Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 30 March 2004

30 March 2004

Cheer up, you mardy buggers! Town may be facing almost certain relegation to the third division, meaning the loss of leading players and a further drop in support for the already impoverished club, with little chance of returning to Division One for at least the next generation or two, but with Darren Barnard retaining his place in the Wales squad and the likes of John Thorrington and Jamie Lawrence now on the books, Nicky Law is building a prestigious line-up of top international players. Oh yes. Hence a Northern Ireland call-up yesterday for Alan Fettis, Town's quite good loanee keeper. Yay! NI manager Sammy McIlroy Lawrie Sanchez has drafted our man into the squad that will play in Estonia on Wednesday afternoon after his first-choice custodian, Manchester United's Roy Carroll, was instructed by his club manager to pull a sickie. Fettis' goalkeeping role is likely to be much like that of Danny Coyne for Wales, though, with Birmingham's number one Maik Taylor expected to get the nod in Tallinn. Is it just me, by the way, or does Carroll look more like he should have been on guitar and backing vocals in a Manchester indie-dance crossover outfit circa 1990?

And let us not forget the bright young things who are just rolling off Neil Woods' footballing school of conveyor belt excellence. The Diary is quite sure that their 3-1 defeat in a reserve game at York yesterday in no way signifies that the Mariners' future is anything less than safe; nay, glorious, in their hands. Liam Nimmo, you may be interested to learn, was responsible for the ray of hope provided by the "1", while the splendidly named Spalding United trialist Brett Chittock made a second appearance in goal.

Because there isn't really any other GTFC news, I might as well take this opportunity to say yah boo sucks to all the Fleet Street twats who are growing increasingly bitter and frustrated that the latest of their pointless campaigns to force England managers out of the job has still failed to catch the imagination of the national team's supporters. I don't know how Ledley King can justifiably be excluded from the squad to play Sweden tomorrow, after the way he played against Portugal; but while Sven remains in the post he can do whatever and talk to whoever the buggering heck he likes as far as this England fan is concerned, and all those smartarse hacks can carry on saying: "Oh go on - please start hating him!" until they're blue in their fat faces. Thank you and good day.