It's the Keepmoat! No, hang on, the Ricoh. Oops, I mean the TFM Arena. Or maybe it's the Walkers?

And that's your lot! I'm now going to await the interview with whichever lackey gets sent to deliver the pre-fabricated excuses to Dalton. Thanks for all your e-mails. I couldn't use all them all, and I've just discovered a load in the junk mail box - apologies for that. Until next time, stay safe - and take care of one another... Pete

Last picture From Mick Taylor



Are you sure Mick? I mean, Evans IS a criminal, after all.

Classic Dalton - 'Steve Evans looked about as popular as Jade Goody on her eviction night,' says Dalton. It's a real shame he won't get to speak to Steve Evans after the game, although our Messiah would only wibble on about 'picking ourselves up for the next game', 'working hard on Monday' and all that shite.

Phew - Only a last minute equaliser from Barnet prevented Torquay picking up maximum points.

Peep peep peeep! Full time at York Street, and Boston have been taken to pieces by a side that had lost their previous seven games. The boos hardly ring out at the end, since most fans left long ago, and the players troop off in disgrace.

90 mins - Three minutes of injury time. 'Time for a couple more,' say BBC Cleethorpes. I'd call them arrogant, but they're actually speaking the truth. 'On the plus side, Evans avoidance of the post-match interview means the word 'coward' can be added to the list including cheat and criminal...'

89 mins - 'Couldn't Evans have done his coaching badge in the time he spent phoning supporters to close down websites, rather than scheduling it for times when he has to explain losing 6-0 to relegation candidates?' says Andy.

88 mins - Justin Whittle is being booked. Bit needless. Anyway, Grimsby have given up hope of scoring their seventh, the dour, negative bunch of miserable sods that they are. They've only come for a six goal tonking. Bloody rubbish. Boston have a corner. Wowee.

86 mins - Drewe Broughton's elbows are picked as man of the match.

84 mins 'WHAT NO LUMINUS - YOU'RE HAVING A LARF AINTCHA? Look pal I don't not pay my TV license money to look at those over exposed holiday snaps from that globe trotting, raving lunatic MNH!' yells Mick Taylor. He's not going to like the next picture then.....

80 mins - 'Didn't you actually post a pic of Evans' coaching badge at 30mins?' laughs socalled.

78 mins - GOAL!!! Boston 0, Grimsby 6 Wonderful build up play by Patterson and Bore set up Bore's hattrick, and this is the worst day I can remember as a Boston fan since, er, well November actually.

75 mins - '56 goals conceded this season and I blame Evans for each and every one of them! How embarassing,' says Mick 'The bastard' Taylor

73 mins - 'Ole!' sing the Mariners.

70 mins - E-mails come flooding in socalled: "Quote from Crazee Jimmy on 4th November - SOME 3 LONG MONTHS AGO.... 'Chairman Jim Rodwell said he hoped fans and the club could move on from the case. "I think Steven has been working under incredibly difficult circumstances and it's been a struggle for him. I'm on the verge of securing significant investment for Boston United which should unlock one of Steve's hands from behind his back. Now I'm telling him to go and manage and his future will be judged purely on results," he said.

Can we judge yet then please?"

69 mins - 'We want Evans out, we want Evans out!' chant the Boston fans, as Peter Bore fluffs his chance to grab a hattrick and make it 6-0. 'Does this constitute the improvement by the New Year that Rodwell said was needed to keep Evans in a job?' says Andy.

64 mins - As promised A pie-eating Upsall:



60 mins - Attendance 2,915 And Steve Evans will NOT be speaking with the media after the game, according to one poster on the forum, who says he's pissing off somewhere to do a coaching badge. A coaching badge? Is that some kind of sick joke?

58 mins - "Dear Ed,' begins Mark Isaac, he of BUFCST, who had an Open Meeting today. 'Great show but far too much of that Upsall chap eating marsupials for my liking. Did he pay his carbon tax or plant a tomato in his back yard?

