Cod Almighty | Diary

Football pie

20 December 2017

It's the season of goodwill and peace on earth. John Fenty hasn't shot his bullet-riddled foot for a whole week now, and things have even begun to feel settled on the pitch too, Town taking 10 points from 12 with a starting XI that most fans can predict. My advice is to enjoy the calm while it lasts. Couple another positive result this weekend at Luton with no more foot-shooting shenanigans by the Grimsby Town board and who knows where this season might end up.

Your West Yorkshire Diary had the chance to chat with a Notts County fan at work on Monday and he looked as annoyed by the goalless draw from last weekend as we did when we couldn't break down Creepy Crawley. "You made us play like you," was his assessment. If we can do the same at Kenilworth Road then I'll look forward to hearing the screams of "Sort it, Joneses!" from the home stands.

I'm fond of collective nouns and recently discovered at work that a group of jockeys is called a shortness. Working in a small team where four people share the name Richard, many collective nouns have been suggested for this particular grouping – and in the absence of an official word, we've decided on a bag.

And four Richards in particular is a Dick quad.

I'd have linked this nicely to some hilarious collective nouns in football, but it's a bit of an emergency diary today so we just haven't had time to make them up. But we'd love to hear your collective nouns in football to get us through this midweek lull.

Normally you wouldn't expect the club to provide some genuinely entertaining filler, but GTFC stepped up to the mark and delivered at the start of the week by bringing us some classic John Moore. The club seems to knock out these nuggets of gold with absolute randomness, but as a huge fan of the old GTFC end-of-season videos (which are no more because of the internet) they're nonetheless appreciated. They should bring those compilations back. There was something nice and warm about the way they were produced – not like now, where the action is out there but it's left to you to piece it together.

It gives me a convenient opportunity to point you in the direction of All That and a Bag of Chips, which joined John and the video crew up on the gantry a few years back to get their perspective on a typical match day.

If you haven't already, take a look at Jamey Osborne's 35-yard cracker for Solihull Moors against Tranmere. You'll need your best eyes though, because while the goal is top-division quality, the camera work is, dare I say it, non-League.

There's some speculative nonsense over on the Grimsby Telegraph about us fans wanting Ricky Miller, Tyler Walker, Lenell John-Lewis and Conor Townsend to join in the January transfer window. I've never been a fan of this trading period; it's almost like managers are duped into thinking they must strengthen because every other team is strengthening. But the reality is that by one team strengthening, another is weakening. If every team was strengthening at the same rate by bringing in more players then no one would gain an advantage.

For many years now I've considered the January transfer window an inconvenience. Just when we've found a balanced side and some consistency in both our play and results, along come a few new players to disrupt our steady rhythm. And I don't think chucking a few more strikers at the squad is the solution to our goalshyness. Slade already has plenty of strikers to work with and I believe, between them, they're good enough to score the goals needed to keep us interested in the play-offs.

If we found our goalscoring touch at the same time Luton lost theirs, though, it really would bust a few coupons this weekend. Here's to hoping that's the case. UTM!