Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 27 January 2004

27 January 2004

"The war of words over the future of Grimsby Town's leading scorer has been turned up a notch by Barnsley manager Gudjon Thordasson," reports BBC Humber Sport today, which is a shame, because they managed to spell his name properly last week. So what's he said? "The Tykes boss claims Boulding wants to move to Oakwell." And? Er, that's it. Cheers, the Beeb. Oh, there's some other stuff we already knew. "Furneaux says Boulding has not talked to them about moving, nor exercising the clause in his contract, that says he can leave Blundell Park if a bid of over £45,000 comes in from another club." Ah right... so the clause works like lbw in cricket, and Mick has to go to the chairman every day and appeal for it to be activated if anyone's come up with the moolah.

Let's see if Barnsley's official website can tell us anything more. "27.01.2004 BREAKING NEWS NO PROBLEMS AT OAKWELL," reads a headline. "Barnsley Football Club can confirm that there are no problems whatsoever with tonight's game at Oakwell." Well, the Diary didn't say there were any problems, but I'm downright suspicious now... One thing of which we can be reasonably certain is that no new clubs appear to have 'joined the race' to sign Boulding, and indeed our nouveau-riche neighbours Hull City are going to some lengths to deny any involvement. "He was a player we did show some interest in," says "a source close to the club" in today's Hull Daily Mail, "but we will not be making an offer and there are no plans to sign him." So that just leaves Barnsley, Derby, Peterborough, Gillingham and Walsall - but today's Grimsby Telegraph reckons he's stopping with Town. What are you looking so worried for?

Town's promising young reserve keeper Andy Pettinger has returned to training, announces the official GTFC website, having fully recovered from a broken finger. Pettinger, not the website. Stuart Campbell and Darren Barnard, two of Town's better players this season, remain on those sidelines with injured knees and calves, knees and calves, heads and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

Barnard, meanwhile, could still be about to experience a good trip because of drugs. The Mariners' Welsh international left-back, along with all his German, er, Welsh compatriots, thought his chance of starring in this summer's European Championships had gone up in smoke after the principality lost a two-legged play-off against Russia in November. With the news that Russian midfielder Igor Titov failed a drugs test after the first leg, though, the Wales FA has asked UEFA to overturn the result and award them a 3-0 victory, which would mean Dar-Bar and his mates bezzing off to Portugal in June. This would be fully in keeping with existing rules and protocol on controlled substances, apparently, so it'll never work.

Diary reader Mark Wilson has emailed in confusion over Alan Pouton's alleged contribution to Gillingham's consolation goal in their 3-1 cup defeat to Burnley last Saturday, which, as Mark Stilton pointed out here yesterday, was scored nine minutes after the former Town midfielder left the pitch. "I don't doubt Mark's report," he writes, "but I saw the goal on Sky's Sunday morning round-up thing and I thought I saw Alan in a hopelessly ineffectual position looking bewildered as the Gills were torn apart for said goal. Was he there or wasn't he? Did one man score or was there another striker on the grassy knoll?" You've lost me now, Mark... although the Diary is interested to note that the fourth official is listed as a Mr L H Oswald of Dallas.

Finally, a trawl through some of the curious unsolicited email that has ended up in the Diary's inbox recently. Richard Croll has emailed about, well, absolutely nothing, really: it's a blank message. The subject line "GMT 2004" is similarly unhelpful, so a visit to www.fanzineclick.com might be in order. What do they do there then? "FanzineClick helps a network of independent football fanzine sites to generate meaningful advertising revenue." Sorry, not interested. People come to this website because they respect its non-commercial ethos and know they can access quality content that is neither plagued by an array of annoying pop-ups nor editorially distorted by the profit motive. By the way, if you haven't already bought your Cod Almighty T-shirt, then you could do it now. Priced at a pocket-friendly £5.50, they succinctly express your regional pride, and look pretty cool too. Order now!