Emailing from my wap phone live(ish) at YS (whatever that is) Asian betting syndicate has got a 4 all draw with a Broughton hatrick in the second half. Odds of 300 to 1.

Let's be more optimistic. Ha! Ha!

Rooster"

56 mins - GOAL!!!!!! Boston 0, Grimsby 5 - Fenton's header hit the bar and Martin Patterson heads in the rebound to make it five. Is Steve Evans going to brave the postmatch interview after this pile of dogshit, one wonders?

55 mins - They're winning four nil - yet Grimsby seem vulnerable and unsure in defence. Boston are enjoying a decent spell. Well, decent insofar that they haven't conceded another goal yet.

52 mins - Obviously this match is now going to go one of three ways. Either Boston will shut up shop and keep the humiliation at DEFCON TWO, or they'll totally collapse to a fifteen goal drubbing.... OR the Cods'll get complacent and concede a couple of goals.

50 mins - It's only 4-0!



Kick-off! The second half kicks off. Adam Upsall has been on the blower promising some mind-blowing pictures of him eating some pies and pointing at some Aboriginal signs later on. Cooksey has replaced Joynes, by the way.

Half-time contd. - 'I wonder if this time round Evo will actually ASK to be ejected from the ground early.....' chuckles socalled, under the subject 'Premature Ejection'

Half-time No Luminus this week. But we DO have more holiday snaps from MNH....


'This is me and the boss in Ramsey St'


'Less noise than.... yep you guessed it, the Staffsmart MEGAbowl'

Half time - Peep peep peeeep! BOOOOOOOOOOO! says a small child somewhere near the burger van, while all the other Boston fans carry on shopping at Tesco.

45 +1 mins - "What's the score? There was some cheering a minute ago... " quips Hildred, before excusing his actual attendance at today's game as he 'has a season ticket'.

44 mins - Words fail me - Remember Grimsby have lost seven on the trot. Including at Torquay. Oh dear. Oh dearie me.



41 mins - GOAL!!! Boston 0, Grimsby 4 And it's Peter fucking bastard fucking Bore again. Newey crosses, he skips past the full back and whipped in a wonderful cross, right onto the head of Peter Bore - and Boston are heading for absolute humiliation.

40 mins - 'Carbonman? It's all just a myth anyway. Next up, me eating a Kangaroo Pizza.'



39 mins - CHANCE! Now Bloomer blocks a shot on the line. Boston United have had, oooh, about four or five fantastic chances to score. Grimsby have had three.

33 mins - CHANCE! Broughton crashes a header in and hits the bar, drawing ironic cheers. From the Boston fans presumably.

31 mins - Adam Hildred, socalled will be disappointed to lear, is actually at today's game, but has checked in to offer his thoughts: 'E-mailing from webmail from my phone at the ground. Don't be fooled by pictures of a full main stand - it's all Grimsby fans! This is hopeless - even the bloke shouting his voice away next to us has given up! Adam H' This is, of course, modern football supporting at its finest. You pay your money, go to the game - but it's so unbelievably shit you log onto the internet and watch the scores coming in from all the better games you're not at. Or in this case, a text commentary from a bloke listening to commentary of the game you're actually watching.

30 mins - Here's a good one:



25 mins - CHANCE! Boston almost grab a consolation (ha! a consolation with 25 minutes gone) after Barnes makes a real hash collecting a routine cross, but the header from Broughton is tame. Unlike his elbow-bashing.

24 mins - 'For fuck's sake, two down already?' yells Upsall. Well, Adam, I don't know how to break this to you, but...... 'Next one, outside Olympic Park Melbourne home of Collingwood AFL and with a statue of legend Bob Rose.'



23 mins - Time to roll out the classics



22 mins - Broughton booked. It should have been red. No prizes for guessing why.

21 mins - Just to confirm Boston 0, Grimsby 3. Fuck-a-do.

20 mins - We're back! Like a lost space probe calling home, we now hear a weak signal peep-peeping from York Street, and it goes something like this: 'GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Toner scores!!! Boston are shit! Grimsby are leading by three bastard goals!!!!'

