a clipboard and send it to Doigy in case he doesn't know it already.

While we're on suggestions, there have been some fixture changes. Maybe it is fanciful to think that football is immune from the madness of the society around it but we've had 18 months of empty Saturdays or at best, sat in front of a PC. Now that we can attend again, it appears that old bill, BT Sport and Hursty's Saturday DIY plans are trying to rob us of our Saturday fix. Richard Hallam is well qualified to comment on this and does so here.

Some housekeeping. Boston tickets are available. James McKeown's testimonial and Broadley tickets are available. Finally, take a moment if you can to visit a GoFundMe for Town employee John King.