Cod Almighty | Diary

Shine On You Crazy Diamond Formation

2 September 2026

It's either feast or famine over here for the midweek diarist, with either a complete absence of news and gossip or a massive sackful hurled onto the doorstep by a passing courier. 

Today it's the latter, with Town having handed a 2-2 draw to the Acccccccrington Sstttttanleys last night and also deadline day being done and dusted. That's right. It's all over bar the fat lady singing, despite claims it isn't over until the shouting.

So who is new in the building? Well firstly we have Jay Cartwright from the Inbetweeners who has trials with West Ham lots of fwiends (thumbs up) from football and has had sex with loads of girls. 

No. Hang on. Fin Cartwright from Middlesborough. Are we just a accepting any old word as a first name these days? Is it short for Finbarr, as in Viz's Finbarr Saunders and his double entendres? Let's hope he performs well, otherwise he might find himself being (double entendre redacted for reasons of taste). 

I miss the days when every footballer on earth was called Gary. It wouldn't surprise me these days if our next signing was called Splot or Badger and nobody batted an eyelid. At least Badger would suit the stripes. 

We also have Shelton from York, a player who recently signed for York, but York changed their manager and the manager who signed him wasn't there any more and the new manager decided he didn't want him and now we have him and he never played for York. Got that? He's a midfielder. I hope he scores against York. That would be amusing.

So, last night. I watched it on the Republic of Kazakhstan SuperFootball Go-Go We Is Completely Legal! channel, which kept cutting out for much of the first half and presented me at one stage with a highly dubious advert that would have made Finbarr blush. What I did manage to see was a masterclass in Grimsbyness. Ease into a two goal lead. Become the victim of some dubious refereeing decisions. Give away a mad penalty. Incidentally, I wonder what phrase was going through Turi's head when he made that tackle? I'm going to go for 'It's JOHN CENA!' Then concede an equaliser through shoddy defending, then miss chance upon chance upon chance upon chance showing all the killer instinct in the box of an Angora rabbit. Or an angora jumper. Then troop off, heads down, say 'we should have won that!' and off we trot towards the mid-table hinterland reserved for good teams who can't finish off bad teams. 

Our best hope is that Morgan and/or Finch finally manage to get a shot on target after many hours of practice. As my friend Roy said about Finch, 'he's not afraid to have a go, but maybe he should be.'

If you speak in a negative way about the team in the early season you tend to get jumped on by The Fishy Yaysayers (also the name of a very good Sea shanty group by the way), but to them I suggest we moaning old groaners present this message. 'Don't be so negative about our negativity. Have a more positive attitude towards it.' Whilst they're trying to work that one out, pour some coffee on their keyboard, and with luck you'll never hear from them again.

So, we're going over the same old ground. What have we found? Norman Hunter's teeth? No, the same old fears. Wish I had a joke to end on. UTM