19 mins - 'Incidentally, anyone heard how Ossett (aka Ocid) Town are getting on at home to Ilkeston? :D (sorry Adam, couldn't resist)...'

17 mins - CHANCE! Corner from Dean Marney.... and Delany's header is over the bar! Good chance for Hull! Come on you Tigers.

16 mins - Shoddy BBC Radio Humberside have lost contact with York Street, so let's have some commentary from Hull City's game with West Brom. And a picture from Andy:



13 mins - CHANCE! Fenton clears off the line from what sounds like a Joynes chance....

9 mins - "Maybe its because I am having to screw my eyes up and put my nose against the screen to see as its so small, but what on EARTH is "carbonman" wearing on his head in that last pic?" asks socalledutd fan. Well, since we pride ourselves on great public service, here's a closer look....



7 mins - Jesus. That was a lot of typing for the first few minutes.

6 mins - 'The Grimsby fans must think they've been on the marijuana or something!' squawks Humberside's co-commentator.

5 mins - GOAL!!!! James Hunt scores at the far post after another deflection lands extremely kindly at his feet, and with no-one seemingly wanting to tackle the cheeky little upstart, he plonks it in for a two goal lead.

4 mins - CHANCE! Boston literally go right down the other end and would have equalised were it not for a wonderful last ditch tackle by Newey. The ball is off for a corner.... but is cleared.

3 mins - GOAL!!! I don't believe it! I don't believe it! I actually do NOT believe this is happening. Peter Bore takes advantage of yet more comical defending to put the visitors into the lead. Patterson broke clear after a mistake in the Boston back four, Marriott saved his shot, Toner tried a lob, didn't pull it off, but the ball fell to Bore and Grimsby lead!

3.00pm - KICK OFF! I hear chanting! Grimsby must have brought a few. Broughton gives away a foul, backing into Whittle while repeatedly battering him in the face with his elbows.

2.59pm - He's back! Our favourite carbon emitting globetrotter returns: "Well you have me back in the country till.....well till i next fancy going somewhere better than i am. As such today i'll be boring, sorry i mean sending, you photos from my recent travels. We start with me at the MCG on Boxing day:

I've not got any radio coverage so impstalk you are my only hope - prediction 1-1 & 2134."

2.55pm - Nicknames It'll be Ernsey, won't it? Grimsby will play 4-5-1 this afternoon, if you care.

2.50pm - Nicknames Given footballers' penchant for adding '-sey' or '-ey' to the end of their mates' names for the purposes of laddish 'banter' ('Oi, Greavesey!' or 'I'm going to break your fucking neck Crofty'), what's going to happen to poor old Ernie Cooksey, a man blessed with the most nicknamey name in the history of the game. Cookseysey? And Ernie already ends with that 'ey' sound....

2.45pm - Teams Joynes makes his Football League debut....50s thowback Cooksey on the bench..... Peter Bore starts - be afraid......

Boston: Marriott, Clarke, Thomas, Ellender, Nicholson. Green, Greaves, Vaughan, Farrell, Broughton, Joynes
Subs: Stevens, Galbraith, Cryan, Rowntree, Cooksey

Grimsby: Barnes, Bloomer, Fenton, Whittle, Newey, Boshell, Bolland, Hunt, Toner, Paterson, Bore
Subs: Murray, Till, Grand, Croft, Jones

2.25pm - Prediction Time! Another massive relegation six...zzzzzzzzz....... Sorry, I just nodded off there. I was trying to make the point that this is a huge bottom of the tabl- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......... What? Eh? Stop prodding me! To take all the pain and, well, educated and informed guesswork out of these predictions, I visited PC World yesterday to purchase a new Predict-o-Meter. I stood like a moron, grinning at a repulsive salesman while he patronised me with simpleton jargon guff and convinced me to buy an overpriced white box shortly before I was grabbed by a huge and frankly terrifying digital glove that looked like it belonged on the sweaty hand of some child molester.

