Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 25 March 2003

25 March 2003

More bad news from the treatment room today, as one of Town's legion of Welsh internationals, Darren Barnard, has been ruled out for six weeks with the shoulder injury that tore him screaming from the Rotherham match last week. "It leaves us in the mire," admits manager Paul Groves on the Grimsby Telegraph website, now that it has finally stopped redirecting my browser to the Bristol Evening Telegraph.

The Riby Square Thunderer also finds the space for a heartfelt plea from Barnard's wounded comrade Stacy Coldicott for the Mariners to offer him a new contract. The crocked midfielder, who has gone from official fan scapegoat to revered war hero after breaking his leg against Burnley at the weekend, whimpers: "I like it at Grimsby. I've always enjoyed it here and obviously I want to stay. I hope there's no change." Stace is one of 11 players out of contract this summer, adds the report.

Town's official site, meanwhile, sees fit to disinter the manufactured controversy that surrounded Stuart Campbell's goal that never was at Selhurst Park in January. For those of you who don't remember, the rather feyly nicknamed 'Camby' scored against the club formerly known as Wimbledon, but it went down as an own goal, or something, and he still isn't letting it lie. "It was nice to get another goal on Saturday," says the hero of Turf Moor, "that's my seventh, contrary to reports in some of the newspapers. I got officially credited with the goal at Wimbledon, but nobody else seems to know." For God's sake, man, get over it!

The system of 'parachute payments' that gives relegated Premiership clubs a stack of cash to kick ass in Division One and go straight back up is to be extended further down the Football League. Under a new agreement, the three clubs promoted to the Prem this season will each contribute £100,000 to a fund that will cushion the financial blow of relegation to Division Two suffered by Sheffield Wednesday and two other clubs. "The introduction of parachute payments is seen as an essential part of helping clubs to cope with the additional wage burden they carry with them from a higher division to a lower one," says league spokesperson John Nagle. "Distributing Premiership TV money more fairly throughout the game would rid us of the need for this stupid system in the first place," says the Diary.

A quick dip into the Diary's inbox now - and it will have to be quick, as I am typing this in Chesterfield library (long story) and don't have very much longer to do it - and a flurry of emails has arrived in response to yesterday's random question "What is a hospice anyway?" Mat Hare writes: "Was she not one of the famous five that had hits such as 'Wannabe'? It was her, uglyspice, miserablespice, idon'tfancyyoursmuchspice and facesetonfireandputoutwithashovelspice. She was the slutty one, obviously." Tony Butcher, meanwhile, defines hospice as: "A home for the destitute (GTFC) or terminally ill (Sheffdefiled Wednesday)." Can I borrow your nail file, Tony?