Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

1 July 2004

January sales always seem to start in December these days. And so it was in 2004, when Martin Gritton arrived at Blundell Park for a bargain £5,000 - a price reminiscent of the days when football hadn't gone all mental about money and marketing, and was actually concerned with football. This paltry fee was in fact the first time that money had changed hands for Gritty, the striker having previously signed on freebies for Plymouth and Torquay. Hmmm. Come on then - what's wrong with him...?

The Glaswegian six-footer (he's six feet tall, I mean - he's not an insect) seemed suspiciously cheap, having scored 25 goals in 72 full and 19 substitute appearances for the Devoncestershire side - six of them during the few months prior to his transfer. If Gritts were a car, you'd think Auto Trader had printed the price wrong, or the seller was trying to pull a fast one. 

But apparently, there isn't a catch, and there doesn't seem much wrong with him, for the man they call 'True' Gritt (well, OK, they don't - but you'll all be doing it tomorrow) seems to be a pretty useful front man. He's big and strong; he holds the ball up well; he's formed an exciting and promising partnership with Reddy; and, at the time of writing, has already scored four goals for us. Five if you count the strangely disallowed penalty against Darlington.

So: a cheap striker, one who knows how to score, and how to set up team-mates. A player who showed promise in his first two games... and then actually improved rather than fading away into disappointment. Is there really not a catch? It doesn't seem so. Slade simply has a nose for a bargain, a keen eye on the transfer market, and, we suspect, a handful of photographs of the Torquay chairman in flagrante delicto with a farmyard animal.