Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 24 August 2005

24 August 2005

Do you want the good news or the bad news? Actually, I'll just tell you both, because if I wait for 3,000 readers to email their preferences, and then count up the votes, it won't really be news any more. And you wouldn't want that, would you? Well, you might. But I wouldn't. I've got my reputation to consider as the GTFC internet community's sharpest and most straightforward daily news summariser. Ah. Right. OK. The bad news is that Fate has deemed five minutes of first-team football for the Mariners as quite sufficient for Ciaran Toner before he gets crocked again, and the Northern Ireland midfielder has bust his finger in a car crash. Altogether less surprising, in the run-up to this evening's League Cup tie at Derby, are doubts over the fragile duo of Simon Ramsden and Gary Croft, who are suffering from crap legs. The good news is that Justin Whittle is in line to replace the suspended (not, alas, from the top of the Dock Tower) Tony Crane and a belated debut is finally expected for Jean-Paul F Kennedy Kalala. The slightly weird news is that Gary Jones seems to have rapidly progressed above Gary Cohen in the line of ascendance up front and will replace Martin Gritton tonight, apparently.

More good news, at the very least if your name is Justin Whittle, is that Crane's suspension will last for two matches, ruling him out of this Saturday's trip darn sarf to bleedin' Barnet, innit. With Town's available defensive personnel not matching the strength in depth up front, if you can call it strength, any injury tonight to Justin Brittle will have the GTFC kit lady nervously ironing DOWNEY onto the back of a shirt quicker than you can say "testing visit to the division's surprise early pace-setters".

Yeah, that Alan Buckley, what a loser, eh? And that John Fenty, cuh, Town would be better off without him. Sometimes I feel like giving up, I really do.

Before we turn to today's Diary emails, I will quickly draw your attention to a bit on the OS where Chairman John is talking about Town's dealings with agents. Fents seems to have that slightly defensive tone about him again, whereby he seems to be assuming that you're forever on the brink of a bitter tirade about his appalling stewardship of the club, calamitous record in the food industry and rubbish shoes (although with nesbits like the above still troubling the Telegraph letters page you can sort of see why), but it's quite interesting and worth a read for the priceless anecdote about a Mr 10% who turned up at BP two hours late for a meeting and had forgotten the name of the player he was representing. It's Trevor's World of Sport gone mad, I tell ya.

It falls to the inimitable Dan Humphrey to begin today's emails. "I swear, they used to play for England, now they play against Town," he writes. "Part I: Michael Ricketts for Leeds pre-season. Part II: Dominic Matteo for Blackburn, nearly played for England, chose Scotland eventually. Part III: Seth Johnson for Derby tonight in the Other Cup. Er. That's it. Ricketts was appalling. Let's hope Johnson is too." Quite possibly, Dan. I can't speak for anyone else, but receiving nearly a quarter of a million quid per game from Leeds would certainly dull my edge a bit.

Last, and quite possibly least, comes a comment on yesterday's news about Grimsby Town Supporters Trust's forthcoming 'Pride in the Park' event from Mat Hare, a man who is never slow to exploit small linguistic ambiguities for limited comic results. "Giant name card, eh?" writes Mat. "Does that mean instead of names like Steve, Jane and Andy it'll be Jean-Paul Kamudimba or Marc Bridge-Wilkinson?" Told you.