Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 3 September 2003

3 September 2003

It's one of those quiet days again, but the Grimsby Telegraph can't go to press with the back page empty; hence the newsworthiness of Iain Anderson being glad that he hasn't needed a knee operation. "They didn't operate and that's why I'm delighted," is the player's unsurprising take on the medical attention he received earlier this week, which dispelled fears that he would miss three months of the Mariners' Division Two campaign. All that Anderson needed, it appears, was a steroid injection - let's just hope the FA aren't reading, eh - and he could now be hammering spectacular long-range goals again as early as next month. Actually, I said that yesterday, didn't I. Never mind - it's good news, and you can't have too much of a good thing. Except Guinness, I tend to find.

He isn't a striker, and there's no chance of signing him, but Town fans with less than unshakeable faith in the Crane/Ford central defensive pairing may still be drooling like hungry dogs at the news that Blackburn could allow former Mariners loan hero Andy Todd to leave Ewood Park on another short-term contract. Unable to command a first-team spot, the player was recently granted a transfer request by scary man Graeme Souness; but with no movement towards a permanent switch Rovers may let Todd out on loan. "Nationwide teams are still in a position to buy or loan from Premier League clubs," explains chief executive John Williams, for the benefit of Premiership fans who are pig-ignorant about the rest of football, "and we have been getting enquiries about Andy." Not that GTFC would have a chance even of loaning him again really, but I just thought I'd tell you.

This season's passionate Boxing Day derby against, er, Oldham is to be sponsored by Town's supporters trust, assuming that the Latics can scrape together the readies to get their team bus over the Pennines. The trust is promising a day of fun and games, with face-painting and penalty shootouts already on the agenda, and more details will follow when we have them.

On a similar theme, the Cod Almighty people will be having another Fans' Day on Easter Monday, when Town take on fellow seaside types Blackpool, so let's hope the weather holds out this time. "Expect just about everything," warns the chief culprit Simon Wilson. The CA team have also insisted, on pain of upping my daily word count, that I bring your attention to one or two new items elsewhere on this site: firstly a spiffy competition thing to win a GTFC shirt signed by our new cult hero Mr Disco Des Hamilton; and secondly a slightly less exciting but possibly more important questionnaire thing, for you to state your points of view about this website, which sadly won't win you anything but will help the CA editors at their next planning meeting, provided they haven't drunk too much black vodka.

Before I leave you to a blurred frenzy of mouse-clicking, there is the final, though not inconsiderable matter of an email from Mark Wilson, who wishes to confess to listening to Radio 2 yesterday afternoon; more specifically, to the Jeremy Vine show, which apparently discussed the meteor that may or may not destroy the planet Earth in 2014. "He pointed out," explains Mark, "that we are more likely to be hit by a meteor than win the lottery and then gave a number of other unlikely events that were more likely than winning the lottery. Grimsby Town winning the FA Cup was one of them. Oh, how I laughed."