Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 29 July 2003

29 July 2003

Hello, it's Graham Hockless lookalike Mat Hare here and I am your guest diarist for the day. Sorry the diary is late but I work in the defence industry which means every word I write is screened by the Government Ministry of Death, I'm not allowed access to the internet and we have to suffer CSC as our IT providers. I am trying to get out of this industry though so if anyone has any jobs for a C programmer with four years of commercial experience, the last three spent developing on SuSE Linux then let me know.

There's an awful lot of football news for you today. Makes a change from a lot of awful football news, eh? But before we get to that, I hope you have all been reading my series on what Championship Manager 4 predicts will happen this coming season. It's dead good, even if I don't swear much in it. Ooh, I haven't sworn in today's diary yet either. I must be ill.

OK, two shameless plugs and no news in the first two paragraphs, this is just like the real Diary was writing it. I'll behave now. Maybe. Ahem. No-one seems entirely sure what is happening with big Dutch fella Clyde Wijnhard. The Sun (a source your regular diary would never use) reports that we have given up on the lad because he didn't turn up for training. But that is not what the club think. The OS says he will arrive on Thursday and is expected to play some part in the match against Middlesbrough the following day. But Oldham's website reckons he is staying with them apparently. Now they have sorted out their finances a bit perhaps Clyde will be persuaded to stay at Boundary Park. Dunno. Shall we just wait and see what happens?

Wijnhard is just one of a number of players expected at Blundell Park over the next few days. I say a number not to sound like a poncey journalist type but because I haven't actually counted up how many new faces we expect. Jason Crowe is supposed to be showing up again, which is nice. He has also said he would happily move from Hampshire to the Grimsby area, "anything to get playing again," he says. There's some nice houses off Cleethorpes seafront Jase, I know, I used to live in one. And I used to deliver the paper to Chris Hargreaves when he lived round there, Cromwell Road to be exact. Joining Jason and Clyde will be two triallists from Torino, Paolo (striker) and Antonio (defender) according to the OS. I've never met anyone whose surname has to be in brackets before, interesting. Oh no, here we go, the Fishy reckons they are actually called Paolo Castellini and Alessandro Conticchio and has them down as a defender and central midfielder respectively. So make of that what you will. Three or four. That's the number of new faces, depending on whether or not you are counting Crowe as a new face.

There's been a lot of players in and out of Blundell Park this summer so you've probably lost track of where we are in terms of signing 10 new players. Well fear not because the board have issued a statement to let you know. Not exactly a Blue Peter player-o-meter but not far off. Hang on, I've lost the e-mail with it in...here we go. The board start by slagging the GET off for misinforming the fans. Then state their position: "Simply, the board has decided to provide Paul Groves with a budget to build the squad up to 25 players." Fair enough. It goes on to say that after signing some existing players on new deals and bringing in some players from outside we now have a squad of 23. Hmmm, sounds like Jason, Clyde, Paolo, Antonio and of course our other current triallists (Mark Edwards, Laurens Up Heaval (summat like that) and any others I have forgotten) are scrapping it out for the last two places in the Mariners squad for the coming season. I would have thought that now some of the big earners have left the club we might be able to sneak a 26th player in. Now wouldn't that be nice? As long as it's not another Phil Jevons of course.

And the football news continues. This really is a bumper edition today isn't it? I told the rest of the Cod Almighty team that today's diary would be quite short. Mind you, it may well be when they have hacked this to shit and called it 'editing' [Oh I can't be arsed - Temporary Ed]. Johnny Rowan, remember him? Graham Rodger does and what's more he told BBC Humber that Rowan should play a big part next season. For the club. At football. Not in the Division Two pantomime performance of Dick Whittington. Rodger describes the young forward as "full of beans" and "the hungriest looking" which makes it sound more like the team are training for something other than football. He also says Rowan looks keen and sharp and stuff like that but I thought it was amusing to edit Rodger's words to make Johnny sound like a greedy porker. Town's assistant boss also says Mark Edwards has done himself "no harm" during his trial. I assume Mark has not been trying to out-eat young Johnny then.

If I was struggling for stuff to write I was going to offer you all tips for the first day of Glorious Goodwood today. As it is I have written a hell of a lot so I won't bother doing the whole card. Persian Lightning looks good in the 2.05 though, I quite like Arakan in the 3.15 and Tahreeb stands a chance in the 5.35. Nothing really stands out in the other meeting today, at Beverley. Having said that Catch The Cat in the 5.50 looks to be in with a decent shout.

I think I ought to end with an apology to CA's regular Diary who is probably reading this somewhere. Sorry mate, they made me do it.