The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Today's your lucky day

13 September 2023

Boo Stockits and Petwood! Boo Hursts! As lamented recently by a fellow diarist, steady hands make light work for the devil's diary. The shit or bust approach favoured by clubs up and down the leagues creates a rich seam containing knee-jerk sackings, pissed-up players, midnight claret-stained press releases, dressing room scraps, tax-dodging land swaps and other diary gold just waiting to be plundered. We get none of that. Not so much as a Pettit's sausage. By the way, isn't 'shit or bust' the same outcome? Wouldn't 'boom or bust', or 'shit or chocolate' be more apt?

Knowing a less conventional approach to content was required Daubney opened a list of Observed Minor GTFC Grumbles earlier in the year. See it as sieveing through the Freshney in the hope of finding a sparkling pebble. On a midweek morning when I forgot I was diarying and the three worthwhile #gtfc-ers haven't posted anything amid the gathering Twitter tumbleweed, here is a snippet from the list:

  • We haven't signed a striker
  • The people sleeping out to raise awareness of homelessness weren't sleeping rough enough
  • The salary for a job at the club they are not applying for and know nothing about is too low.
  • Couldn't hear the Pontoon PA
  • Could hear the Pontoon PA and it was playing goal music
  • We haven't signed a striker
  • Radio Humberside commentary isn't on FM
  • Town are never on the telly, it's always Wrexham or Salford
  • Town are on the telly and they've moved the kick-off time, the bastards
  • No heart in team, sleepwalking to relegation 
  • Paul Hurst showed too much heart and over-celebrating with the fans after a mid-table win.
  • We haven't signed a striker
  • Not making subs
  • The tinkering Yorkie made too many subs 
  • Not that striker!
  • The Town shirt designed by a kid for charity is crap
  • Not enough tickets allocated for an away game
  • Not selling out the allocation for a mid-table game on the other side of the country for a fixture we are repeatedly told we are not allowed get excited over because they are just another team with celebrity owners and their own Netflix documentary series.

The last one against Wrexham or to give them their full name, Completely Normal and Not Exceptional Opponents Wrexham, is perhaps under-subscribed because it comes with an associated health warning. The Fishy has a thread on the thickos who chant No Surrender to the IRA and similar bollocks at Town games. It's over, get over it. Bess had McGuinness around for tea at Buckingham Palace about ten years ago and then Prince Charles did likewise with Gerry Adams.

Maybe the news hasn't registered. This week the thickos have likely put aside their cum-stained portraits of HRH and instead are tossing off frantically to the prospect of abusing James McClean at Wrexham this weekend. To aim their chants at McClean whilst on "foreign" Welsh soil is like the planets aligning for a rare eclipse. If the planets then proceeded to froth at the mouth and soil their pants. 

The irony of the abuse McClean receives up and down the land would blow the minds of these knuckle draggers if you could explain it to them in words of one syllable. "He's got national pride and, rightly or wrongly, harbours hurt. We're the only ones allowed to have that!".

It's a match that I'm happy to miss for this reason alone. It's the same reason I was happy Luton beat Wigan and McClean in their replay last season, even though it meant a tougher opponent. The Fishy thread, to its credit, highlights the issues but is understandably short on solutions. So how do we counter the inevitable, this weekend and at the return fixture at Blundell Park?

UTM