Cod Almighty - Diary - October 2005

Sometimes it isn't pretty, sometimes it isn't nice

Diary - October 2005

Monday 31 October
If you're struggling to adjust to Greenwich Mean Time today then spare a thought for former Town winger Graham 'The Hair' Hockless, who will shortly have to adjust to a time difference of not one but ten hours when his transfer is completed from North Ferriby United of the Northern Premier League to Richmond SC of, um, some semi-professional league or other in Australia. Hockless, you will remember, scored two excellent goals in the Mariners' 2003–04 relegation season but failed to command a regular first-team slot under a succession of managers despite the unwavering support of the entire teenage population of the Pontoon stand, and has found the net four times for North Ferriby since joining in the summer of this year. After announcing the news of his imminent departure to his teammates, the player has apparently had to endure them humming the theme tune from Neighbours on a regular basis, so Richmond will be able to rest easy in the knowledge that their new signing will not be dashing back home because he misses the English sense of humour.

At a time when the Grimsby Telegraph can run a story about the fact that Town haven't got another match until next Saturday, an interview with the club groundsman might seem to indicate that the current run of slow news days surrounding the Mariners has reached an altogether new level of sloth. But today's natter between Town's official website and Mick Phillips (or Mike Phillips, if you go by the headline) has appeared because the GTFC turfmeister is celebrating 25 years' service at Blundell Park, and it's quite an interesting read, as it turns out. The Diary would like to join the club in warmly congratulating Mr Phillips, who has clearly performed a splendid job down the decades, and in his honour I will also refrain from ending this paragraph with a joke about his talents having recently being wasted on account of the Mariners' current style of play not actually using the grass very much.

Lastly today, it's over to the Diary's inbox, where an email from Grimsby Jed – a first-time correspondent to this page – gently rests. I will reproduce it now in its entirety.

NEVER GET INVOLVED WITH THIS SORT OF THING BUT AFTER WATCHING THE NEWCASTLE GAME LAST WEDNESDAY ON SKY FROM WERE I LIVE IN SOMERSET; I AM MOVED TO SAY MY BIT. I DON'T HAVE PICTURES IN MY HEAD OF ELBOWS OR SPILT LIPS. WHAT I SEE IS GRIMSBY DEFENCE CLOSING DOWN THE NEWCASTLE ATTACKS & ON TWO MANY OCCAISIONS; BOOTING THE BALL UP FIELD TO NO-------- BODY.THAT RESULTED IN HAVING TO DEFEND ANOTHER NEWCASTLE ATTACK. OH! I KNOW THAT IS A GOOD THING TO DO IF TRYING TO LAND IT TO A PLAYER TO RUN ON WITH IT ( LIKE READY ) BUT IF NO ONE IS UP THERE !!!!! NEWCASTLE MAKE THIER WAY UP FIELD BY PASSING. IF THE WAY IS BLOCKED ;THEY PASS IT BACK & BIULD AGAIN.( YES I KNOW GRIMSBY DO THAT AS WELL) BUT THEY SEEM TO LOSE THE BALL BEFORE GETTING INTO THE danger

AREA'S. THEN IT'S A BIG SCRAMBLE TO GET BACK TO STOP THE ATTACK AGAIN. WE ARE KNOWN AS A "set piece team" LONG BALL S OVER THE TOP IN THE HOPE OF GETTING A FREE KICK OR CORNER. WELL WE DIDN'T GET A CORNER AGAINST NEWCASTLE IN THE 1st HALF & ONLY ABOUT TWO IN THE 2nd. IT'S TRUE WE ARE BETTER IN DEFENCE BY MILES FROM LAST SEASON ; & keep a few clean sheets. (like at Northhampton Sat; ) BUT WE DON'T SCORE DO WE? I THINK WE GO AWAY TO PLAY DEFENSIVE & HAVE HAD SUCCESS. AT HOME YOUR EXPECTED TO WIN BUT ITS NOT WORKING OUT SO WELL. LETS HAVE LESS BALLS OVER THE TOP & MAKE OUR PROGRESS UP THE FIELD WITH SOME GOOD PASSING. WHILE YOUR NOT BOTHERING THE OPPOSITION YOU CAN BE SURE THE'LL BE DOING IT TO US. SATURDAY WAS A GOOD EXAMPLE BUT WE MANAGED A POINT.I CAN ONLY ASSUME THEY ARE DANCING TO THE MANAGER'S TUNE ( which needs tweaking up a bit.) grimsby jed

So what you're saying, Jed, is that Town need to pass the ball instead of hoofing it? I agree with you. Now where's that paracetamol?

Saturday 29 October
Ciaran Toner and Martin Gritton replace Gary Jones and Michael Reddy in the Mariners' starting line-up at Northampton, where a creditable goalless draw keeps GTFC third in the league table behind Wycombe and Leyton Orient, who extend their lead at the top by beating Oxford. The result extends Town's remarkable unbeaten away run to 8,114 matches or something, but Russell Slade's side have now failed to score in five of their last seven games and won only one of them, if I've counted it up right. I guess that includes games against Newcastle and some of the best teams in the fourth division, but if this promotion thing is going to be taken seriously then that winning habit is gonna have to be rediscovered pretty sharpish.

I'm not going to run the Whittle v Shearer emails after all, because it all seems so long ago and insignificant now. There was one from a Newcastle fan saying exactly what every other Newcastle fan has been saying on the messageboards for three days – but warmly complimenting us on the Mariners' performance and promotion chances, which was nice. Then there was one from a Liverpool fan saying exactly what every other non-Newcastle fan has been saying on the messageboards for three days – that Shearer is a twat. Finally, there was one from a Town fan about Sol Campbell's would-have-been-winning goal in the '98 World Cup being disallowed because of Shearer fouling the Argentine goalkeeper. Seems a pretty fair reflection of national opinion, really. Now the Geordies can try and win something and we can support our team without queueing up behind people who like Friday night matches and don't know what the stands are called – so all let's get on with our lives. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, whoever you are.

Friday 28 October
Welcome once again, dear readers, to the world of guest diarists, brought to you this week by Quite Shy and Not Quite Sure of Himself Diary. First things first, or maybe not, but I couldn't let the opportunity pass. The Alan Shearer beal-athon has been officially downgraded to a sat-in-the-corner-whimpering-a-thon. The ex-England captain is reported on the official Toon site as saying: "Ah div'n wan ner action terken noo tha gayams owa," after finally coming to his senses and realising that Newcastle actually won the game. Justin Whittle was unavailable for comment - well, he might have been but I'm far too scared to ask him - the official line from GTFC being, basically, that Justin didn't mean it, honest guv. So that's that.

Other newsy-type stuff. Town play Northampton on Saturday - yes, that's Saturday, though Town's preoccupation with trying to make Friday night football night continues after the FA Cup first round tie against Russell Slade's Bristol Rovers, if you believe the News of the World. Russ claims never to have heard of them and that the fact Rovers have put back the naming of their new manager until after the cup tie is purely coincidental. Actually, yet again, I haven't really talked to Russ and have made that bit up, but you can't beat a good conspiracy theory.

Back to Saturday's match then, and it is widely rumoured that Jason Crowe will make an appearance, so those travelling to Sixfields will be in for a brand new experience there then. The big-spending-for-about-the-fourth-season-on-the-trot Cobblers are just below Town in the league but, as with Town and the rest of the top six, it is their home form that seems to be holding them back, so it should be a good opportunity for Town to recover from the Shearerfest and the home loss to the Orienteers.

