Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 11 May 2009

11 May 2009

Farewell, then, Stuart Watkisses. Deemed by many Town fans to be incapable of doing his job, on the basis of little more than a mumbly Black Country accent and his presence at Kidderminster when financial reality bit, the erstwhile assistant manager to Graham Rodgers, Alan Buckleys and Mike Newells was told over the weekend that his expired contract at Blundell Park won't be renewed. As widely expected, Brian Stein takes the assistant position: "There isn't a club at this level that operates with two assistant managers," points out John Fenty (Con) in Town's official statement. In fairness to Watkisses's detractors, his spell as caretaker manager during last season's interregnum did little to persuade anyone that he deserved the job permanently (Tomi Ameobi, anyone? No, thought not), but he seems well thought of by the players and the chairman's goodbye is warmer than mere protocol would demand. Good luck, Disco Stu. The Diary will always remember with hilarity the work of one internet nesbit last autumn, who insisted repeatedly after the sacking of Lord Buckley that Watkisses' accession to the manager's hotseat was a done deal - using the phrase 'cheap option' approximately 849 times in all - and finally accounted for his error, when Newell was appointed, by explaining that he alone had changed Fenty's mind with all these well-reasoned posts in the comments section of the Grimsby Telegraph website.

Busting the mould? Very much commissioned? The aforementioned John Fenty (Con) is nothing is not the most voice-iferous of Town chairmen, and today the triumphant Tory can be found in the pages of the Telewag explaining the financial context of his bid to get Barry Conlon into the building. In an interesting aside, JF(C) puts some figures on the unsuccessful recruitment campaign of January 2006, which saw Russell Slade's GTFC side plunge from top of the table to fourth and an abject surrender to Cheltenham Town in the play-off final - at a cost, it turns out, of £7,000 per week for the five players involved. The club must clearly be careful with Conlon, given his previous club Bradford's penchant for paying players well beyond their means in a gamble on their league form which never pays off. There was a very good reason why Peter Furneaux waved away all those exhortations to sign Benito Carbone in 2001, you know.

So, an excellent weekend for former Mariners in the fourth division play-off semi-finals. A penalty miss by Phil Jevons sealed defeat for fourth-placed Bury at the hands of seventh-placed Shrewsbury, while the Newey Effect reached its inevitable conclusion at Rochdale, whose faltering bid for promotion from the fourth division for the first time since the reign of Ethelred the Unready ended at the hands of Gillingham after a horrendous plunge to match Town's in 2006. Just for the record, then, poor unsuspecting Dale were placed second in the table when Tom Newey joined and won just once in the ten games they played afterwards, taking six points from a possible 24, and could easily have fallen out of the play-off places altogether had their two key rivals not been paired together on the final day. Look out, Lincoln - you're next!