Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 26 September 2003

26 September 2003

Let there be no more talk of the Groves/Rodger regime being soft on discipline. The GTFC management have opted to get tough after the costly early-season red cards handed out to Des Hamilton, Iain Anderson and Marcel Cas - by fining Tony Crane and Darren Barnard. A discussion between the two players during last Saturday's game about the fine details of defensive technique ended up getting a bit Noel and Liam, and the protagonists had to be separated by their colleague Simon Ford. The Diary could maybe have understood if the goal that had just gone in was being celebrated by Chesterfield, but it was 100 per cent black and white in nature and execution. But hey. "I wanted it to be kept as an internal matter but it has come out," says Mr Paul in the Telegraph of his new iron-fist style of leadership. "There is a time and a place for that. It could have cost us. I don't want to see it happen again."

"I wonder how much," says Miles Moss about the fines. "Perhaps they get away with only a week's wages, or perhaps the club have really clamped down, and gone for the full twenty quid."

Speaking of Daz B, the Wales international is again required for a Wales international, not that he'll get a game, it just weakens Town's squad so that he can go on a plane with some people from the Premiership and have a weekend looking at some interesting foreign training cones, but anyway, yeah, the match he will miss is the Mariners' visit to Brighton on 11 October and the other match he will miss is Wales' Euro 2004 qualifier at home to Serbia & Montenegro on 11 October.

Smashing result for Town reserves yesterday. Did you see? They went up to that Newcastle, right - who are in the Premier and everything - and won 3-0. Cor! All three were cracking goals too by the sound of it. The Lincolnshire-based black and whites took the lead on 20 minutes with a super edge-of-the-box free kick from Giovanni Carchedi, three minutes before Darren Mansaram doubled the advantage with a belting 20-yarder. Phil Jevons, meanwhile, continued his riches-to-rags story with an overhead kick midway through the second half, completing the victory over a Newcastle side featuring established Premiership players Nikos Dabizas and Carl Cort (well, sort of) and hotly-tipped striker Michael Chopra. Newcastle's local paper is properly complimentary about the goals but is unable to resist terming the visitors "humble Grimsby". I'd rather be humble than a lost Premiership soul though - especially after sitting with several thousand Spurs fans on Wednesday night.

OK, I can't avoid talking about it any longer. Tomorrow's visit to Sheffield Wednesday will be undertaken without Nobel peace prize contender Simon Ford, whose failure to recover from a hamstring strain after all will usher Mike Edwards into the starting line-up; and why not, after he did so well in the second half last weekend. Cod Almighty sponsoree Mr Derrick Hamilton is in contention, though, after sitting out the last two games with a funk-related knee bingo; and the Zidanesque Mr Jevons might be in with a shout if they can sort out his contract doobie doobie do, you know the rest. "We are hoping to sort Phil out fairly quickly," quoth Paul, "we are almost there."

Owls boss Chris Turner has similar problems in his squad. "We have players in our team who are on pre-ITV Digital contracts and must be the highest paid in the league," he said earlier this week, "but they're certainly not the best, from what I've seen." Far from a happy fella after his side lost their last two games, Turner has been sitting down with the chairman and talking about big changes and shake-ups and time machines and abattoirs but the biggest step taken has been to loan prolific forward Shefki Kuqi to Ipswich, which sounds like quite good news for the Mariners. Derek Geary is banned and Richard Evans, Matt Hamshaw and Ola Tidman are all injured; but that jumped-up little get Proudlock will probably score a bunch.

Your referee tomorrow will be "the infamous" Michael Ryan of Lancashire, as Mark Stilton describes him. The name rings a bell. "You may remember him from such laughable refereeing decisions as 'the sending off of Robert Taylor for kicking thin air against Bradford." Ah, that infamous Michael Ryan. "This season he has officiated in seven games, issuing 19 yellow cards and four reds. However, three of those red cards came in the Wycombe v Colchester match (and Iffy wasn't one of them). Last season he saw fit to issue 112 yellow cards and 12 red cards in 35 games. Nothing too out of the ordinary there. He dished out six yellow cards in the 0-0 bore draw between Town and Wimbledon near the beginning of last season - three to each team. Seems fair." Was the Bradford game a one-off then? "Tony Butcher said 'he didn't do anything totally outrageous' last season but in his report for the Bradford match the previous season Tony almost has an embolism: 'Rotten, a word chosen deliberately and meaning just that...Some described him as incompetent and that he didn't know what he was doing. Au contraire, he seemed to know exactly what he was doing...This man is very likely to cause a riot.' Should be a good game this weekend then. Ahem."

"Epic narrative poetry?" writes Al Wilkinson, to conclude today's somewhat distended Diary. "Nah." Just a thought. Carry on then. "Meanwhile, field agent George, a highly trained longhaired black ops specialist, is overseeing the removal of all the cats in the Sheffield area. The relocation to the training facility is going smoothly, when the Sheffield Wednesday Owl Raiders (SWOR) launched a surprise assault. George's unit, using the latest of Doctor Fluffy's violent toys, repelled the attack. As the SWOR swooped, the brave agents of CRAMP leapt using rocket-propelled jump packs and, in mid-leap, unsheathed the latest claw extensions. The birds were soon dealt with, and the operation continued, demoralising the Wednesday fans as they search in vain, before the game, for their cats. Soon they will buy their own GTFC pet." Bids for the film rights in strictest confidence to codalmightydiary@yahoo.co.uk please.