No emails today - actually, there might be but I haven't seen them. [There are a couple from Premiership fans, actually, but we'll run 'em later - Ed.] So on that note, fair readers, I bid you adieu. Bloody hell, that was hard - I don't know how real Diary manages it every day, oh is the tape still on, bugger, you can edit that can't you...

Thursday 27 October
For the second successive round of the League Cup, the Mariners find themselves all over the back pages the next day, and this time it's for an even better reason than beating Tottenham: pissing off Alan Shearer. The multi-millionaire son of a sheet metal worker went public after last night's kickabout with his moral outrage at receiving close attention from the elbow of Justin Whittle, telling reporters: "I just wanted to go out there and do him, because he did me," and curiously neglecting to mention the earlier incident in which the notoriously dirty Shearer had already 'done' the GTFC captain, whacking him in the face when challenging for a high ball. Shearer's schoolboy conduct makes it appropriate to point out firstly that he started it, secondly that if he and former soldier Whittle were indeed to engage in bare-knuckle combat then Whittle would fucking batter him, and thirdly the old playground rule that you shouldn't give what you can't take. Andy Townsend can splutter until he's even bluer in the face, but as a great believer in karma the Diary prefers to dwell on the image of the dozens of Premiership defenders surely smirking over their cornflakes this morning.

"Sibbo here," is the fitting beginning to an email to the Diary today from Sibbo (50), who celebrated his 50th birthday in the Rutland Arms last night. "Just having a hol after yesterday's big day. Thanks for making yourself known last night, it was nice to have a chat with the real Diary, having at one thought that Cod Almighty could have been infiltrated by aliens from another universe. Despite the result the Alford barmy army had a good night out. Will no doubt join you for a beer before another home match. Keep up the good work. Best wishes to all at Cod Almighty." Nice to meet you, too, sir – but ask yourself: how do you know we're not aliens from another universe...?

On that disquieting note I leave you, as is traditional, in the hands of an as yet unknown guest diarist for Friday, and for the current working week, that's all from the Diary: older than I look, younger than I sound. Ta-ta.

Wednesday 26 October
Third verse, same as the first. Luton forward and sometime Grimsby wide midfielder Calvin 'Andrews' Andrew is returning to Blundell Park for a second month on loan, giving Town the option to hoof long balls out to one side of the midfield as well as straight up towards Michael Reddy. Having not played in the League Cup this season, Andrew would be eligible to take part in tonight's match against, um, er, dunno, I've forgotten, should Luton show themselves to be cool about him becoming cup-tied. They might even have got knocked out by now, come to that. I'll have a look. Yeah, they have. Woo. Andrew proved an effective player in his first month on loan at Blundell Park at the beginning of the season, scoring the winner in Town's 1-0 triumph at Barnet in August, and if we're going to play route one then we might as well have players who can make it work. I feel dirty.

After yesterday's Diary went live with a spirited if entirely predictable attack on GTFC for moving next month's game against Macclesfield to a Friday night, the club's official site added another paragraph to the page on which this latest atrocity was announced, which succeeds only in undermining its case even further. Possibly in response to the Diary pointing out – as if it needed to be pointed out – that the attendance against Wycombe the other Friday was artificially inflated by part-timers chasing ticket stubs to get into the Newcastle game, the OS added: "The Stockport game was switched to a Friday night, with the club originally expecting a Saturday crowd of around 4,500, 5,381 turned up for the clash with the Edgeley Park side." First of all, that should be a semicolon after "Friday night"; more importantly, the club is once again insulting the intelligence of its own supporters, who know very well that a substantial proportion of the crowd at the Stockport game were kids who'd got in for free on a special offer the club put in place after switching the game to the Friday. Keep digging, guys. You're making my job a hell of a lot easier.

Oh, all right then, if I have to. Both line-ups for tonight's oversubscribed Lager Cup match against Newcastle - they're in the Premiership, you know! - are still far from clear, with Andy Parkinson and Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala seeming likely to shake off the injuries that we never believed would keep them out of the match in the first place but Sunderland fan and sworn deadly enemy to Geordies Simon Ramsden on stand-by to fill in at left-back should Tom Newey not recover from his. As for the visitors, some reports are claiming Graeme Souness may rest some of his players while others suggest he'll go shit or bust with a full-strength line-up; on balance it seems likely that Alan 'Kick Your Head' Shearer will join his one-time England striking partner Little Michael Owen on the sidelines. Back in the starting line-up for the visitors, though, will be Kieron Dyer, Celestine Babayaro, and, um, I dunno, some other millionaires.

If Souness succumbs to the temptation to withdraw some of his poor little lambs from the fray tonight then at least his club's official website can't be accused of failing to take the match seriously. A quite decent Rob Jones interview, in which Town's most upright of citizens tells of losing 8-0 to Newcastle while on the books at Spennymoor United, will be the highlight for GTFC fans, but also of interest is a statfest which reveals that "Grimsby actually enjoy a better record in the previous head-to-heads" between the two sides, having beat the Magpies 16 times and lost only 15. Note the use of the word 'actually', implying: "You're not going to believe this, because we've got loads of money and they've never been higher than the fifth division in the whole 20 years they've existed for and, er, um... fish. Yeah."

Finally, let's hope the Mariners can make it an ecstatic 50th for regular Diary emailer Dave 'Sibbo' Burton, whose friends and family have been bombarding Cod Almighty with virtual birthday cards. "We would like you all to join in wishing our dad a happy 50th birthday for Wednesday 26 October, and thought what better way to do it than to post a message on the one and only Cod Almighty website! After all, he practically lives by this website, and is a top GTFC supporter through thick and thin. Have a great day Dad, let's hope it's as BIG as the Grimsby vs Newcastle match. All the best to the Mariners, make it a good match for our extra special birthday boy! With lots of love to you, from your 'lil sibbas' Nicola, Toni and Charlotte." Awww! Hey, I could start charging for this. Dave the Engineer adds: "Tomorrow may go down in Mariners history if we manage to win, but history of another kind will be created when Sibbo turns 50. To celebrate we have clubbed together enough to buy him a pint in the Rutland before the game. Honour indeed for this stalwart of Blundell Park and just reward for retiring from the East Lincs Combination and Alford Town's defence." Have a good 'un, Sibbo, and if you wear a Cod Almighty T-shirt tonight and we reach the Rutland in time then I'll buy you a pint meself. Mmmm, Bullion. Thirsty now.

Tuesday 25 October
Hello, readers. Another day, another kick in the teeth for Gary Cohen and Nick Hegarty, for away supporters and exiled Town fans, and for anyone who wants to support the Mariners and also has a bit of a life. And for the UK comprehensive education system, while we're at it, but I don't suppose we can blame that one on GTFC. We begin with the news that Russell Slade is about to loan his third wide midfielder of the season after the freshly departed Simon Francis and the admittedly excellent Calvin Andrew. Town's official website has revealed this morning that, despite some promising performances on the fringes, Cohen and Hegarty will continue to be kept out of the first XI by the hard-working but sometimes infuriating Andy Parkinson and whoever Russ can rope in on loan during any given month.

Think back to the summer of this year: a time when England won the Ashes, the sixth Harry Potter book was published, Greece won the Eurovision Song Contest and Live8 achieved precisely nothing. It was also a time when a majority of Grimsby Town supporters expressed a dislike for Friday night football in a poll on the club's own official website and the club was treating those fans like morons in the case it made for bringing games forward to Friday nights. The club's response, as widely expected, is to bring another game forward to a Friday night – next month's meeting with Macclesfield, which 'clashes' with an England match – and to continue to treat its fans like morons by citing "the success of previous Friday night games at Blundell Park" when there are undiscovered civilisations in the outer reaches of the Alpha Centauri system who know very well that all those part-timers turned up for the Wycombe match only to procure ticket stubs for the Newcastle game. If it is true, as GTFC claim, that "the club has been criticised in the past for not switching games to accommodate international matches" (and some supporting evidence wouldn't go amiss, chaps), then this still fails to address the issue of why Town fans, unlike their counterparts at some other clubs, are not consulted as to whether Saturday lunchtimes, Saturday evenings or Sunday afternoons might not be preferable.

