Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 2 February 2006

2 February 2006

So much for cash-strapped, saddled-with-a-massive-tax-debt, sell-the-family-silver-to-keep-the-Mariners-afloat crisis club Grimsby Town. The Bristol Evening Post is reporting that the purportedly skint Mariners turned down a bid of £300,000 from Bristol City for the services of star striker Michael Reddy shortly before the transfer window closed at midnight on Tuesday. All very good if you happen to support the club and you want them to get promoted; a little less impressive if you helped Keep the Mariners Afloat and Out of Steam by auctioning off a much-loved item of GTFC memorabilia or by taking out a life membership to Town's supporters' trust despite following a different club. Or if you pay tax in the UK. It's just a good job the club wasn't really holding out for 450 big ones, as the Bristol paper suggests, and decided to sell Reddy to Luton for £325,000; otherwise you'd be hopping mad!

If you attended the Mariners' pre-season friendly at Brigg Town on 15 July 2004, you might have been forgiven for thinking: "That trialist we had in goal was useless! There's no way Russ will sign him after that!" Useless he may have been, but this proved no bar to Anthony Williams being awarded a one-year contract at Blundell Park shortly afterwards. You might also have been forgiven for feeling a bit smug when almost the entire 2004-05 season proved you right all along. Williams, bless him, moved on to Carlisle last summer, was out of the team by September, and ended up on loan at Bury last month. It never rains but it pours goals, though, and after conceding seven in three matches, the player "has been allowed to return to Brunton Park" ten days before his loan was due to end, as the Shakers' official website tactfully phrases it. "The spell with Bury didn't work out for either party," adds the site, whose author is shortly to take up a position as a senior diplomat with the United Nations.

Smash Hits being closed down. Hundreds of millions of people doomed to drown because of irreversible shifts in the climate of the planet. Michael Reddy being sold to Luton. It's a fast-moving world these days and it's easy to miss important news. Which is why it's such a good thing that professional sports journalists are here to keep us up to date with important matters - such as Town's new signing Marc 'The Refrigerator' Goodfellow now being in his second spell at the club. "The winger spent time on loan at Blundell Park last term and notched four goals in eight appearances," explains widely respected news organisation Sporting Life. "However, the two clubs failed to agree terms for a permanent move then but concluded a deal before the transfer window shut." Next thing these journalists will be telling us Russell Slade is on the shortlist for the Derby job.

Before I depart this working week and leave you with tomorrow's guest diarist, there is just time for a dip into my sack to turn up an email from James Booth. Before paying lavish compliments to the recent work of both your regular Diary (thank you, James) and Friday substitutes in this column, JB writes: "While there is obviously a lot of rubbish on eBay, this is a particularly strange item," and points us to a letter on GTFC headed notepaper, signed by Brian Laws during his calamitous spell at BP in the mid-1990s. Strange indeed, and hey, no-one has bid for it. Perhaps the seller will have better luck in his other auction, for a Bury shirt signed by Anthony Williams.