Cod Almighty | Diary
Graded gains make finer flowers
14 September 2026
"I didn't think he could hit it that hard," said one of the coaches. Artell is the snitch of whoever gave us that immortal line to describe Turi's wonder strike. Your View from the Weekend Diary is struggling to find the words to describe the 25-yarder that has lived on everyone's screens 48 hours now. Adjectives fly through the mind like the ball flying at the Osmond goal. A beautiful, sensational, outrageous, arrowed, rising, rocketing strike. I can feel a poem coming on...
So, the best, most complete performance of the season so far? Over the whole game, certainly. We've had better halves, the first 45 against Accrington was an assault, but this was what we've been waiting for. This was a performance worthy of a title-challenging team.
What's changed? What's improved? The obvious answer is Shelton. How long since we had a midfielder like him? Gets the job done, harries and hassles, uses the ball well, is barely even noticed, while the other middlemen go about grabbing headlines. Greeny! has finally started his season or has finally had a partner that allows him to do what he does best, bomb forward and make a nuisance of himself. The goal was a bonus. Captain fantastic stuck it where it hurts again and again, even dropping deep to have a little scuffle with their no. 4 who had kicked out at King Charles.
Vernam's crown began its repolish on Saturday, and we saw a much better performance from the winger with the broad shoulders. Crosses, shots, positioning, not bullied off the ball and got another assist. Keep that up, CV, and you'll have another belter of a season.
On the other side, Finch had his best game yet. He did little wrong, gave their left-back a harder afternoon than he was probably expecting and grew visibly stronger as the game went on. Artell's strategy seems to be to load the boy up with minutes at league level, and leaving him on for nearly the full 90 looked like he wanted him to get a few more bruises. School of hard knocks indeed: there was a challenge towards the end where he stuck out his hip to knock over their left-back; I'm not sure he was up to that in the first half.
As for them: top of the league? You're having laugh! Always in control, Town were too quick, too slick and just too good for the Bristol bullies. A46 Diary had told us to watch out for Tom Leigh the Bradford loanee, and we couldn't take our eyes off him. A big lad, the kind of fair-haired Tommy raised on corned beef to be a poster boy for fighting the Kaiser, he put himself about like a boy possessed. Maybe he just saw himself as the king bully in a schoolyard of bullies. Whichever it was, he was lucky to still be on the pitch for his straight red – after a tiny amount of X-scrolling research, a Rovers fan confirmed it was an off-the-ball kick or stamp at Shelton – when he should've been off for 17 yellows in the first half.
The Gas were a poor man's Cambridge, a beggar's Bromley. Their dinosaur manager used his dinosaur tactics to tell his lads to kick and fall and defend like tree trunks. Too slow, too heavy, too obvious to trick this referee – a referee who should've been braver with the cards but wasn't to be fooled by this particular Evans master class. You'll need brighter boys than this, Steve, if your old tricks are to work again this season.
Artell was brimming with pride, in his team, in us, in Turi. Quite rightly too. This was billed as our toughest test yet and it was a breeze, a walk in an autumnal park, the Rovers so many dead leaves kicked joyfully out of our way. That's not to diminish the aches and pains the players will certainly be nursing after a hard-fought game, but the way we dominated a confident, capable side was satisfying in a way that I'm struggling to put into words. It was just ace. The view from this weekend is smiles, miles and miles of smiles walking down the Grimsby Road. The season starts here. Let's have it!