Friday night, Saturday afternoon or Sunday during the Eastenders omnibus: it's all academic as far as Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala is concerned, as the Mariners' leading scorer will be unavailable for the whole weekend around the Macclesfield game. JPK has been called up by the Democratic Republic of Congo again, this time for a friendly against Tunisia on 11 November as his nation prepares for its African Cup of Nations campaign in the New Year. Gah!

Say the name Jones to a Grimsby Town fan these days and they'll likely come back at you with a comment along the lines of: "I can't believe he's the same player! He's been fantastic this season holding the defence together!" If not, then their response might be: "Well, he's scored three useful goals but his last few appearances have been disappointing. In my opinion it's time to bring Gritton back into the starting line-up." Alternatively, they may well ask why you're just saying random names with no context or anything. But if you'd said the name Jones to a Grimsby Town fan in the early 1990s, they'd have said: "He's made some good signings, this Buckley bloke, but that one's a disaster." To this day, ex-Town 'striker' Murray Jones remains living proof of a successful former manager's fallibility in the transfer market, but from this day he is also caretaker-manager at Crawley Town of the Conference, who have given the sack to previous boss Francis Vines, just as he'd given up his own sack by quitting his day job as a postman. I assume it's the same Murray Jones anyway; there can't be too many of them floating about the place, eh.

Monday 24 October
Tom Newey, Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala and Andy Parkinson are all feeling a bit sore after the Mariners' defeat by Leyton Orient at the weekend, reports the club's official site - which is a coincidence, because so are the 4,500 Town fans who watched it. Cross your fingers as Gary Croft undergoes a scan today which could determine his fitness to boost GTFC's faltering form or bring an early end to his fitness-dependent contract at Blundell Park and make Newey a permanent fixture in the first team. So is it a real injury crisis or is crafty Mr Russell Slade up to his old tricks by tricking Newcastle as to the team he will field this Wednesday? For that matter, are Leyton Orient and Wycombe really better than Town or did we just lose to them on purpose to dupe gullible Mr Souness into resting half his team this Wednesday? I'll be glad when this bloody cup run is over.

Panic buy Jermaine Palmer has made his third loan move of the season, just days after making his belated not-exactly-first-team debut for the Mariners. The young forward, lest you forget, joined from Stoke in the summer and had already spent time borried out to York and Scarborough in the Conference before coming on as a substitute against Morecambe in the Vans last week. Before the weekend he had moved on once again, this time to Hinckley United of the Conference North, with whom he registered his first goal in English senior football in Saturday afternoon's 1-1 draw at Stalybridge. "The 20-year-old striker is the son of assistant boss Charlie," notes Confguide.com, immediately before quoting Hinckley manager Dean Thomas: "The lad is only 19". Ask Charlie – he should know.

Oooh, guess what? Bristol Rovers don't want Russell Slade to be their manager, and Russell Slade doesn't want to be Bristol Rovers' manager. That means the News of the World must have been making it up. Well, well. Who'd have thought that, eh.

Saturday 22 October
Town's lower mid-table home form continues with a not unexpected 1-0 defeat by Leyton Orient, who climb one point and one place above the Mariners in the fourth division table. The gameplan unravels today on the 43-minute mark, when the London side reap the due benefits of their first-half superiority with a Craig Easton header from 10 yards out, and some will point the finger at Russell Slade for his ongoing insistence on approaching home games as if they were away games, with early containment and reliance on counterattacking, and selection of the lumpy Gary Jones ahead of the rejuvenated Martin Gritton. The now routine second-half fightback is again spirited and inadequate, and Town drop to third place in the table as a 2-1 win over Lincoln takes Wycombe to the top, two points ahead of the Mariners. After the artificially inflated crowd figure for Town's last home defeat, half of those planning to attend next Wednesday's big, big cup tie against big, big Newcastle United resume relations with Freshney Place and Sky TV and today's gate reverts to a more realistic 4,963 – or 41.35 per cent of the capacity of the proposed new stadium.

Four days after getting knocked out of the Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy on purpose, Town now have another cup game to not take seriously. Today's draw for the first round of obscure knockout tournament the FA Cup has handed GTFC a not terribly exciting home tie against fourth division rivals Bristol Rovers, to be played the first weekend of November if I remember rightly (I want me dinner and I can't be arsed to check). So as one door closes, another one slams in your face. Is that another Blackadder quote?

Clearly not having realised how stupid the club made itself look in recent seasons by publicly squabbling with the Grimsby Telegraph and Radio Humberside, GTFC have gone after the local paper again. The run-up to the Newcastle game has seen a mix-up over arrangements for the sale of the last few tickets in which the Telewag seems to have given supporters who queued and missed out earlier, but were handed preference vouchers to buy tickets later when the extra seats were approved, the mistaken impression that they had to attend today's match to be able to get their mitts on the tix. The Mariners' outraged official website declares: "The Headline on the back page of the Grimsby Telegraph – 'NOW CUP VOUCHERS HAVE TO PAY AGAIN' is categorically wrong and will be asked to be immediately retracted by the Editor of the Grimsby Telegraph with a full apology to GTFC & all the supporters they have upset with their damaging headline." Quite apart from the disastrous wording here (the headline will be asked to be retracted?), the Diary can't help reflecting that if the club could stop making such a pig's arse of its communications in the first place then there would be even less need for it to adopt such a pointlessly confrontational tone once again.

Friday 21 October
Good day to you all – Special Guest of Special Guest Diary here – reporting from deepest (and humblest) West Yorkshire on another day filled with GTFC issues, ones which the OS normally has to sort out first before reporting them. Anyway, it appears the club has given November, December and the most part of January a miss by claiming that fans with tickets marked 'FA Cup Round 4' will, in fact, be able to purchase an exclusive ticket for what can only be described as the League Cup Round 3 match against Newcastle United. If the club happens to reach Round 4 of the FA Cup early next year, please be patient and expect delays as the club rushes around the place trying to find blank pieces of paper and the correct printing text. It also transpires that you probably need to attend the Leyton Orient match in order to get your Newcastle ticket anyway, just to confuse matters. Willy Wonka's golden tickets go on sale at half time during the match – but be quick Charlie, there are only five of them left and a big fat lad has already claimed his.

Security will be tight; you can be assured of that. But as General Melchett once said: "'Security' isn't a dirty word, Blackadder. 'Crevice' is a dirty word, but 'security' isn't".

I have a theory that Simon Ramsden is one of the unluckiest Town players at the moment (however, I wasn't there to see his performance against Morecambe). I also have a theory that Huddersfield residents can't walk straight, but that's another matter. Rambo faces the challenge of dislodging Rob Jones or Justin Aim-For-The-Corrugated-Steel Whittle from the side. Is it bad luck? I used to know someone who suffered from bad luck. He also suffered from alopecia, and so he bought a book on hair care but all the pages fell out. He had to be put down in the end, you know.

So who else will come back into the Town side that bothers? The Grimsby Telegraph is hedging its bets on Gary Cohen playing up front against Orient, and it's Simon Francis' last game for us before he returns to Moan-land. Ah, I give up. Trying to predict our starting eleven is like trying to predict when Anthony Williams is going to have a solid game.

