Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 22 June 2006
22 June 2006
Remember when Alan Buckley left for West Brom? And we all had two months of nightmares that the great big Baggies' awesome spending power would finance an immediate £500,000 swoop for Town striking hero Clive Mendonca, only for Buckley's first act of cherry picking to be a rather less terrifying £30,000 swoop for permanently crocked Welshman Tony Rees? Yeovil's Russell Slade has already somewhat outstripped his illustrious predecessor, however, by stealing away the brilliant Steve Mildenhall, followed it up by rescuing ex-Mariner Terrell Forbes from his unimpressive stint at Oldham, and has now snaffled Jean-Paul Kalala from Town's flimsy grasp. Popular midfielder JPK has signed a one-year contract at Huish Park and is now set to strut his stuff on the grander stage of the third division - assuming, of course, that nothing really bizarre and unlikely stands in his way, such as Slade dropping him from the team as soon as he has a chance to sign a higher-division replacement looking to play out the last few weeks of his career before becoming a professional boxer.
There's a lot to be said for tradition. Town playing in red socks. Grimsby getting a Christmas tree as a present from Norway, or whatever it is. And "Snickers" still sounds stupid to the Diary. But traditions are never fixed: sometimes old customs are replaced by new ones, and so it is that the fixture list for 2006-07, published today, has preserved the Mariners' recent tradition of a bank holiday match against Lancashire opposition rather than return to the past for a local derby. New Year's Day will see Rochdale visit Blundell Park, while Easter Monday institutes a completely new tradition by bringing Wycombe up to the Humber for a pulsating Lincs/Bucks clash. Proceedings take a slightly more local turn on the opening day of the season, Saturday 5 August, when Boston travel up the A16, but the fish and chips derby is too recent a phenomenon - if indeed it can be deemed a derby at all - to really get the blood racing. If the sad death of bank holiday derby matches is because the police have to be paid double time for working bank holidays then perhaps Cod Almighty should organise a whipround to pay them a bonus if they manage to throw Steve Evans out of the ground again.
Ahead of the teams' forthcoming encounter in the League Cup, Crewe have already taken a psychological advantage over GTFC in the bad web publishing stakes. According to an unofficial Railwaymen site, Town "endured a good run" in the competition last season - well, Grimbarians can't stand it when things go well and there's nothing to complain about - while the opponents' official website does far worse, partly by chucking random capital letters around like there's no tomorrow but mostly by rendering the name of the Mariners' new manager as "Grayham Rodgers". Town's OS has its work cut out to keep up with these guys.
Speaking of which, Dan Humphrey has emailed the Diary regarding the club's new service whereby existing holders can renew season tickets online. "Tried to buy a season ticket for the 'Osmound Stand'," writes Dan, "but it wouldn't let me." The Diary had a look at this earlier on and won't be using it because the entry of personal data does not appear to be protected by a secure server. It's nice to know they've got one thing right though, even if that thing isn't the names of stands in the ground that the club has called its home for 107 years.
Today's second email comes from Guest Diary, who has found an interview with Grayham Rodgers somewhere in which the new boss explains: "I've got a couple of key players to replace and I'm working very hard to do that. I've made a couple of enquiries and they've spoken to their respective managers, but I'm in no real rush." Guest D comments in turn: "The first sentence sounds all right. But I'm worried by the second one." Well, I'd sooner see a manager wait around and get the right players than panic-buy Jermaine Palmer, but with Russell Slade clearly on a mission to thwart the Mariners' every move (yesterday's Grimsby Telegraph having reported that Rodgerses wanted to keep Andy Parkinson; check out the nesbits while you're at it) the Diary can certainly see your point.
Before I leave you in the hands of a guest diarist for tomorrow (who may, or may not, turn out to be the aforesaid Guest Diary) there's just time for some World Cup news, and Newcastle parasite Freddy Shepherd says he "nearly vomited" when he saw Michael Owen injure his knee while playing for England on Tuesday night and reckons the insurance money heading his way from the FA "isn't high enough". Funny really, since Shepherd and his family took £5.5m out of the club in share dividends from 1998 to 2005, and Shepherd's annual salary rose from £23,533 in 1999 to £717,145 in 2004; and when Newcastle fans discover these figures a lot of them tend to feel quite sick as well.