Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 6 April 2004
6 April 2004
Possibly wishing to cash in on today's news of a possible Abba reunion, GTFC announce details of the 2004 player of the year awards. This season's jolly takes place on Tuesday 11 May at its usual venue, Cleethorpes Winter Gardens, with its usual musical entertainment, the fabulous Y'Abba D'Abba (it is actually the law that cheesy cover acts must have their name preceded by "the fabulous"), and tickets are now on sale from the club shop for just two of your English pounds. Over 30 awards will be presented on the night, announces Town's official website, which might seem to some to devalue the whole exercise somewhat, and because text messaging now appears to be the only way to vote (cost: 50p plus your usual charge), the Diary will be sitting this one out. For the record, I would concur with Guest Diary's verdict of Mike Edwards, but by the time the awards are announced it will be much too late for Nicky Law to realise that Edwards is by some way the best defender at the club.
Apologies are due to the bloody-minded among you, who would have been disappointed by the Diary's omitting to mention Alan Pouton's weekend penalty miss. The former Town midfielder, who left the sinking ship for another sinking ship way back in January, was entrusted with a last-minute spot-kick last Saturday, which could have brought Gillingham back on level terms with Lennie Lawrence's Cardiff, but followed up his recent own goal for the Gills by drilling the pen well wide and condemning his side to a fourth defeat in five games. Andy Todd scored an own goal on Sunday as well, but we still like him.
A big "sorry!", too, to any Diary readers who have recently ordered a Cod Almighty T-shirt and are beginning to wonder whether it will arrive this side of Town's new stadium. Since the shirts featured on the telly and radio and in local and national press the other week, the CA team have been snowed under with orders and have had to send for more stock. Responsibility for despatching the goods has passed from Si Wilson - who, to be honest, has his hands more than full writing his match previews in between feeding his daughter and cat - to CA's foul-mouthed betting writer extraordinaire Mat Hare, who says: "I'd like to reassure everyone who has ordered a t-shirt that they will be sent out soon. I have 27 orders awaiting my attention and will be dealing with them ASAP." In the meantime you'll just all have to go bare-chested.
As the rain and hail continue to ping down the Diary's chimney, let us turn for enlightenment to some of your emails. "As you reported in today's Diary," writes Michael Shelton (well, he wrote it yesterday actually, so it's yesterday's Diary), "Tony Crane said the referee's reasoning for booking him was that he went off the pitch, but I've just watched the highlights on Mariners World and at no point did he cross the touchline, he stayed on the pitch throughout." I guess it was just a reflex, then. "Having said that, Whatshisname Thingy-Thingy's sending off looked a bit harsh on second viewing as well," concludes Michael. Hush, child - no more o' that!
"I have to confess that the use of the word 'continuating' was a feeble attempt at a joke," writes Guest Diary, in response to Paul Wright's pedantry. "Suffering from an overdose of presidential press conferences, words like this have slipped into my everyday, laconic but ironic, vocabulary. Sorry everyone, but please don't misunderestimate my real grammatical capabilities. They try to be like my uncle, Les Dawson, on the piano. Les knew his neighbour loved his piano playing because he broke his windows (in order to be able to hear the piano playing better)." Come to think of it, Guest, old Les would probably have made a far superior world leader to Dangerous Dubya as well.