"Never be frightened of flying," someone once said to me. "Flying isn't dangerous; it's crashing that's dangerous." But by the same token I'm scared of going in a hot air balloon. It's not because I'm scared of heights; it's the fact that I'm stood in a wicker basket – something that creaks when you subject it to the weight of a flask and a scotch egg. Playing Tom Newey at left back could have similar effects. If Orient have a quick right winger, then you might hear the creaking from our number three at roughly 3pm tomorrow.

I know it's not GTFC-related but I can't finish without mentioning Cristiano Ronaldo. It's not been a good week for Manchester United – first Paul Scholes was sent off for a rash tackle, and now it's been alleged that Ronaldo has got a rash tackle too. He's in that predicament where he'll probably play out of his skin before he's found not guilty and then he'll go and sign for Oldham at the end of the season.

I'm sure there's more news and previews of the Orient game on the Grimsby Telegraph website but, as has become traditional, it's refusing to load up – just like my TV aerial refuses to introduce me to BBC1. So for now I bid you goodbye, as me and my housemates try and chase up the person that so generously delivered a firework at our front door last Sunday night.

Thursday 20 October
It's nice to know that the Diary isn't the only Grimsby-related media outlet suffering from a severe shortage of news this month: hence the tragi-comic headline for the lead story in today's Grimsby Telegraph. Naturally, one wishes Dorothy Ramsden (68) a full and rapid recovery from surgery at the same time as observing that the local paper is straying into the realms of Framley Examiner parody by headlining the story of her woes PILLOW FURY. (Note to sub: 'chronic' is not an emphatic. Look it up.) To save you reading it and being forced to saw off your own head in despair, that hospital named after the dead royal is a bit short of pillows, so they're having some more delivered today.

Oh, and there's some old tosh about the local football club submitting a fresh planning application to build a new 12,000-capacity stadium at Great Coates in time for the start of the 2008–09 season. Didn't think you'd be bothered about that though.

Gary Cohen may be unable to sit on the substitutes' bench for this Saturday's home game (hooray, a home game on a Saturday!) against Leyton Orient. The pacy, young, versatile, on-loan-from-Gretna, Tottenham-supporting, two-goals-this-season forward got a tap on his ankle during Tuesday night's disheartening farce in the LCV Trophy, collided with the Morecambe goalkeeper twice, and still played all 120 minutes of the match, leaving him rated a bit dicey for the weekend's return to games that Town actually want to win. The player may return to training today, though, reports the Grimsby Telegraph, which adds that the Mariners' problems in adequately filling both wide midfield slots may return after the match, when his fellow loanee Simon Francis could return to parent club Sheffield United, but stops short of blaming Cohen's ankle problems on the chronic pillow shortage at the local hospital.

Finally from me today (and this week, since tomorrow, children, classes will be taken by a supply Diary), we return to Tuesday for an amusing take on the evening's reserve training session. The Diary is not one to patronise or underestimate non-League football – especially given that the Mariners came within half a dozen league positions of joining it at the end of last season – but was unable to suppress a smile at the Morecambe Today website's match report, which optimistically insists that the visitors to Blundell Park overcame "a side who beat Spurs... a couple of weeks earlier" when of course Tuesday night's line-up included only three of the heroes who started against Tottenham. As if that isn't funny enough, the report goes on to rate Tony Crane's performance as worth 7 out of 10. You don't need to be that polite, you know. We're not.

So good luck to Morecambe in the Conference this season, thank you all for reading this week, and I'll see you on Saturday. Ta-ta.

Wednesday 19 October
Result! By fielding a weakened team against Morecambe last night, Town achieved their more-or-less stated intention of elimination from the Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy – the competition that brought joy to the hearts of only 35,000 GTFC fans who travelled to the final at Wembley in 1998. Second-half substitute Paul Ashton enjoyed a dream debut, scoring an equaliser to force half an hour of extra time that nobody wanted, and the Mariners' apparent objective of getting knocked out was confirmed beyond doubt during the shoot-out when the responsibility for taking the decisive spot-kick was given to Tony 'Duck!' Crane, whose penalty is now being traced by the Huygens-Cassini space probe as it passes through the orbit of Saturn. The club has now cunningly avoided having to play a second-round tie in November – when the fixture schedule is crammed solid with, er, three league games and the first round of the FA Cup – and avoided weakening the squad with injuries and tiredness, as the only regular first-team outfield players on duty last night were the fit young lads who never pick up any knocks, such as, um, 34-year-old Justin Whittle, who played all 120 minutes. What are you complaining about? It only cost a tenner to get in.

Sensitive Mariners chairman John Fenty has issued a statement seeking to pour soothing scented oil on the troubled waters of ticketing arrangements for next week's League Cup tie against Newcastle. Treacherous whirlpools of discontent are swirling over whether the club had its fingers crossed behind its back when it announced that two ticket stubs – or counterfoils, to be accurate about it – from the matches against Notts County, Wycombe and Hull would get you in to see the big, big cup match, and the former Five Star Fish supremo has strung together some businessman's bad English in an admirable attempt to placate the great Grimsby public. It all seems sincere and convincing enough to the Diary, but then I'm not one of these people who are never happy unless they've got something to be unhappy about. Yeah, I know. Maybe my parents lied and I wasn't actually born anywhere near Grimsby.

All of which nonsense drags us kicking and screaming towards today's Seatwatch Update, where it seems that the Grimsby Telegraph has beaten Town's official website to the story again. The provisional approval of plans to install extra seats for the Newcastle game seems to have been upgraded to definite, positive, go-ahead-and-install approval, and 228 lucky winners will now get to see the match from another windswept open corner. Hooray!

Tuesday 18 October
Yay, I'm famous! The Mariners' official website has singled out Cod Almighty (three out of ten Town fans prefer us, but they're the three with the best record collections) as the world's leading purveyor of incorrect reports that Tom Newey will be suspended for tonight's visit of Morecambe in the Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy. The club's second-choice left-back will, it transpires, probably line up alongside several other fringe players believed by the Grimsby Telegraph to include Ciaran Toner and Simon Ramsden. What the OS fails to realise, unfortunately, is that the Diary was yesterday collaborating with Slade the Manager in a pre-match campaign of misinformation cunningly designed to lull Morecambe into a false sense of security. Or insecurity, depending on your point of view. How is Gary Croft's knee, exactly?

Now it's time for today's Seatwatch Update, and the latest news from Blundell Park regarding the club's application to the North East Lincolnshire Seat Authority to add some more bum space for next week's League Cup tie against... er... um... it's so long since anyone mentioned it that I've forgotten. Anyway – in yesterday's installing enthralment we learned that provisional approval has been granted for Town to stick an extra 228 seats in – which, at 15 quid a throw, comes out at £3,420, half of which must be given to hard-up Newcastle, leaving £1,710 for GTFC, which is hopefully a little bit more than it costs to put the seats in and go through the application process. Presumably the club is now awaiting confirmation of this provisional approval – and there are only eight days to receive it, buy the chairs, put them in and sell the tickets. Get your finger out, North East Lincolnshire Seat Authority!

Monday 17 October
If somebody told you Town were signing a 34-year-old centre-half who is currently with the club that is bottom of the entire league, and he can't even get in their first team, you'd probably say: "Booo Slade booo, sack the board, kill whitey!" And that would show just exactly how much you know, sunshine, because that was Town signing Paul Futcher in 1991. Don't be too cynical, then, about the fact that Town are trialing a 30-year-old striker whose career in the four senior divisions has yielded a total of seven goals. Steve 'No Relation' Slade began his career with Tottenham and moved in 1996, for a fee of £350,000, to QPR, where his 27 league starts and 42 appearances as a substitute brought him six of those seven (including one in a 3-0 win over Kenny Swain's shortly-to-be-relegated Mariners side in April 1997). After that Slade played a handful of games apiece at Brentford and Cambridge before slipping into non-League in 2000, where he has worked his way through a multitude of part-time sides scattered across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Essex (the most recent that the Diary can find being Barking & East Ham United of the Southern League Division One East). The new Bradley Allen, anyone? Oh, go on – smile.

