Cod Almighty | Diary

Booo for Hollywood

22 March 2024

Good morning everyone, hope you are well.

My name is BOTB and I am a Cod Almighty diarist. That's the formalities out of the way, let's move onto tomorrow's game.

The old footballing cliché is to say that we are 'entertaining' Wrexham at Blundell Park. I really hope we aren't. I'd like to the see the Tyrannosaurus Wrexhams, as they like to be known, go home thoroughly unentertained and hopefully asking for their money back. We are still at that nervy stage of the season in which one good result can make everybody breathe easily, drink herbal tea and listen to Van Morrison, but one bad result can render us asthmatic alcoholic Sisters of Mercy fans.

So how's the table looking, I hear you ask? No? Well I'm telling you anyway.
We are currently six points ahead of the Greenies and six points ahead of the Colchesters. We have a game in hand on the Greenies and have played one more than the Colchesters. The Colchesters have a very tough looking away game at Mansfield whereas the Greenies are on their way to Doncaster. I'm leaving Sutton out of it because even my concrete-blooded grey Grimsby pessimism can't see them overtaking us as they are fast running out of games. Got all that? Good. What's going to happen, then? I have no idea. This division is such a messed-up muddled-up world I wouldn't even put money on Mansfield beating Colchester.

The Tyrannosauruses are of course famously owned by a couple of Hollywood superstars I've never heard of. I've heard of Ryan Gosling, but one of them isn't him, and neither is the other. This should make them very dislikeable but I must say the public pronouncements of the pair have been very classy and reasonable, which rather stymies the natural football fan's instinct to sneer. This layer of glamour has helped them maintain a level of public interest not granted to, say, Stockport who are one place ahead of them and on a similar trajectory. Their form has been very patchy recently. Wrexham's, I mean, though Stockport have been dodgy as well.

I was once persuaded to go to the greyhound racing at Wembley Stadium. It's a great night out, I was told. It wasn't. The worst part was the concept of betting on dogs. What? Can anyone tell dogs apart? Particularly when they all have meaningless names like Human Finger Machine and Bingo Jesus. In the first race I bet on the brown dog, which came last. In the second I went for a white dog, which stopped halfway to have a dump on the track. The black dog I bet on next came fourth, or something. How in the name of God are you supposed to know which dog is going to run faster than the others?

I mention this because the feeling I have in this division is very similar. It all seems so random you could not bother with the matches and just roll dice instead. Mansfield 1 Colchester 5. Doncaster 3 Forest Green 4. Admit it, you wouldn't be that surprised by any of these results. You may as well bet on the grey dog and hope for the best. Or in our case, the stripey one.

After a heavy tackle at Bradley pitches yesterday BOTB is 50/50 to make the Wrexham game, as my walking style is currently halfway between Albert Steptoe and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. If I was a Town player I'd be whipped to the hospital and x-rayed and CT-scanned and given the once-over to find out the extent of the problem, but since I'm just a bloke I'm limping round the house wondering what it is and hoping it goes away.

The better news is that, as I wretchedly hauled my sorry, broken form off the pitch, a very fit looking Charles Vernam sprinted past me. Looking at the Town players en-masse it's very noticeable how very similar they all are physically, resembling the line-up for the 200 meters at the Olympics. Whatever happened to short, chubby looking footballers? I liked them. Joe Waters, Archie Gemmill, Billy Bremner. Gone, my friends, gone the way of the double-arm-raise goal celebration and playing with an orange ball when it snowed. And they call that progress? Tchoh.

Incidentally, CA will soon be bringing you a big, in-depth interview with a very interesting and well-known local figure with more Grimsby Town stories than all of the Moore brothers combined. Don't touch that dial! It's gonna be a cracker.

A nice big crowd is expected at the BP tomorrow. The Franchise game was the first time this season I've really felt the crowd were giving it their all in response to the commitment of the players and, hopefully, tomorrow will see more of the same. I don't know what’s going to happen. I just know there is hope.

Hang on to your hats, and Go Soccer Super Mariners, Go!