Cod Almighty | Diary

Heroically avoiding a Psychedelic Furs citation

9 August 2022

Middle-Aged Diary will get around to tonight's game eventually, I promise.

The last time I was really counting on the Radio Five Live classified results service was maybe a dozen years ago. Our young nephews were with us for a sleepover and I'd had no time for score-checking. Just before 5pm, I manoeuvred myself into a quiet chore making up a bed, my earpiece in and the radio on. I was accompanied by one of the children and, sure enough, at the very moment Grimsby's score was about to be read out, he started crying.

Last Saturday, I of course knew from my mobile almost as soon as the game was over that we had drawn. When I got home from watching Trafford march on towards Wembley and turned on Five Live, I was too late for the classifieds anyway. What I mainly heard was the presenter boasting about how at 5.30 they'd be going over to live commentary on a Premier League game, as they would every Saturday of the season for the next three years.

The curtailing of Sports Report, and with it the culling of the reading of the final football scores, is a mistake. Nowadays it is top heavy with Premier League reports and reaction, and I doubt the BBC will be cutting down on any of that as they trim the programme into its new 30-minute slot. But as it meandered through its old hour, sketching the day's action from Scotland, from the lower leagues and sports other than football, it was a reminder that there was more to the sporting life than the top clubs.

Of course all that information is there if we choose to go and look for it, but I rarely do. Starting with the ritual reading of the results, every score from Plymouth to Peterhead given equal significance, Sports Report was an interlude of democracy, a reminder that we are part of a bigger world that puts our own troubles and triumphs into perspective. I can't pretend I relied on it, but its absence makes us poorer.

No doubt struggling to empathise with any of that are Bella and Molly, aged ten and seven respectively, who have won the competition to design Grimsby's third kit. Kits aren't my thing but this one looks very smart, in pink but with a nod to our traditional colours in the single black and white stripe and the red collar and cuffs. Well done Bella, Molly and everyone else involved in getting it out there.

Aribim Pepple reads like a cryptic crossword clue - the closest I've got so far is "Brazilian legend kept very quiet (6)". He's also quite close to being an "'arry" so already a step of the way to Town legend status. Pepple is in fact the 19-year-old striker we yesterday signed on loan from Luton, having only joined them last week.

It opens up the prospect of us playing an all-Luton front two when John McAtee recovers from the shoulder surgery which Paul Hurst has said will keep him out for some months. Unfortunately those months won't be next June, July and August but after Town's battling display on Saturday, it is easier news to bear.

Tonight then Grimsby entertain Crewe Alexandra in the first round of the League Cup. We've won our last two home games against them but before that, we had lost six consecutive matches against the railwayfolk, including a 3-0 home defeat in the League Cup, a run going back to 2002.

In his autobiography, John McDermott writes that Crewe were always a team that Town were especially keen to beat. As a fan, I shared the feeling. They enjoyed the same highs as us in the 1990s, playing similar good football, but got approximately 36.65 times more credit for their achievements. That even though it was far easier to recruit to a town between three conurbations than it is to Lincolnshire. Since then, in very different ways, we have both had our lows. Town have been tonked several times at Gresty Road, but no one there seems to take any pleasure in it, a sullen ground still grieving.

It is a good thing tonight's match is in Cleethorpes. And it'll be an even better thing if we win.

Enjoy the game.