Supporters who will simply die if they don't get a glimpse of hotshot Slade the Player almost immediately are advised that the trialist will, strangely, be eligible to play in tomorrow night's Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy game against Morecambe (or so the Mariners' official website tells us, anyway). Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, the one-match suspension Tom Newey incurred by collecting his 280th yellow card of the season at Cheltenham on Friday will apply for this game, and with far more important things to worry about than the possibility of a £½m payday at the tournament's Millennium Stadium finale, Slade the Manager is planning to 'rest' several of his first-team squad. With expectations thus diminished, it'll 'only' cost a tenner to get in on Tuesday, and only the Beer Stand will be open. Live the dream.

Next, more of the Diary's increasingly desperate attempts to squeeze a story out of Town's increasingly desperate attempts to squeeze a few more quid out of next week's League Cup game against Newcastle. A couple of days last week, you will recall, the best we could do for news was whether the club would be allowed to put up a few more seats in the corner between the Osmond and the Beer Stand, and at times we were reduced to wondering who was going to be at the meeting where they decided, and arguing with GTFC's official website about when the meeting was going to be held. If you are reading these words then I will assume that you've clicked on to today's Diary without assistance and hence came through last week without chewing off your own arms in exasperated boredom. You will no doubt be thrilled to learn today, then, that provisional approval has been given for an extra 228 seats, though the club's request for permission to install 600 was refused. Please do embarrass yourselves and the ticket office staff by asking for additional tickets for the Newcastle game.

Saturday 15 October
After a week spent languishing in the unaccustomed depths of second place, the Mariners are back on top of the fourth division for at least another few days. Unreciprocated goals from Paul Bolland, Michael Reddy and Gary Cohen gave a slightly flattering look to what was nevertheless a classic soak-it-up-and-dish-it-back-out away win at Cheltenham last night, restoring Town to first place: a position Wycombe surprisingly spurned the chance to reclaim this afternoon by recording only a 0-0 draw at home to Rushden. Rochdale's 3-0 win over Notts County today brings them level with the Chairboys on 26 points, one behind the Mariners and one ahead of fourth-placed Leyton Orient - next week's visitors to Blundell Park - who could only draw 1-1 at home to Lincoln today. There is a word for combinations of results such as these, and that word is 'yay!'.

Friday 14 October
Sepp Blather is blattering on again; the official site news pages are quieter than a welldigger's arse, and so your Guest Diarist has resorted this morning to such arcane practices as washing tea towels, finding the precise distance from his new home to Blundell Park and visiting Steve Livingstone's tracker winch mounting page. But more on these stories later, gentle reader, for we are here to remember that Town have an important fixture this evening. What I should have been doing, of course, is re-reading the excellent rough guide to Cheltenham penned by Miles Moss over the summer. In it, among many other pearls and oddities, he mentions that Cheltenham had a really good run about this time last season, winning five on the bounce. Simon Wilson has written a match preview for Cod Almighty, which reviews more current Cheltenham form, and seems to conclude that Town ought to go there and win. Let's hope so.

The amusing photograph below, taken at the GTFC ticket office last Sunday, demonstrates once again why the club's marketing department needs a proofreader just as badly as its official website. (Thanks to 'original gtfc' for that.)

But enough of that nonsense: the Telegraph sports page will finally load and tells us that "Grimsby Town boss Russell Slade is banking on striker Michael Reddy to fire the Mariners back to the top of League Two at Cheltenham tonight." Slade hints that he will bring back JP Kalalala at the expense of Mr Toner, but all but confesses that he has no clue as to whether to start with Gritton or Jones the lump. Macca has declared himself fit to start, but the left side of the Mariners will remain a tackle-free zone as that most unedifying defensive partnership of Newey and Parky continues to put hearts in mouths. Let's hope we do well enough to go back top though. I like it when we are top, don't you? See yer.

Thursday 13 October
If Tuesday was a slow news day then Thursday makes it look like John Fenty on amphetamines, as today's lamentably weak lead story is that no decision has yet been made on whether Town will be allowed to have another 500 mates round for their party against Newcastle on Wednesday week. In case you've forgotten since yesterday, and because I need to pad out this paragraph a bit, GTFC are wishing to make Blundell Park into a genuine four-cornered arena by installing extra seating between the Osmond end and the Beer Stand, and they're waiting for a decision from the police and a shadowy cabal known only as the Safety Advisory Group. Taking full advantage of a rare opportunity to get a shot back at the Diary, the club's official website insists that the relevant meeting took place yesterday and not today. Oooh, get you!

Gary Croft won't be playing for the Mariners, or anyone else for that matter, at Cheltenham tomorrow night. Today's Grimsby Telegraph reports, and I can't give you the link because their website is playing up again, that the player has been told to rest with the, um, whatever injury it was that opened the door for Tom Newey to replace him – and for Kevin Betsy to tear the Mariners apart down their left flank – in last Friday's home defeat by Wycombe. This is bad news for Town fans, better news for Tom Newey, and fantastic news for whoever plays right midfield for Cheltenham.

Settle down now. In the absence of anything very much better to do, the Diary can now reveal just how close Scott Kerr came to joining the Mariners over the summer. The former Scarborough midfielder, you may recall if you're as much of an anorak as the Diary, was briefly the subject of an entertaining Chelseaesque tapping-up row shortly after Russell Slade joined Grimsby from the Salty Seamen in 2004. Slade was publicly alleged by his furious former employer to have invited Kerr to follow him down the east coast, but then it all went a bit quiet for a year, yes, a year, until 2005, in fact, when we all suspected that the player was just about to join Town at last when he signed for Lincoln instead, and, confirming our suspicions, an interview with Kerr on Lincoln's official website now reveals that the player was just about to join Town at last when he signed for Lincoln instead.

Oh, and there was something in the Telegraph about Town running "soccer schools", whereby local youngsters brush up their skills and hope to catch the eye of club scouts while GTFC cultivate the next generation of fans and develop stronger links with the local community. A really good scheme, by the sounds of it, then, which clearly deserves as much coverage as it can get and probably more besides; hence it seemingly having been ignored completely by the club's official website. Hey ho.

Before I bid you cheerio for the week, it's a good job Mark Wilson is around to fire off an email and keep us all sane. "I beg to differ with the Diary over our chances of winning a prestigious trophy this season," he writes. "Whilst the reserves tumbling out of the cup t'Tahgers was disappointing can I remind you we still have the LDV to come and we have several more opportunities to win the Powerade player of the month and the Carling/Carlsberg/Carcroft, Brigg and Thorp Arch Performance of the Week. I hope there's space in the trophy cabinet." Thanks, Mark. You're now persona non grata in Darley Dale.

Wednesday 12 October
Err nerr! The Mariners' dreams of lifting a prestigious trophy this season lie in tatters after the reserves lost 2-1 to Hull yesterday afternoon in the Pontins Holidays Cup. A strong Tahgers side strolled to a two-goal half-time lead against a Town XI featuring Tony Crane, but Graham 'Rodgers' Rodger's side came back strongly after the break, propelled by another stirring – and goalscoring – performance from ginger winger ninja Nick Hegarty, who must be due a return to the first-team squad one week soon, eh, Sladey?

