Cod Almighty | Diary

Stop the boasts

20 June 2024

Hello you! What’s new? Matty Carsons, that’s what! With Danny Amos and Anthony Driscoll-Glennon to be ex-Mariners come 30th June, and Denver Hume jingling and jangling over a new deal, the DA has taken charge of the situation and signed a left back on a two-year deal. No messing about there.

And so the world keeps on turning, the fans keep on rumouring, and the club keeps on scouting. There’s a busy marketplace out there. My dad used to wonder why I got so angry, back in the day, when simulated football matches on the Amiga didn’t go my way. ‘It’s just a glorified spreadsheet,’ he used to say. He probably thought he was helping.

Little did he or I know that in just a couple of short decades the humble spreadsheet would leap from simulation to reality. Hutchinson Artell & Stockwood might sound like a law firm to the poor souls who have never discovered the joy (and despair) of football but, in our world, they are our transfer triumvirate with ears to the ground and eyes on the spreadsheets. Let’s hope they excel!

Hmm, that’s bad. But, since we’re celebrating a Carson… it’s the way I tell ‘em!

When it comes to transfers, your West Yorkshire Diary has a lot of time for the known knowns — you know, the things we know we know, like Warrens, Carsons and Wrights being in the building. I don’t mind the known unknowns too much, either. So, we know the existence of transfers we don’t know, like McJannets and that Faroese geezer (or Géza).

It’s the unknown unknowns that really get on my wick, man. Transfers we don’t know we don’t know. We could be signing any cunt, as they say in Scotland; players we’ve never heard of and never saw coming, at any time. That’s just outrageous. You must tell us everything, you hear? Everything! These unknown unknowns are driving the Fishy fans potty.

Oh but hang on — this suggests we’re aware that unknown unknowns exist, which make them known unknown unknowns. This is all getting rather silly. Where’s the Colonel, Graham Chapman, when you need him?

England put in a Paul Hurst of a performance on Sunday night to beat the Serbs. They’ve got another tricky test tonight against the Danes — the land from which our town’s founding father arrived. He came, he saw, he settled. Now he’s immortalised as that bloke in the nip carrying an equally naked Prince Havelock on his shoulders. The story of Grim and Havelock — the formation and identity of our beloved town — is one of immigration and inclusion. Which is worth remembering.

The statue required significant repairs before it could be put on public display again. The Heritage Fund supported the Grim & Havelock Project to restore it, and earlier this year managed to raise enough funds to get Grim back on his feet again. Two weeks ago it went on display, for the first time since 2006, at the Fishing Heritage Centre.

Not a lot of people will be aware of this work, which has been going on behind the scenes for some time. But on the crowdfunder page, with a pledge of £500 when they needed it most, when no one was looking… well, you know who it was. All Town aren’t we?

UTM!