Cod Almighty | Article

by Michael Shelton

10 August 2004

I used to get excited when Town signed someone who had once pretended to be good. Perhaps I was naïve, impressionable, foolish. Maybe I was simply just too young to know any better. As with any rule, there are exceptions (see: Todd, Andrew), but on the whole there is quite a significant correlation between players of this type. Des Hamilton, once played for Newcastle... arse. Robert Taylor, was once bought for £1.5 million... arse. Michael Jeffrey, once scored a goal of the season contender against Rangers in the Scottish Premier League... arse. Kevin Nicholls, once the only English player in Chelsea's entire matchday squad for a Premiership game... arse. The list, as seasoned Town fans will testify to, is endless.

Now I don't get excited. Call it wisdom, call it foresight, call it realisation. Now I know they'll be arse before I even watch them.

So when I read in the Grimsby Telegraph that Monsieur Slade was attempting to sign a 'veteran former Premiership full back' I really didn't get excited. "He'll be arse," I thought, without even needing to know who the player concerned was. It didn't even come into my thought process that he might be useful as anything other than a newspaper story.

When I discovered the following day that the player concerned was in fact Dean Gordon (two Flashes at one club?), this did little to alter my opinion. At time of writing he hasn't yet played for Grimsby, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to pull on our revered black and white stripes. He doesn't have to arrive at the training ground. He doesn't even have to get in his veteran Premiership automobile and leave wherever the hell he is at the moment. I know he's going to be arse.

And then it struck me. Possibly the single most depressing Town-related thought I've had in my entire life. Just think about that for a minute: a decade of following the Mariners through lows and lowers, with the odd high stuck in, and this thought was worse than all the others. That's quite some going if you think about it. It went a little like this.

In 11 years' time the Grimsby Telegraph will run the headline Town manager signs veteran Premiership full-back and some poor nine-year-old male relative of mine (I don't know quite which relative exactly yet, since he's currently minus 2 years old) will get all excited about it. He'll go loop the loop and work himself into a frenzy of excitement and expectancy tempered only by the knowledge that a veteran won't be able to run any more. He'll come to me, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, the poor soul, and exclaim at the top of his high-pitched nine-year-old voice: "Look, Uncle Michael! Town have signed a veteran former Premiership full-back!" And just imagine the disappointment of the poor kid as he looks at me and I really can't bring myself to share his excitement.

My description of Danny Butterfield will be four letters long and will begin with an A.