Since their win over Tottenham in the League Cup last month the Mariners have been all over the media like a rash, or Abi Titmuss, and in the run-up to the third-round meeting with Newcastle the rash shows no sign of clearing up. Really old defender John McDermott has told nobody in particular that, in the style of Bobby Robson during the 1990 World Cup, relative newcomer to the club Russell Slade "often talks to a few of us senior players and asks for feedback or advice on certain things". But other than Macca himself, who exactly are the senior players? Over on the BBC, meanwhile, there's another of those longer-than-a-news-story shorter-than-a-feature-article pieces, in which a sleepy-looking Slade declares: "We have turned a big corner," referring either to the club as a whole or the fans who queued up for Newcastle tickets on Sunday and made it as far as the final 90-degree turn from Grimsby Road into Constitutional Avenue.

At the time of writing there is no news as to whether Town are going to be allowed to put those extra seats in between the Osmond and the Smiths/Stones/Findus/Barrett stands. The club's official website says a decision will be made today, but if we were reliant solely on the OS for the background to this story then we would be uncertain as to whether permission is needed from the local council, the Football League, John Fenty's mum or the leader of the Singapore Democratic Alliance. It's a good job we have the Grimsby Telegraph, then, which has reported that the decision will be made following a meeting between club officials, Humberside police, and something called the Safety Advisory Group – a meeting due to take place on, er, Thursday. So either the OS has it wrong or Town are going to just sneakily erect a new stand before the meeting, under cover of darkness, and hope nobody notices.

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as others see us! Oh, here it is. Cheers giftie! A preview of Friday night's Town match can now be found, fittingly enough, on the website of Friday night's opponents Cheltenham. Excitingly, the Robins' OS manages to correctly identify the national team of Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala, but lets itself down on hyphenation, apostrophes, the number of goals scored this season by Gary Jones and the spellings of Calvin Andrew and Russell Slade. There are also some weird photos of headless footballers, and while it may be factually correct that GTFC "lost the services" of Anthony Williams to Carlisle over the summer, this is a bit like saying the Diary's careful daily use of Anusol over the summer caused me to lose the services of my haemorrhoids.

Tuesday 11 October
When your lead story concerns a midweek afternoon reserve match, you know it's a slow news day. So I'm going to amuse myself by writing out long synonyms for the names of all the companies that sponsor things in today's Diary. Town's second string face Hull at home today, kicking off at 2pm, in the One Of Britain's Leading Holiday Camp Companies Cup. This is presumably the match that GTFC originally wanted to reschedule for Wednesday 4 January until somebody told them that they'd be lagging three rounds behind the rest of the tournament by then. The Mariners' line-up for the match includes Bunce and Benson, who I think were two of the inconsequential trialists who gatecrashed John McDermott's testimonial last week, while the Tahgers name several expensive signings who got about a month in the first team when they first arrived two years ago, didn't score goals, and were replaced by more expensive signings, and so on ad infinitum until they got promoted. Probably.

GTFC are attempting to crowbar a few more seats into Blundell Park and squeeze a few dollars more out of the forthcoming Britain's Best-Selling Lager With Over 5 Million Barrels Drunk Last Year Cup match against FA Europe's Leading Issuer Of Credit Cards With 11 Million Cards In Circulation Worldwide Premiership side Newcastle. After adding extra seating last week to the two corners of Blundell Park adjoining the Pontoon stand, the club is now planning to raise the capacity by a further 500 by installing additional arse-space between the Osmond and the Tadcaster-Based Brewery Owned By Scottish Courage Stand.

Town's official website has published a page of travel and ticket information for this Friday's [spit] away game in the World's Largest Soft Drink Corporation League at Cheltenham. Yes, it really is that boring today, and the page is notable only for the fact that it refers to pubs as "drinking establishments" with no apparent irony. Scroll past all the stuff about where to drink and which bus to catch and there's a note about the forthcoming Birmingham-Based Light Commercial Vehicle Manufacturer Trophy tie against Morecambe a week tonight, which says only the Tadcaster-Based Brewery Owned By Scottish Courage Stand will be open and that it'll only cost ten quid to get in. Woohoo!

Monday 10 October
Scenes of hysteria gripped North East Lincolnshire over the weekend as tickets went on general sale for the forthcoming big event. Fans were reported to have been waiting from seven o'clock in the morning in desperation to secure entry; eyewitnesses described queues stretching several hundred yards down the road; and those left empty-handed are bidding up to five times face value for tickets on eBay. But enough about Aled Jones playing Grimsby Auditorium – what about Town v Newcastle? Honk! GTFC report that all available seats for the match have now been sold, except the ones not yet taken up by season ticket holders with a relaxed approach to life. These will be kept back for another week, or something, so there's no need to panic – unless the next "Croft was rubbish against Wycombe" supporter who walks into BP and pretends to have forgotten his season ticket chooses your seat number at random when the gullible and untrained sales staff ask him where he sits.

"Jean Paul Kamudimba Kalala came on as a second half substitute in Congo's 2-2 draw with South Africa today," reported Town's official website on Saturday, and who are we to doubt its authority, even if it has missed out a couple of hyphens and got the wrong country? JPK's side has not quite made it to the 2006 World Cup, what with Ghana having just about wrapped up qualification from that group before a ball was even kicked at the weekend, but the Democratic Republic of Congo are now probably going to feature in January's African Cup of Nations in Egypt, ruling the Mariners' top scorer out of the fourth division promotion chase for a month or so should he be called up by his country again. It's a good job Paul Bolland can do the work of two men.

They were second best against Wycombe, they're second in the league behind Wycombe, and now Town's goalkeeper has been voted to second place in some fourth division player of the month awards thingy or other. I dunno who votes or makes the award or anything like that – and I strongly suspect that some kind of corporate sponsor is involved, so I don't intend to inquire any further – but Steve Mildenhall, my lord, has finished runner-up in September's gubbins, between Gary Alexander of Leyton Orient and Nathan Tyson, who'll be out of Wycombe as soon as the Christmas decorations come down but who, of course, they didn't even need to beat the Mariners on Friday. Erk. Er... oh yeah – well done, big Steve. Yes.

An email has reached these shores from professional Town fan John 'Kirky' Kirk, who has an optimistic riposte to the Diary's gloomy Saturday musing that "it would be interesting to learn exactly how many teams have ever secured promotion after having suffered three home defeats just a week into October". "Well," writes Mr Kirky, "we could start with Grimsby in 1989 – we lost three on the bounce!" A quick click on the nearest results database confirms JK's thesis, with Maidstone United, Hereford and Rochdale all having danced away from BP with three points this time 16 years ago. Hooray! I didn't like being top anyway. Slow and stealthy – that's the Grimsby way...

That's just about it for today, then, so... hang on – what's this? Slade linked with Bristol Rovers job? Always the way, just as we start doing well, typical Town, they'll never do anything, rubbish Town, anyone wanna buy a Newcastle ticket, booo Grimsby booo. So, it was reported where? News of the World? Oh, OK. As you were.

Saturday 8 October
Back in the summer most Town fans, if you'd been God and offered them second place in the table at this point in the season, would have had your holy hand off. There can be few complaints from North East Lincolnshire today, then, either at GTFC's position in the fourth division or at the outcome of the match that placed them there: last night's 1-0 home defeat by Wycombe. The Chairboys lived up to their hype as the best footballing side in the basement with a skilful display that pulled the home side well out of shape with deft switches, good movement off the ball and the sadistic nous to run Tom Newey ragged down the Mariners' left all night.

