Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 19 May 2009

19 May 2009

"Is he the one from the West Ham academy?" asked Mrs Diary this morning when I mentioned that Joe Widdowson had returned to GTFC on a three-year contract. I confirmed this to have been his origin. "Well, he must be dead keen," she observed. "A young lad moving from London to Grimsby!" Even the proudest Grimbarian must acknowledge this to be a pretty telling point, and Mike Newell himself points out: "When it comes to the crunch you have to take into consideration he was moving out of London permanently. It's a big commitment for a 20-year-old lad." The move, happily enough, comes just half a day after Mr Re-Newell's cheeky observation that, while his predecessors may have struggled to attract players to the Humber Riviera, he's fighting them off with a stick. In his weeks on loan with the Mariners last season, Cockney Joe showed potential to become the reliable left-back the club has needed for years - and when you think about it, being better than Tom Newey, Darren Barnard, Tony Gallimore, Ben Chapman, Ronnie Bull and Knut Anders Fostervold shouldn't even be as hard as it sounds.

Speaking of sticks, Rob Jones is being 'linked with' a move to Nottingham Forest this summer. The reason the Diary sees fit to mention this and not the transfer of some other former GTFC player (like, say, Ricky Ravenhill going to Notts County) is that Town are widely rumoured to have inserted a sell-on clause when Jones moved to Hibernian from the Mariners in 2006, entitling Blundell Park's bean-counters to a cut of any fee received for his next transfer. But does hard evidence of such a clause exist? The Cod Almighty team spent the whole of April scouring the internet and drew a bigger blank than Rochdale with Tom Newey in the squad. The Stick's Wikipedia entry, significantly, repeats the popular belief that "Grimsby negotiated a clause meaning that they would receive a portion of the transfer fee Hibs receive for Jones if they sell him", but adds in square brackets: "citation needed". So - where's that citation, anyone?

Andy Taylor, meanwhile, has left the building. After being told last week that he wasn't part of Mike Newell's plans, the 20-year-old striker has agreed terms with GTFC to end his contract a year early. The Diary wishes Taylor well - but not so well that he does a Cameron Jerome and our whole lives become no more than a futile maelstrom of pain, regret and bitterness forever.

Diary reader James Parrott has emailed in response to the Grimsby Telegraph reader comment we featured yesterday which would have Tim Berners-Lee wishing he'd never been born. "I love comments like those from the Mysterious Knight Pete of Clee," writes James. "And so it was written that ye olde soccer fan speake ye utter balderdashe. Indeed, what football manager wouldn't 'of' taken a third division team coming off relegation to Wembley twice within a few months? I tried wracking my brain for an answer but such a conundrum confounds a mere peasant such as myself. Keep up the great work Sir Pete of Clee." Glad you enjoyed it, James, and the Diary is glad I ignored my schoolteachers when they told me not to make fun of people who were less intelligent than me - although, in fairness, I did make fun of my schoolteachers quite a lot.

"Don't know if you heard Fighting Talk on Saturday?" asks Loughborough Mariner. "It was nice to hear Sir John of McDermott getting a mention as a 'real man with football running through his veins' from that doyen of lower league football (well as far as Fighting Talk is concerned anyway) Bob Mills. Nice to hear some praise for someone associated with Town occasionally!" Indeed, LM - the Diary was assembling Ikea furniture at the time, with the radio on in the background, so the mention of Macca's name was like an oasis in a desert. You know, one of those flat-pack deserts. "Also, don't know if you have a scouting hotline to Mr Re-Newell, but has anyone noticed that Notts County have released Richard Butcher? Any time I've seen the Pies recently he's consistently been their best player - snap him up Mr Re-Newell!" Mike could need more persuading than that, though. Describing someone as Notts County's best player of recent years is surely the ultimate back-handed compliment.