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Diary - Friday 4 July 2003

4 July 2003

Just when you thought it was safe to trust the messageboards, Aidan Davison's much-muttered-of return to Blundell Park is anything but a done deal, it would appear, as Paul Groves continues to keep his options open for a man to fill Danny Coyne's winged boots. Despite talks with Davison, says BBC Humber, Town's search for a keeper goes on; and one other possibility could be Ipswich's James Pullen - the young stopper who suffered a torrid time during the Mariners' trip to Portman Road last season, conceding a soft goal to Mr Groves himself. "If [Grimsby] were interested then I would be delighted to hear from them," the player has told the East Anglian Daily Times, though it is not known whether he has reason to suspect such an interest or is just Pullen names out of the air. Sorry.

Meanwhile Town's target target man has gone away to think about what he's done, which was to discuss a switch to Blundell Park with Paul Groves yesterday. Nobody knows who he is, still, except presumably Groves and the player himself. And their mums. But it might be Lee Trundle from Wrexham. The GTFC boss will be hoping a deal can be wrapped up in the next 36 hours, ahead of the squad's departure for Ibiza on Sunday, which has so far proved an enormous success in attracting Tony Crane, Marcel Cas, Des Hamilton and Iain Anderson to sign for the Mariners.

Not that such resorts are to the Diary's taste; as a cold-blooded reptile, or so Mrs Diary insists, I much prefer something a bit more chilled - Norway, say. Which, funnily enough, is exactly where Grimsby-area youngsters and Grimsby Town youngsters could be making some character-building visits in a proposed link-up between GTFC and Norwegian side Lillehammer. Talks have begun between the two clubs, reveals Scandinavia's number one Mariners website Jailhouse Rock, over a scheme whereby young players will switch between them for extra training and stuff, and schoolchildren at Town's study support centre get an ace holiday. "The value of this is big in relation to exchange of players, training camps, matches," says Lillehammer dude Stig Bjørnes. The Mariners may also tour Norway next pre-season.

I leave you today with the eighth Reason I Hate Wimbledon, a linguistic phenomenon that for want of a proper name might be termed the Wimbledon possessive. For no good reason at all, commentators on Wimbledon decided some time ago to replace perfectly adequate possessive noun phrases such as "Williams' serve" or "Roddick's volley" with a more pretentious construction, so that they now speak of "the Williams serve" or "the Roddick volley". Last week I even heard mention of "the Henman racquet", for crying out loud. One mitigating factor for this Reason I Hate Wimbledon, though, is that it at least prevents the occurrence of number five in the series, the use of first names, because even Wimbledon commentators would feel stupid talking about "the Greg sweatbands".