Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 27 June 2007

27 June 2007

Jamie Lawrence, Curtis Woodhouse and John Fenty may all have been found guilty of offences by the courts of law, but Fenty at least managed not to injure anyone while he was ignoring the speed limit, and Terrell Forbes was acquitted altogether. The catalogue of felonies by personnel recently associated with Grimsby Town Football Club could be worse, though Ashley Sestanovich has done his level best to make it so. The 2004 Mariners loanee was infamously convicted last December of conspiracy to rob, having taken part in the planning of a 2005 theft at a London roofing firm in which a man was murdered, and is in the headlines again this week as the FA has forced Grays Athletic to hand Sestanovich £10,000 in unpaid wages. When the player's precarious legal situation became clear to Grays officials in July 2006 they terminated the player's contract - only a month after signing him - but an FA disciplinary panel has ruled that the club must fork out for the five months of it that remained. "It sticks in our craw to have to pay a substantial amount of money to a convicted criminal who did nothing for this football club," says a statement from Athletic, and a lot of people will sympathise.

If Alan Buckley's Grimsby Town team is currently riding a wave of optimism, then so is Stuart Watkiss's. The Mariners' assistant boss is credited by many fans with transforming the fortunes of the club's reserve side - and with it, perhaps, the careers of many of its young players - since taking over the role last year (the other fans preferring to ignore his exemplary record at Blundell Park and Mansfield in favour of sulking and muttering darkly about Kidderminster). With Peter Bore, Danny North, Andy Taylor and Ryan Bennett having recently graduated from the youth and reserve sides to the first team squad, much attention will focus on the performances of the second string next season. That's the context; now here's the content: the fixtures for next season's Hi-De-Hi Holidays League have been published, and the club's official website gives a complete list, which will be updated until October or November and then forgotten about for the rest of the season.

Today's email to the Diary comes from crack match reporter Tony Butcher, who has a bone to pick with the Quiz, but the Quiz doesn't have an email address. Our Tone has been busy finding fault with the final set of questions in this website's current end-of-season quiz thingummy - and when I say busy I mean, you know, hyperactive. "In the final set, question 1 does not have an option for the correct answer," he rages. "The answer should be 22 minutes, as James Lawson entered the pitch in the 68th minute against Stockport County. How can we go on with this? And another thing: Ricky Ravenhill made 21 appearances, not 20." Boooo, sort it, Quizzes! That said, TB has been the only participant to have emailed on this issue. Far be it from the Diary to suggest that he has a competitive streak to match his capacity for Beatles and Spinal Tap references; let's just say he'd like his score to go up to 11.