Cod Almighty | Diary

Loan or lone?

28 October 2021

Glass Half Full Diary returns with the metaphorical glass remaining half full. Yes, we've lost a football match and that's twice this season, but we are fast approaching one third of the season gone. Defeats will happen and, totally selfishly, if we're gonna lose occasionally, let's lose away from home at those games I'm not at.

Since my diary debut last month, our Mariners have played nine games of football - eight in the league, one in the cup - and October will come to an end this weekend with a tenth, the visit of Notts County. With four successive wins, plus the cup success, it's been a pretty decent month. Just pesky Wealdstone failed to read the script. If they really had to win, it was destined to be a last minute offside Ira Jackson Jr backside/handball/double deflection goal which didn't even cross the line, surely?

The weekend visitors have employed a conveyor belt of ex-Premiership players as managers (Fullarton, Cooper, Sheridan, Nolan, Kewell, Ardley with Cox as assistant) then settled on relatively non-famous Ian Burchall who now has been in charge for ages, comparatively (over six months). He has a background in Scandinavian management, so insert a lazy Potter/Jolley comparison here. Hang on, a manager called Ian? No comment.

County fell out of the League, haven't bounced back yet, and so far are hovering around the play-offs. Sound familiar? Hurst Mark I maybe? Nostalgia-wise, I'm sufficiently ancient to rewind further, to battles at Blundell Park in the last century when we were both in the seconnd tier, and particularly when Town legend Paul Groves scored a hat-trick in a snowy draw. Around that time their best player was a certain Mark Draper, a central midfielder found on the fringes of 1990s England squads. Well, he is back at Meadow Lane. He's their kit man now; he's 50 years old - you don't get players that old, even at this level. Steve McNulty, despite looking 50, is 38 and not quite at this level.

Also on the County staff, their goalkeeping coach is Jake Kean, a contender for my forthcoming short-name GTFC XI, after he appeared for us briefly in 2017-18, on loan from Sheffield Wednesday. Spoiler alert - he wasn't that season's Alex Hunt. What is it with Nottingham; last I heard Nick Colgan was Forest's keeper coach.

Kean only appeared a few times in the Town net. He then never played in goal for any first team again, unless Wikipedia is wrong. On a loose Halloween-type theme, I hereby label Kean our own Grimsby Keeper Reaper. You know that when Town beat a side and the manager gets sacked immediately after, that's the Grimsby Reaper. This is a goalkeeping adaptation: he played for us and then didn't play in goal again. 

Form guide: the Mariners have lost twice all season, to Wealdstone and Bromley. County drew with Bromley in midweek, but they were beaten by Altrincham and Woking, both sides who lost to us. I'm hoping it is a good sign that we've beaten two of the teams that beat our next opponents.

What else is new? Do we need a loan striker as we risk having a lone striker? There is speculation galore as to whether we will obtain temporary cover for our illness- and injury-affected squad members, although Joel Grant is due back to fitness soon and Edwin Essel has appeared on the bench a few times. Notably a few times more than Sean Scannell has.

And finally, the BBC graphic still thinks Ryley Towler is a winger, and have we ever had a shorter five-man subs bench than Revan, Khouri, Hunt, Pearson, and Wright? I meant letters-wise, but Pearson aside, they aren't not exactly height-tall either.

Last night was the Mariners Trust AGM with subsequent Chief Executive Q&A, so hopefully there will be some footage and/or report of that later. I'm off to check the latest club catering news in advance of Saturday's game.

Up The Mariners!