Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 11 January 2013

11 January 2013

Mardy Diary writes: Hurrah! Hannah! Hurrah! At last! Hannah. Well, that was sort of exciting wasn't it? All that will-he-won't-he business; the cryptic Twitter messages; the obsessive messageboard fawning. Go on, admit it, you were a bit excited by it all and when he signed you clenched your fist and muttered "Yes!" But not too loudly because you were in a queue at the bus stop.

So he's here now - for two and a half years, which is a good length. Rumour has it that Bradford held us to over £50k for his signing, and while we'll probably never know for sure how much it was, Fenty's words suggest that we did pay much more than we wanted. The robbing bastards. Yes, it'll not matter so much should we get promoted - but if we don't get promoted it might matter a lot. Fair play to Ross for not chasing the cash though.

One way to mitigate that loss, of course, would be to ensure a trip to Wembley to lift the FA Trophy. Fenty intimated that it was the extra gate revenue from the Christmas matches that helped us raise the cash to buy Hannah. Winning the FA Trophy, in this context, is not to be sniffed at. The combined fees for winning each round along with a share of gate receipts from the final would go a long way not only to covering the costs of Hannah but providing finance for the following season - regardless of which division we are in. Besides, this 'concentrating on the league' theory is always utter bollocks. It's time it was put to rest.

Joe Colbeck has joined the ranks of footballers caught out on Twitter. He has received a hefty fine for a player at this level of £1,500 - I wouldn't like to guess at how many weeks' wages that is for him. I disagree with Paul Hurst's comments that "we live in a very politically correct environment" because we didn't use to call it political correctness: we instead used the simple phrase 'rude bastard', and without knowing what Colbeck posted it's difficult to really comment on whether he's been unlucky, foolish or just plain offensive.

Regardless of that, though, the fine does seem disproportionately large and while such a hefty fine will definitely make Joe more careful on Twitter in the future, I'm not sure it's really educating him on what he did wrong. Nor do I think there's parity with players at the top level, even if the fine is calculated as a proportion of income. Losing £15,000 when you take home millions won't make much of a difference, but losing £1,500 when you take home thousands will. Still, this isn't really out of keeping with how society generally operates anyway. You're rich? Do what the fuck you like.

Before I go, then, just a late plug for an excellent article by long-time CA contributor Rich Lord who spent the day with the GTFC film crew. And when you've finished reading that, take a look at our own match preview for the game against Welling. Chance on!