Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 4 August 2003

4 August 2003

Hello readers, it's Miles here again - back by popular demand. Well, okay, back by virtue of the fact that Mr Diary is again unavailable, and everyone else is kind of busy. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow, we hope, so please bear with us.

Friday afternoon seems a long time ago to be writing a news item about, but as you no doubt will have seen, Town continued their unbeaten pre-season by coming out 2-1 winners over Middlesbrough. Unless another practice match is hastily arranged in the next few days, this was the last opportunity for Paul Groves to assess triallists Ten Heuvel, Edwards and Crowe with a view to completing his Mariners jigsaw. Of the three, the Grovemeister may be most keen to settle terms with Larry Ten H, who just could be the ball-holding forward Town are looking for. Stop sniggering at the back.

Mr Ten Heuvel has become somewhat of a Hobson's choice, anyway, since that other large Dutch geezer, Clyde Wijnhard, continues to spend his time on an Oldham gym treadmill and a mobile phone, rather than getting his fat useless arse over to NE Lincs. "Clyde Wijnhard did not take part because his agent has not been out of contact," explains the BBC Humber site, rather confusingly. Unless of course this means that Clyde's agent refused to hang up, thus preventing Clyde from driving. Or something.

Of the other potential Mariners, though: Stuart Rowson reiterates that a striker and a centre-back are PG's main priorities, which "leaves little in the pot to offer free agent Crowe, who looked a class act at right-back yesterday." Hmmm... well... see Tony's match report for an alternative view to this. Oh yeah. Mike Edwards. Graham Rodger said he was quite good, or something. Make of that what you will while we all wait to see what colour smoke comes belching out of the Blundell Park chimneys.

A snippet of news regarding a couple of ex-Mariners now: Chris Thompson has signed a two-year contract with Conference side Northwich Victoria, having spent part of the summer on trial at Belgium club KV Mechelen. Another old boy and Conference starlet, Daryl Clare, has pissed his manager off, apparently, by hiding an injury. Clare is having exploratory surgery on a long-standing (no pun intended) knee problem, leaving Chester boss Mark Wright without his services for the start of the season, and is kind of miffed that little Dazza didn't hobble straight to Chester Royal Infirmary as soon as the whistle blew at the end of last season. Whoops.

Finally, Mat Hare kindly informs us that the News Of The World have tipped Grimsby to finish 20th in the division this season. I'm sure you'd like to join us at Cod Almighty in a collective "PFFFF!" in the general direction of the NotW offices. Twentieth our collective arse.