Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 1 June 2012

1 June 2012

Mardy Diary writes: When the Telegraph appends a non-story from the previous day's Lincolnshire Echo to the bottom of an article to pad it out a bit, you know there's really no news to report on. But that got me thinking: we've been doing this for ten years now, and the barren period betwixt seasons shouldn't be anything new to us. So how have we coped in previous years?

Last season the Diary reported on Town replacing their entire scouting network with a piece of software: Scout 7. The Telegraph, reading from the club's PR release, claimed that this might be a bit cheaper than paying people to actually go and watch players. Who knows how successful the software was, or if it was even used? Players like Hearn and Miller were certainly known quantities, along with the trio of ex-Boston players. So was it used for Artus and Soares? Or is it slowly ticking away on a dusty old 286 at the back of the ticket office?

Two years previous (we'll ignore the fact that I we accidentally deleted the Diary of June 2010 - ahem) news was in such short supply that the SNOS actually had nothing better to do than apologise for yet another monumental fuck-up by the club: this time sending season ticket renewal forms out without stating when tickets would be on sale. Amazingly, this time the year before that, season tickets were already on sale, in what must be some sort of club record. The Diary at the time noted that this was still some considerable time after most clubs in the League.

2007 brought nought but Buckley saying he hadn't spoken to anyone except a few goalkeepers and so the Diary chose instead to focus on England's game against Brazil that coming evening. Which was an improvement on the previous year, in which the Diary - with post play-off hangover clearly still lingering - looked back on Slade's time at the club and suggested that whoever was appointed next would have a strong squad to work with. Oh.

It was all go the previous year though, when Slade was busy, busy, busy. With players already in the bag he added Gary Cohen and er, Jermaine Palmer to the squad while fervently persuading a keeper (Steve Mildenhall) to join the club. At the same time the previous season, having been appointed within the week, Slade instead took the time to find somewhere to live. Around that time the Diary reported that Fenty was beginning to take a more active role as 'spokesman' for the club, even though Furneaux was still officially chairman.

Back in 2003, then, Danny Coyne was keen to tell the world of his love for Burnley. He then went on to sign for Leicester, but luckily for him he was united with the love of his life the following season. At the same time cuts at the club meant that Paul Wilkinson was made redundant. This was a near repeat of the previous year when Ian Knight, then director of youth, was made redundant in the name of cost-cutting.

So it seems generally that 1 June is a time of job losses for backroom staff at the club. I expect staff at the club will just be pleased to get to the end of today without being sacked. Thank God we made those cuts: without saving that money we'd have never had the money to terminate all those player contracts over the next ten years.

Have a good weekend.