Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 2 May 2003

2 May 2003

If you've got 40 quid to spare this weekend and think the appearance of your upper body would be improved immeasurably by the livery of a controversial engineering firm, then why not invest in a new Town shirt? The goodies will be available to order from Town's official site from midnight tonight, apparently, so you might want to camp in front of your PC right now with a sleeping bag and a thermos. The Mariners' site has one of those pictures of a very well-scrubbed young lady modelling the kit, like they always do, and I have to admit the shirt looks quite nice; but the Diary is waiting for them to produce some without the Jarvis logo. They could if they wanted, you know. My mate has a sponsorship-free West Brom shirt. There's no punchline - he really does.

Town have offered a new contract to Stacy Coldicott, claims BBC Humber Sport. The lean, mean midfield machine has sat out the last few weeks of the season with a broken leg but Paul Groves says: "Hopefully he'll get over it in the three months that it takes generally and he'll be fit for pre-season." Which seems a bit presumptuous to me at this stage: I mean, how does he know Stace isn't torn between the modest new short-term offer the Mariners have placed before him and a range of highly lucrative five-year deals from the likes of Real Madrid and Hull City?

Former GTFC keeper Aidan Davison is to leave Bradford on the twelve hundred scrillionth free transfer of his career. The Northern Ireland international, who turns 35 this month, is one among loads of players being released by the Bantams, who have presumably spent so much wonga buying referees that they can't pay players any more. The highlight of Davison's spell with the Mariners was probably the play-off final victory over Northampton in 1998, of which he heightened the already life-threatening tension by playing the last 10 minutes while concussed. Town remain the only one of the nomadic stopper's 13 clubs to have had more than 50 appearances out of him.

"I am not a fucking monkey!" writes a clearly quite upset Mat Hare. "If Mr Keeper wishes to make any more personal attacks, I suggest he develops the balls to send his abuse directly to me. The twat," he adds, in an email sent directly to the Diary. Dearie me.

The slightly more savoury contents of the Diary's postbag today concern the player of the year awards, upon which one correspondent comments: "The player of the year is John McDermott. It's John McDermott. Macca, McD, the Macmeister, Sir Macsford, Ubergruppmanfuhrer Herr Doktor McDermotz." Another opines: "I agree with Richard Dawson to some extent. My player for the 2002 portion of this season would have been John Oster. A superbly talented winger, he made an incredible difference to the Grimsby team. In fact, he was probably the best player of the 2003 portion too. Come to think of it, he's probably the best player, home or away, to have graced the Blundell Park turf since 1903. And will never be bettered. In addition, he is beautiful, intelligent, and has a penis which would make a blue whale feel inadequate. Yours sincerely, Mr J Oster."