Cod Almighty | Diary
Give me a fact, and make it HARD
5 January 2023
No one's interested any more in Noddy Holder bellowing his trademark festive shout as the beats to Slade's irritating Christmas song thump in. It's still Christmas, you know! Today is the twelfth day. Drummers, keep on drumming.
“Thanks, Jim. Yes, I'm hearing the three kings have arrived for talks at Bethlehem and — oh… I'm also hearing from my sources that Billy Big-Bollocks' move from American Plaything FC to Sportswashing United is a step closer too!”
Don't think Sky won't go there. If you want unregulated spurious claptrap on transfers, simply switch on your TV. There are very few things left in life that bore your West Yorkshire Diary more than grown men sat around shiny desks, under studio lights, speculating. It's easy to speculate. Getting things right is much more difficult but, for some reason, getting things right isn't valued any more.
If you don't have anything right to say, don't say anything at all. The media has gone balls deep in the opposite direction. Someone has wound the key in the back of these newsroom clowns too far and this is what we get. Chatty programmes for chatty bastards. The infinite monkey theorem springs to mind. Speaking random rubbish for an infinite amount of time means someone, at some point, will say something worthy. The chances are extremely low, but technically not zero. And that slim chance is enough to justify non-stop broadcast, apparently.
With so much hot air being spoken about the lives of people who are so rich it's impossible for any of us to relate to them, it makes you wonder why any of us care about any of this guff that plays out so relentlessly every January. Crystal Palace may or may not sign someone, who very few people know anything about, from a club in France. Debate the tits off that for four hours and then nothing happens anyway.
As yesterday's Happy Clapping Diary alluded to, transfer windows are horrible in every way. They incite panic; they encourage stockpiling and overspending, and the media makes an event out of this by dialling up the dramatic ident music at ad breaks and making grown men and women wear special yellow attire to address the subscripted nation. The best part about this performance is that it usually ends with young men waving dildos on live TV while stood behind reporters stationed outside football grounds.
The game's gone. It's with the hot air speculators, prawn sandwich devourers and rubber dildo wavers now. I want the best for the Mariners, but I genuinely worry that I'll lose interest if we ever venture into that lofty world. It's not what it was, and it won't be what we hope it'll be.
It's a hard sell. Am I genuinely saying I'd turn down too much success? Well, wealth brings power, or at least a sense of power, and that makes people think they're untouchable as they detach from reality. Have you watched that Netflix documentary about FIFA? The Mariners haven't had even an average amount of success thrown our way for some time, so it's not something I need to answer right now. I won't, and you can't make me. So there.
This weekend the Mariners host Burton in the FA Cup third round. With a few extra eyes looking in the direction of Blundell Park on Saturday (5.30pm kick-off, remember), Neil Johnston from BBC Sport has written this top-line article about Jason Stockwood's relationship with the club and the town. It doesn't contain anything we don't already know — well, maybe apart from the bit where it said Stockwood worked as a holiday rep in Zante — but it does a good job of demonstrating why and how our 'council estate kid' relishes a challenge.
The article states it's been 23 years since we last reached the fourth round. It's an era I thought I knew very well but I must admit I had no recollection whatsoever of us losing 2-0 at home to Bolton. I do remember what happened just a week later, though. It's not every day we beat Forest 4-3 in the league.
Well, after making no appearances for the Mariners and not even making the bench for the vast majority of games since signing in September, back-up keeper Jamie Pardington has left the club. After three years at Wolves, he got three months with Steve Croudson. We might not have felt the benefit of Jamie's brief stay with us, but hopefully he did. It appears he has another club lined up, where he'll likely get more game time, so good on him, and good luck to him.
You can't fault a player for seeking first team football. Money is important, but when it comes down to it, playing is more important. Alex Hunt wasn't getting much of a look in at Sheffield Wednesday and so he put pen to paper at Grimsby… where he also hasn't been getting much of a look in, so it must be a bit of a frustrating time for the lad.
And when Hurst starts talking about the general height of the team, as if it's a significant feature of the way we play, it's not going to make 5'6'' Hunt feel any better. In doing so, Hurst broke the Short Arse Code, which clearly states that no short arse should raise awareness of a fellow short arse's short arseness.
It's not like Hunt can do anything about it. Which reminds me, the EU banned the compost you could put in your shoes to make you grow taller, so surely, now we've solved our economy, invested millions in the NHS, taken back control of our borders, made bananas bendy again and breathed new life into our docks with dozens of new fishing fleets, can't the prime minister, whoever they are today, legalise this compost? And creosote. My fences need sorting.