So the next time anyone tells you it's impossible to pass your way out of the fourth division (whether or not they happen to manage the team you support) you may be able to cite not only Yeovil in 2005 but possibly also Wycombe in 2006. Town can take comfort from their spirited second-half fightback, which came close to taking a point from the match, and from the knowledge that they are unlikely to face a better side in the league all season; but it would be interesting to learn exactly how many teams have ever secured promotion after having suffered three home defeats just a week into October.

And the Diary award for Glory-Hunting Nesbit of the Week goes to the 'supporter' who got himself on the Radio Humberside phone-in after the game in order to bemoan the performance of Gary Croft (not named among Town's 16 on the night). Even on the radio, poor old David Burns was clearly struggling to keep a straight face.

Friday 7 October
Hello from Leeds. This is the news, what little of it there is.

Russell Slade is "sweating" (a direct quote) on Gary Jones's ankle injury for tonight's TOP OF THE TABLE clash with Wycombe - an amusing piece of mental imagery if you remember Ted Striker bringing the plane into land in Airplane!. The man they call Kalala is away with the Congo DR, hoping to beat Ghana to top spot in group 2 of the 2006 World Cup African zone. Lucky for Slades (who looks a bit pissed here), Ciaran Toner is fully fit to make his 100th career appearance, while Little Parky and Bullish Bolland are looking more than likely to play. Gary Croft, however, is looking less likely (there's an o-meter in that). Wycombe have a few absences of their own. If you're bothered check out our preview.

Tickets for the League Cup game against Newcastle go on sale this Sunday to fans who are in possession of two counterfoils (hopefully bringing a close the current misuse of 'stub' by the club's illiterate web department). Those fans "will be directed to form an orderly queue from Constitutional Avenue", notes the club's official site. How utterly British! Are they prepared if people aren't willing to follow directions or conform? Or am I planting anarchist thoughts in people's minds? The OS also points out that there will be a refereshment kiosk open, obviously so fans don't die from thirst queuing all day in the vociferous heat. No word on whether the kiosk is before, along, or after the queue, nor whether John Fenty will be dispensing the orange.

Which brings this short Diary to an abrupt halt. Before we dismiss class, it would be rude not to plug our very own Pete Green's column in today's Grimmo Telerag. Worrying about my manners? How utterly British of me. I'll be getting into line and conforming to the boardroom dress policy at this rate.

Thursday 6 October
Grimbarians are a superstitious lot. Put your shoes on the table of my reactionary forebear, Hang 'Em and Flog 'Em Granny Diary, and you invite a hefty clout around the head with her detachable wooden leg. The same punishment awaits any unwary visitor who leaves their umbrella up indoors, swears on a Tuesday afternoon or crosses the threshold of her scullery wearing a green cagoule. Imagine the collective sigh of relief from the south bank of the Humber this afternoon, then, at the news that Grimsby boss Russell Slade (13 points in September plus glorious cup victory over Tottenham) has avoided what we gullible provincials believe to be the 'curse' of the manager of the month award, the divisional honour for the past month having been awarded instead to John Gorman (11 points plus ignominious 8-3 cup home defeat by Aston Villa). Gorman, of course, is the man in charge of tomorrow night's opponents Wycombe, so Town fans can leave those rabbits' feet and four-leafed clover at home just this once, though you can still wear your lucky pants if you're going out on the pull after the match.

Mariners supporters of a more cynical bent may be looking for something altogether more concrete than this sort of nonsense before they allow their hopes to flicker tentatively into life. The heartless bastards may be delighted, then, by the news that Wycombe's goalscoring superstar hero Nathan Tyson is rolling on the floor in agony with a calf problem and will not be in the visitors' squad for tomorrow night's game. Unless, of course, they are of a really cynical bent and are already suspecting that Tyson will undergo some kind of miraculous recovery just in time for kick-off.

Nathan Tyson or no Nathan Tyson, interest in tomorrow's match is reaching levels of quite interested, as those scary-looking green seats are being reinstalled right now to cope with the demand from local people who have suddenly remembered they have a football club now that a League Cup tie with Newcastle is looming. Today's Grimsby Telegraph reports that more than 5,500 tickets have been taken up already, prompting club officials to bolt an extra 620 seats into the corners adjoining the Pontoon, just in time for Friday's game. Tickets for these will be available at £15 for Wycombe and £17 for Newcastle, with no protection from the elements, and the club is yet to rule out a 'pitching fee' for supporters arriving at Blundell Park with deckchairs tucked under their arms.

Three days after the Diary became the first GTFC-dedicated news source to report Russell Slade's interest in Derby's England u19 left winger Lee Holmes, the Grimsby Telegraph has got around to ringing up the Mariners boss to see if it was true. "I did speak to Phil Brown about Lee," admits sneaky Slade, "but things didn't move on so we switched our attention to Simon [Francis]." All hail the Diary for this glorious journalistic scoop, cunningly obtained by intrepidly subscribing to universally available email news services!

The Diary will now bid you ta-ta for another working week. Thanks for reading, as always, and I hope you enjoy the guest stylings of whichever Friday diarist graces this space tomorrow in my absence. See ya!

Wednesday 5 October
As the great Victorian dramatist, wit and dandy Oscar Wilde once put it, there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is losing at home to Darlington. Grimsby Town Football Club, of course, have experienced quite a bit of both recently, and all this being top of the table malarky is leading to some unlikely angles in the coverage as the media tie themselves in knots trying to do pieces on Grimsby without going on and on about cod and trawlers. Hence an interview with Russell Slade on the official website of the entire goddamn Football League which picks up a casual remark by the Town boss about Chelsea being a well-organised team and decides the Mariners are "taking the Chelsea route" to success. Not that John Fenty hoodwinked the employees of Five Star Fish into selling him their shares at a fraction of their real value, you understand.

Another day, another few millilitres of news from the drip-feed of information about tickets for big League Cup matches. GTFC have announced that holders of two stubs from two of the three home games against Hull, Notts County and Wycombe, although not necessarily in that order, will be able to buy a ticket for the Newcastle match on Wednesday 26 October starting this Sunday at 10am. I guess that means season ticket holders can buy one now then, unless they live in Lincolnshire and want to pay by credit card over the phone, or something. Must have missed that. More importantly, why do they talk about keeping the 'stubs' from your tickets? Isn't the stub the little bit on the left that the turnstile operator keeps? Surely the big part that they give back to you and you keep is not, in fact, the stub but the ticket itself? Enquiring minds need to know.

When players of the calibre of Peter Handyside, Gary Croft and John Oster came through the Mariners' ranks but then failed to realise their tremendous potential at other clubs, observers could have been forgiven for stealing the title of a Jonathan Richman song and urging GTFC: "Don't let our youth go to waste." It is to be hoped, then, that the cohort of teenagers currently squeezing their zits and quaffing Smirnoff Ice in the Blundell Park changing rooms soon burst through into Town's first team and shake the footballing world to its very foundations, and they took a step in the right direction with a win last night in the Midlands Youth Cup. Hey, oaks and acorns. "Grimsby Town Youth saw of Tamworth," reports the club's official website, possibly omitting the words "the back", "a really dodgy area" or "the arms and legs off".

Before the Diary belatedly shows Town how to eat Shrewsbury for lunch by enjoying a sandwich made with shropshire blue, there's just time for an email from Mark Wilson. "In a quiet moment I was perusing another football website," confesses Mark, "and was shocked to see that Middlesbrough have drawn Litex Lovech in the UEFA Cup. Didn't she have a hit in the early 80s with 'Lucky Number'?" Well, I wouldn't accuse you of being a closet Leeds fan, MW, but great minds clearly think alike.

