Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 12 February 2004

12 February 2004

"The lunatics are taking over the asylum," writes Keith Collins in an email to the Diary: in the subject line of his email, to be precise, and because there is no body text we can assume that he is either satirising spam or referring to the sale of Michael Boulding. For Mick has gone to Barnsley after all, for an undisclosed fee (£50,000, presumably), after lodging a transfer request following the sacking of Paul Groves. Blimey, it's like Pandora's Box, innit. Or summat. So, er, that's that then. The Grimsby Telegraph is doing the requisite "crisis deepens... string of hammer blows" type stuff (those pesky strings of hammer blows, eh) but is the Diary alone in suggesting that this doesn't necessarily guarantee relegation given the player's patchy recent form? Ow! Pack it in! That hurts!

Meanwhile another quick striker, Isiaiaiaiah Rankin, has switched the other way, by which I mean he has joined Town on a month's loan from the Tykes, not that he's just come out or anything like that. Rankin began his career with Arsenal - so he must be good, right? - before a £1.3m move to Bradford in 1998, but let's not hold that against him. Loans to Bolton and Birmingham preceded his transfer to Barnsley for £350,000 of the money that wasn't theirs to spend and that they don't even have to pay back now. The player is expected to line up alongside Lee Thorpe in a new-look frontline for Saturday's meeting with Brighton, and if you can tell the Diary how many strikers the Mariners will have used this season after that, then I might buy you a chocolate biscuit. Town reckon they're about to bring in a Premiership player as well, but I shall have to leave that to Guest Diary tomorrow, who I hope has returned from Whitby with feet and neck intact.

TOWN RULE OUT ANDERSON, reads a headline on BBC Humber Sport, which, needless to say, refers to a story that the Mariners might not be bringing in Keith Alexander as the new manager. For fuck's sake. The Diary understands, in any case, that big Keith is on the brink of signing a new contract with Lincoln. There, I've saved you the bother.

With strikers turning up at Blundell Park like impoverished ne'er-do-wells around the Mercedes that just parked on their estate, the chances of Jonny Rowan - remember him? - making a first-team comeback look increasingly slim. His case has not been harmed, however, by both goals for the reserves in yesterday's 2-2 draw at Darlington, in which Stacy Coldicott returned to action, of a sort, and Des Hamilton appears from the teamsheet to have played in defence. Like, what-ev-er. Oh, and Wes Parker was playing his first game, says the Telegraph, since apparently collapsing in training in December with a kidney problem. Don't you just love the way the club keeps us informed with these things? Mr and Mrs Parker, if you're reading, I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.

Good news for, well, everyone with a functional soul and mind and something of a feeling for football. Town's trip south to face Colchester, which had been switched from Saturday 21 to Friday 20 February for no reason at all, has now been put back to the Saturday, for the rather good reason that Colchester are still in the FA Cup, apparently. And jolly good for them.

And that is all from your regular reprobate regurgitator of GTFC-flavoured news cocktails until Saturday night. I'm going to get drunk with my brothers, one of whose bedroom today's Diary is brought to you from. Bye!