Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 7 April 2004

7 April 2004

Now is a slightly odd time to be reporting football news, because the transfer deadline has passed and yet there's another month or so before the cup competitions, play-offs and promotion and relegation issues reach orgasm. Click your way through the websites or have a rummage through Ceefax, and beyond the ersatz glamour of that chaaaaaaaaaaamp-yons thing there is a hollow lull-before-the-storm feeling, like when you're ready for the pub on Christmas Eve afternoon but all your mates are still at work. The Grimsby Telegraph is so desperate that its main story in today's sports pages goes into unnecessary detail about a knee injury sustained by Huddersfield striker Iffy Onuora, who it wrongly asserts to have "spent five months on loan" with the Mariners this season.

Correspondents on the latest CA letters page are even beginning to detect this motorcycle emptiness on the pages of Cod Almighty, this moment of silence before the guillotine blade descends. Today, accordingly, the Diary can report only that Town reserves are "in action" this afternoon, kicking off at 2pm at Blundell Park, where the visitors are their counterpart stiffs from Lincoln City; the club is flogging another load of plates; and there's another 'free kids' offer on the Easter bank holiday next Monday, when Blackpool are the visitors to BP. "Tickets must be obtained from the ticket office, before kick off," advises the GTFC website helpfully, adding that one callow youth of 15 years or fewer will be admitted to the match at no charge provided that "they are accompanied by at least one full paying Adult." So if you're a young person hoping to get in free just by waving a severed limb or head at the turnstile man, forget it.

You know what? I'm off for a sandwich.