Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 18 May 2010
18 May 2010
The sky is blue, the sun is bright, and it's silly season in the world of Grimsby Town Football Club news. Your original Diary has its work cut out today. Indeed, for the next ten or twelve weeks, nearly every Grimsby Telegraph story 'about' the Mariners will begin with the same sentence.
FORMER Grimsby Town [playing position] [name of player] has been [released or given an contract extension] by [name of current club].
Today sees a particularly interesting variation in an otherwise unbearably dull article about FORMER Grimsby Town defender Simon Ramsden signing for another year at unpromoted Bradford (although he did join them from very much promoted Rochdale, which is quite funny). After three very short paragraphs on Ramsden, the Telegraph's attention deficit kicks in and we move to another ex-Town player.
Meanwhile, ex-Town winger Peter Till has been released by League One Walsall.
Two very short paragraphs later, via Till and Matt Harrold (loanees apparently count as FORMER players these days), we find an identically constructed sentence. And this time it's a player who isn't even a FORMER Mariner and indeed has never had any connection at all with GTFC other than being born nearby.
Meanwhile, Cleethorpes-born winger Peter Winn has been released by Scunthorpe.
But soft! A failed chairman speaks! Is there finally an official statement on Grimsby's superb new official website condemning the violence committed at Burton Albion ten days ago by people from Grimsby? Is there bollocks. Instead, John Fenty (Con) is to be found in today's Telegraph with his coalition partner Mike 'Hasn't Got A Nickname Yet' Parker, reassuring the watching world that we'll still have a reserve team next season. The message is that, despite Fenty's relegation into the Conference, GTFC will continue to be run with the professionalism that has always been the hallmark of his tenure at the club. So that's three more relegations by 2016 and a summer of confident rebuilding ahead of the forthcoming campaign in the Unibond Premier League Division One (South).
If the Telegraph still needs a story, our overworked and underpaid counterparts at Riby Square could do worse than a titbit which has just reached the Diary. Town's scouting network, it seems, has extended up the north-east coast to England's hotbed of footballTM, as Blundell Park's crack youth team coaches have given a trial to Sam Irwin, a 17-year-old left-back/left winger from Newcastle. If the football doesn't work out for Sam, there's an alternative career in the offing, and either way let's hope for his own sake that he doesn't end up on too many nights out with Rob Atkinson and Peter Till.