Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 11 June 2007

11 June 2007

Good day! This is your regular Diary returning to duty following a lay-off which can only be described as Luton's Michael Reddy-esque in its duration. My absence has owed less to dodgy knees than to dodgy motherboards, and to the season ticket renewal form dropping through the door the same week as my old computer giving up the cyberghost - but here we are again at last, just in time for Boston to be relegated for the second month on the trot. I feel an unaccountable urge to run a lap of honour.

The Diary's is apparently one of 2,000 season tickets to have flown off the shelves thus far - a figure described by Town's official website as "equating to a massive £360,000" in sales. All these numbers are pretty meaningless, though, outside the context of previous years' sales, and for this we must look to the Grimsby Telegraph, where club bean-counter Steve Wraith explains: "Last season we only just topped the £400,000 - and that was by August 25 as well." Against this, however, must be weighed the fact that season tickets didn't go on sale last summer until 19 June. Not like GTFC to mislead their own supporters by omitting to mention important information, is it? At the same time, we must remember that the club's outgoings have been greater this summer, since Big Al Buckley has already snapped up James Hunt, Gary Montgomery and Jamie Clarke and got Stuart Watkiss on a longer contract, as well as awarding pro terms to that full-back from the Myspace Mariners and new deals to Gary Jones, Justin Whittle, Ciaran Toner, Danny Boshell and Nick Hegarty, whereas at this point last year the only name to have been inked on a new contract was Gary Harkins.

Speaking of Magic Stu, Town's assistant manager will be still taking his rejuvenated reserve side to various destinations across the north and east of England next season, reports the official site, after the AGM of the Football League decided the club would remain in the eastern division of the Hi-De-Hi Holidays League. Interestingly, the OS notes that the meeting took place in Portugal, though we are given no indication as to why. Still, it must be nice for Brian Mawhinney to top up his suntan while he carries on talking shite about penalty shootouts.

Finally today, don't forget that there are only three days to go before the fixture lists are published for the 2007-08 season. This means it is about 12 days to go before GTFC piss in their fans' eyes by switching half a dozen games to Friday nights and roughly three weeks before Football Dataco Ltd piss in the eyes of fans everywhere by starting to threaten them with legal action for the sickening crime of distributing information about when their football teams will be playing matches and who against. See you tomorrow!