Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 23 July 2003

23 July 2003

Just one or two bits and bobs again today: we still haven't signed that striker; several players are injured and won't play in the Neil Mann testimonial at Hull tonight, including Alan Pouton, who is completely knackered again; Jason Crowe isn't still training at BP but we still want to sign him if we can; and Steph Coldicott "got leathered and chucked up four times," one correspondent informs me. Oh, and there's some daft ersatz row going on somewhere about the whole Jevons thing, with two or three of those peculiar Furneaux-out obsessives going ballistic on messageboards; but it all seems of very little concern to the sensible Town fan.

But yesterday's appeal to your memories for the names of players and managers who have left Blundell Park and then come back, not including loans, has unleashed a flood of emails, some more useful than others. "How about Tillson returning on loan?" asks Dan Humphrey. Gilbert and Oster don't count for the same reason, and Robert 'Injured' Taylor...I'm not sure to be honest; I kind of lost track of what kinds of contracts he was on. Dan's suggestion of Jim Dobbin is, I think, a valid one, though I'm not sure about his mate who says Steve Sherwood. "When Rhys Wilmot was injured and he couldn't get a loanee in, Buckley dragged him back from somewhere like Frickley for a month or two," is the explanation. Can anyone corroborate this?

Two of you - namely Miles Moss and Pat Bell - have spoken the name of Mike Czuczman, which is no mean feat in itself, and the latter has a word or two to add. The player, writes Pat, "was a rather estimable member of the post-McMenemy mid-1970s side that struggled in the old third division - when he left, we were relegated. I was surprised to once see him listed among the worst Town players, but have always assumed that the person doing the naming saw him when he came back as a squad member towards the end of his career, when we'd found our way into the second (I never saw him play in that second spell, so can't comment)." Now do I or do I not recall a piece by Phil Ball in Sing When We're Fishing discussing an absolute screamer he once scored? "I have a feeling there's a striker I ought to remember," adds Pat. I do as well, y'know...is it Marc North?

Miles also recalls Wilf Gillow, who "signed on the dotted line in 1919-20 and then again in 1923-24, after a short stint being a Lancaster player," and I don't think anyone would argue with that. The splendidly named Clive Wiggington is another valid contribution; but Clarrie Williams, Dick Conner and Dave Booth are all sadly inadmissible as their returns to Town were to coaching and management positions. Same with Mark Dillerstone's suggestion of Paul Wilkinson. Mark also breathes the names of Alec King and Dudley Ramsden, but we don't want to open that whole nest of director worm vipers.

An anonymous contributor, finally, says Tommy Briggs, and adds a quote from Dwight D Eisenhower, with which today's Diary will conclude, because it's even better than that Shankly one about life and death. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."