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Diary - Thursday 1 April 2004

1 April 2004

Both halves of Town's international duo saw wins in yesterday's friendlies - from the bench. In the afternoon the Mariners' on-loan keeper Alan Fettis made the subs' bench but not the pitch in Estonia as Northern Ireland notched up a first win in 16 games, by one goal to nil, in front of a crowd of Blundell Park-like sparsity. Darren Barnard, likewise, was an unused substitute as his squadmates recorded a respectable 2-1 victory in Hungary last night, and may never add to his 20-odd Welsh caps after losing his place to Leicester defender Ben Thatcher, who recently became eligible to play for the principality despite being neither Welsh nor any good. One of Fettis' goalkeeping predecessors at GTFC, Danny Coyne, made a rare appearance for Wales in the match, though, as a second-half substitute for Paul Jones. Finally, former Town loanee Richard Hughes made it a bench-warming hat-trick by not getting a run-out in Scotland's 2-1 home defeat to Romania. OK, I'm scraping the barrel now.

Perchance the Diary speaks too soon in characterising Blundell Park as a desolate mausoleum of despair, as this weekend's opponents Sheffield Wednesday brashly proclaim to the world that they have shifted a veritable shedload of tickets, and the Telegraph is rife with crazy talk of a sell-out crowd. What they really mean, though - given that the capacity at BP is 10,033, if you count the beanbags and deckchairs, and that 5,000 counts as a big crowd this season - is simply that the South Yorkists will most likely clear their allocation of 2,400. Should Saturday's gate actually top 7k, this jaded and depressed daily news summariser will be most mightily and happily surprised.

The sigh of relief from Blackpool and Queen's Park Rangers defenders is almost audible from Lincolnshire as Town announce that Darren Mansaram has been banned for two games following his sending-off against Chesterfield last weekend and will miss the Easter encounters with said second division rivals. You learn something new every day, and today the Diary has learned that there is such a thing as a two-match ban. Well well. See you Saturday.