Not that I put up much of a fight. I just said ‘I’ll take it!’ because whatever it was he was flogging was half-price - i.e attempting to upgrade to Vista will turn it into a simmering pile of plastic sludge. But I’m a moron, so I bought it anyway. Anyway, I brought it home, switched it on and entered all of factors, variables and constants affecting today’s match (……eight defeats on the trot…. new signings to bed in….. good home form…… motivation engines…….), spent a few hours constructing complex algorithms to process the data and was told: Boston 2, Grimsby 2, attendance: 1979.

2.05pm - Team news! Steve Evans reveals new loan signing Nathan Joynes will start today's match alongside Drewe Broughton. 'Hopefully the supporters will see how good the boy is,' gushes Evans, as though he hadn't just picked a name off a list faxed to him by Barnsley.

Pre-pre-pre amble
Back in August 2006, when impsTALK started these minute-by-minute reports, it was ready for the season to end all seasons. Really. After a pre-season stuffed full of negative news from behind the scenes and a recruitment policy that looked like some bastardised form of Affirmative Action to appease the anti-ageist lobby, this writer was prepared for the worst. Boiling seas, pits of bubbling sulphur, a supernova sun, the death of God and, to top it off, relegation back to the Conference. Not necessarily in that order, of course.

Yet, with the season just 54 minutes old, Boston were two goals up and cruising to what seemed to be a frighteningly easy away victory - **away from home**.

Then Peter Bore came on.

Tony Butcher summed up Boston's subsequent collapse quite admirably: "Steve Evans' amazing house of straw, an open-air theatre production. Just one puff is all it took." Little surprise that Boston's collapse was a portent of away performances to come.

Since then, both clubs have traveled remarkably similar trajectories on the field, i.e. they've been mostly terrible. Boston have shown some improvement of late. Selling Cape Canoville won't help, but it's the home form that should see Steve Evans through to the end of the season. Mind you, if that goes, we're stuffed.

That lot
While Grimsby have found themselves increasingly and unexpectedly dragged into the bloody relegation cockfight, they have at least managed to achieve two objectives that still seems some way off for our own amber-and-black shit-puppets: they had their new ground approved by the local council AND sacked their manager.

The new stadium, dubbed ‘Fenty Dome’, which is a little bit less of a mouthful than its actual name (if my Google searches are to be trusted: the ConocoPhillips Stadium - apparently it's an oil company that paid £1 million for the naming rights, although we're not convinced this isn't a wind-up), should be ready for action in about three years.

Unfortunately, it looks like yet another depressing bowl, leading us to wonder how the creatively brain dead spaz monkeys behind these stadiums actually manage to sleep at night having charged their clients full whack for a series of architectural plans they've obviously half inched from whatever equally talentless firm built the Keepmoat. Or any one of the new grounds built in the last ten years for that matter.

There's a video here, along with some over-the-top Star wars music that serves only to underline the uninspired design. I have no idea where the stadium is going to be built, although I bet you my overdraft it'll be ten miles from the nearest decent real ale pub and will only be reachable by gas-guzzling people carrier. Or Boeing 747, if you're called Adam Upsall. Incidentally, and brace yourself for a complete topical tangent, here's a headline nicked from the BBC today:



'Blame for warming pinned on man'? Do the police have a suspect? Have they found fingerprints on a huge smokestack in China, or the Midwest? I hope to God they catch him anyway. Next on Crimewatch UK: fuzzy CCTV footage of a man in a white transit van fly-tipping contrails at 38,000ft over the Atlantic Ocean. Can YOU help?

Related links
Anyway, back to football: Grimsby fans are certainly a spoilt bunch when it comes to fan sites: they have the luxury of being served by the sickeningly good Cod Almighty fanzine. As well as dishing up daily news in The Diary, including savage criticism of the woeful club site, Cod Almighty is also home to Tony Butcher's gloriously over-written (in the best possible way) match reports - reports constructed of such elaborate, dazzling prose as to make our meagre offerings look like the monosyllabic neanderthal grunting of a criminally under-educated wannabe reality television bigot.

Codalmighty
Grim Outlook forum

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