Cod Almighty | Diary
Insert niche Steve Albini lyric here
16 May 2024
What a beautiful world this will be, what a glorious time to be free! Your Guest Diarist grew up with the space race, talk of jetpack travel, the Prime Minister promising the white heat of technology etc. Well we did get whitey on the moon as Gil Scott Heron so memorably reminded us. But we also got total bummers aplenty like Vietnam and the National Front. Insert your own bummers here. But they never used to mess with the Laws of football. They had stood the test of time. Once the secret cabal that runs the world had finished in East Asia, destabilised Iran etc they started messing about with our sacrosanct favourite sport. Sorry, I am not a conspiracy nut, just an old joskin but, anyway, it all started to go slowly downhill.
They said football was boring so passbacks were outlawed and three points for a win. They fiddled around with the offside and handball laws endlessly until ex-pros, managers, players, pundits and (most important of all) the fans had no clue what constitutes an offence. They made strikers sycthed down as they are through on goal go off the pitch for the free kick because they had needed the magic sponge to be applied 'cos it hurt like hell. Then AI started to rear its ugly head. First some people in the back of a transit a hundred miles away started re-refereeing every big decision. So all the joy was sucked out of every goal scored. When England score a last gasp winner in the Euros no-one will dare celebrate in case the blokes in the truck chalk it off. Next the bots will take over and top football will become a reality video game. To bastardise the Emperor Hirohito "the football has changed - not necessarily to our advantage".
I saw a video clip of our new club Chairman telling us he is just finishing off the paperwork for multiple Grimsby-connected new shareholders who want to invest in the club and the wider community regenerating aspirations that the Ethical brothers want to launch. It's been a long row to hoe but sounds like they are getting traction. 1500 fans have stumped up in the first two weeks and bought season tickets. Faster than last year but the price freeze until May 31st is a big incentive.
As for next seasons squad, I asked last time for taller, stronger, faster. Add to that players who are really good on the counter attack. We conceded quite a few goals to quick, ruthless breaks last season. When we tried to do it we were not so hot. Insert your Reddy, Boulding, Connell memories here, I'm off for a stomp round in the rain to listen to the plants growing. Green shoot analogy requred. See yer.