Cod Almighty | Diary

A game of two halves

14 March 2025

Much has been said in the last couple of days about Tuesday night's contrasting halves. Your A46 Diary was drunk on the performance at halftime and so the second half come down hit hard, leaving me more than a little frustrated and ready to moan about everything from injuries to thin squads to vicious footballing gods.

Notts County had the beans on the bench, and not just our old friend McGoldrick; no way that capable, competent, confident keeper who came on for the injured Bass was the usual standard of a second-choice League Two stopper. Oh, right, Sam Slocombe, the one who kept goal in their 100-point season in the National League. Must be nice to have options like that. Must be nice to have options.

By Wednesday morning I was sanguine, any hangover sweated out overnight and my thoughts returned to the bliss of the first half high. Again, much has been said, and I won't repeat it here, but I just want to say, wow! Even if the fan gets faecal between now and season's end in ten games' time, I'm already giddy about what we can do in the summer to bolster this already fabulous, if a little fragile, squad.

Of course, it's already been bolstered. Back in January I wrote about the impatience we were feeling about the signing of Turi, about how the delay encapsulated the pause on our progress. At the time we were the almost men: things felt like they were almost in place, like we were almost ready to kick on. Sign Turi and it would be a sign that we're ready now. Much of this was a blind faith, an assumption that he must be a talented player to have turned heads from so far away. He was the face of our bright new data-driven, Jamestown-partnered, rocket-fuel-injected dawn.

Fast forward six weeks and the impatience to see him had lessened because of superb form. So, to be suddenly faced with a debut against a very good side who ran through our melty ice cream early season like a hot spoon, was more than a little concerning. He hasn't played in months, he hasn't played in England, he hasn't ever played on grass!

But what a debut. Even better than Conteh's? Absolutely. Conteh's meteoric smash into the squad was impressive because he was immediately the standout player in an otherwise pedestrian side. Turi's was all the more special because he immediately fitted in with an in-form, more talented team and within 15 minutes was essential to everything we were trying to do. And, other than scoring, everything we tried in that first 45 came off with our Faroese international at the heart of it all.

The Artell way is control. McEachran has been essential for that and Turi stepped into his role as if he had been playing it for months. Calm personified. If he had any nerves for his debut they were channelled perfectly. Take the ball, shield the ball, use the ball. Sounds simple. And when Turi does it, it's beautiful. Welcome to Grimsby.

Who can limp out onto the field tomorrow? No interview with Artell at the time of writing and not much else news-wise out there. I even ventured onto the ad-trap that is This Is Grimsby, but I got sidetracked by a sidebar that still had the photos from the premiere of All Town Aren't We. There's a shot of me, my eldest and my dad suited and booted and very chuffed to be there.

As we will be tomorrow if we get anything like that first 45 that we were treated to on Tuesday night. There's no way Salford are standing up to that kind of pressure. Fingers crossed for the walking wounded and squeezing an extra five minutes from Turi.