Tuesday 4 October
"Championship? You're having a laugh." After about two minutes. Yawn... although if this chant were directed at the Football League and the fizzy pop firm who renamed the divisions last year, it would be pretty good. "Always shit on the north side of the bridge." A visionary solution to the environmental issues of sewage and organic crop production, but imagine the congestion at the toll booth first thing in the morning. A flash of fluorescent steward jacket down to the left of the Pontoon, and hundreds of identical 14-year-old boys with identical spiky Beckham hair are on their feet and craning their necks like a crowd of those funny rodents you see on David Attenborough that stand up on their back legs to spot predators. Dare to be different, kids. Buy a load of Oxfam clothes and listen to some Pavement. You'll get the living shit kicked out of you at school but it's worth it in the end. "The Legends". Ah yes... close your eyes and the names come rushing back: Woods, Donovan, Handyside, Childs, Futcher... Graham Hockless. North Ferriby United are top of the Northern Premier League, you know. OK then – after nearly 20 years it's time, at last, to show Macca some proper vocal appreciation. Oh, he's gone.

Word reaches the Diary that GTFC are refusing to sell tickets for this month's League Cup game against Newcastle to fans who wish to pay by credit card over the phone, and that the only way to guarantee yourself one is not – as the club has been trumpeting for the last couple of weeks – to buy a season ticket but to visit Blundell Park in person. The Diary tried phoning the GTFC ticket office at 11:52am today, in an attempt to find out whether this rumour is true, but nobody was answering the phone and after 6 minutes and 41 seconds I gave up. So if you have any information, reader, do your fellow supporters a favour: email diary@codalmighty.com and tell us whatever the ticket office has told you.

Oh, and if you want a junior season ticket at the moment then you can't have one, because they've run out, apparently, and it'll be a week or two before they get some more from the printers. Way to nurture the next generation of fans, Town!

Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala has sprung from his sickbed and, as expected, been called up to the Democratic Republic of Congo squad for their decisive World Cup qualifying match in South Africa this Saturday, the winners of which will stay in the race for Germany next year if I've read the league table properly. Hooray! This, of course, rules the player out of this Friday's decisive six-pointer in the English fourth division between Grimsby Town and Wycombe Wanderers. Boooo! Town's official website has avoided another political faux pas of the sort you would never, ever see on Cod Almighty and shrewdly negotiated the whole Congo/DR Congo issue by copying and pasting some of its account of the story from that given by the BBC, and they've even managed to miss out the part that says JPK is a defender. Bravo!

You wouldn't send George Best on holiday to Burton-on-Trent, so the Diary is unsure as to the wisdom of bookies' best friend Mat Hare sojourning in Las Vegas. But the Mat came back, and he's wasted no time in firing off a lengthy email to the Diary about the recent confusion surrounding Town's record unbeaten away run. It paraphrases to the effect that the club's original impression that the 1956 sequence comprised nine games was based upon two authoritative sources (Grimsby Town: A Complete Record 1878-1989 by Les Triggs and Dave Wherry's We Only Sing When We're Fishing, but the "oracle of all things Town", a bloke called Rob Briggs, disagrees and says we have set a brand spanking new record. "Two things strike me about this," says Mat. "(1) The OS is trusting one bloke over two published books; and (2) the club really have no idea whether this is a new record or not, presumably because they don't have records of results from previous years stored somewhere in the club archives. Then again maybe they used to but they flogged off the records from the 1950s on QXL." Presumably in a bid to keep his mind off his gambling losses, Mat cites the verdict of Soccerbase (a website that thinks we still have Calvin Andrew on loan) that Town lost some game against Bristol Rovers and... oh, I can't be arsed. "You'd think the club would know really wouldn't you?" concludes Mr Hare. If it were any other club, Mat, then maybe.

Monday 3 October
If the home line-up in tonight's John McDermott benefit match against Hull City doesn't boast an entire galaxy of former Mariners stars then it should include at least one galactic sector of the lower spiral arm. Alan Pouton, Clive Mendonca, Daryl Clare, Jim Dobbin, Paul Futcher and Ivano Bonetti are all beaming up to BP as we speak, and Town's official website adds that "Aidan Davison, Tony Gallimore, Peter Handyside, Mark Lever, Wayne Burnett, Kevin Donovan, Dave Smith, Lee Nogan, Jack Lester and Paul Groves have all said they will do their best to be here", which sounds promising, if a little too close for comfort to the prologue of one of the Diary's many disappointingly attended house parties. Hull manager Peter 'Mr Grimsdale' Taylor, meanwhile, has promised to send "a strong squad" for the match, which makes you wonder how he's managed to find one at such short notice.

In any case, you might very well doubt the sincerity of Taylor's claim when you first hear the news that GTFC reserves' cup game against the mah-ty Tah-gers, scheduled for this Wednesday, has been postponed and "provisionally rescheduled" for 4 January. The Diary certainly did, anyway. "Oh aye?" I thought to myself. "I bet that's because he's sending the reserves to Macca's do tonight, the cheeky Norman Wisdom-impersonating scamp!" Then I read a bit closer and saw that the postponement is at Town's request. "Gah!" I thought to myself again. "That's buggered up the angle I was going to take on it in the Diary, then!" Except that it hasn't entirely, because I've done this instead. Which isn't quite as good, but you can't have everything. Unless you manage Chelsea, obviously.

Transfer speculation now, and Simon Francis reckons he might get the hell outta Bramall on a permanent if his loan spell with the Mariners goes well. Oooh! "My main priority is to do really well in my loan at Grimsby and see what other things happen," the Sheffield United utility dude has told a website with some adverts on it. "A lot of scouts watch top-of-the-league games so they'll be watching Grimsby all the time." Oh. But the Mariners have been linked, rather excitingly, with Lee Holmes, the England u19 left winger who became Derby's youngest ever player at an employment law-troubling 15 years 267 days when he made his debut against Town on Boxing Day 2002. Oooh! "I can't afford to let him go out," says Rams manager Phil Brown. Oh. Sounds a bit like Mrs Diary when I need to borrow her credit cards.

Finally today, Town's top-of-the-league having-a-laugh 0-0 draw at Shrewsbury on Saturday in fact set a new record for consecutive away games without losing, as opposed to merely equalling the old one. The result at Playful Meadow means the Mariners have not tasted the dodgy pint of away defeat in their last nine day trips, and in the run-up to the game GTFC had stated that this would match a club record set in 1956. But somebody got their sums wrong, and it turns out that the old record only stretched to eight matches. A stereotyped 46-year-old virgin male statistician has been sent out from Blundell Park, wiping his spectacles and blinking in the unaccustomed daylight, to declare that the current sequence of results actually represents a new club record, before fending off questions from the assembled throng of journalists about his personal hygiene and whether Town's next QXL auction would feature his collection of Star Trek DVDs.

Saturday 1 October
Town's lead atop the fourth division dwindles to a single point after an illness-hit squad claims a useful point at Shrewsbury, equalling the club record sequence of nine unbeaten away games. Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala, Gary Croft and Andy Parkinson miss the game with one of those weird virus things that only affect lower-division professional footballers (although Croft, bizarrely, appears on the substitutes' bench, free to infect further teammates), and the affliction doesn't stop with the playing staff, as Russell Slade is also forced to stay home and hand control of the team to Graham 'Rodger' Rodgers. The magnificent Steve Mildenhall saves an early penalty which nobody thought should have been awarded, while his opposite number Joe Hart produces a couple of good second-half stops to deny Michael Reddy. Town move to 24 points, while Leyton Orient's 3-1 win over Mansfield takes them to 23, overtaking Wycombe, who draw 3-3 with Chester.

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