Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 29 October 2002

29 October 2002

The ineligibility of Furious Georges Santos for tonight's game with Burnley may be a blessing in disguise, given that your match official is the card-crazy Mr Paul Danson, who in 13 games this season has issued eight red cards. Whether Danson will end the appalling recent run of refereeing that has kept Town in the bottom three remains to be seen. Five years ago he became the first referee to be thrown out of the Premiership for being rubbish; but his record in officiating Town matches since is unusually even-handed, and he actually awarded us a penalty against Birmingham the other season.

The absences of Santos and probably Alan Pouton through injury mean Town player-manager Paul Groves will draft Stacy Coldicott and God knows who else into midfield this evening. Stuart Campbell could move into a central role, which ought to mean a return for the gifted and mysteriously omitted winger Terry Cooke. The otiose Steve Livingstone is expected to be retained up front. Burnley, meanwhile, are likely to name the same squad that relinquished a 12-match unbeaten run on Saturday with a 3-0 home defeat to tedious cash-splashers Portsmouth.

Hugely profitable TV companies Carlton and Granada, who swindled the Nationwide League out of £178.5 million in the summer by winding up their ITV Digital venture, plunging GTFC and dozens of other clubs into financial turmoil, are to pay the league about £5 million for some half-arsed highlights programme that will probably be screened at 3 o'clock on Tuesday mornings. A condition of the deal is thought to be that clubs refrain from publicly criticising the two enormous, cash-rich broadcasters, who have brought football as we know it to its knees. In response to which, Cod Almighty pledges to go on publicly criticising the rotten, greedy, cheating, bloodsucking vermin until they sue us.