Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 12 August 2004
12 August 2004
Injury crisis ahoy! Russell Slade could be dragged kicking and screaming into the living hell that is the loan market with the news that amply posteriored centre-half Tony Crane could be sidelined for as long as a year and that Rob Jones will miss this Saturday's visit of Bury with the knee injury he sustained in Tuesday night's draw with Boston. Dean Gordon has begun his three-day coach and horse journey up from the south and could boost the squad while Ronnie Bull recovers from back knack (although if you ask the Diary, old Macca had a good game on Tuesday), but Young Greg's promotion to first-team duty in Jones's absence exhausts Slade's stock of centre-halves, and it could now be only a matter of time before the manager loans one from Sheffield United reserves.
Crane's injury is deemed serious enough to warrant initial capital letters by Town's official website, which describes the gyp as "a Articular Cartilage problem", and if that's a new one on you then Dr Diary is happy to explain that damage to the knee can result in lesions to the articular lining cartilage in the joint and sometimes also injury to the bone. I suspect an arthroscopy will reveal that the latter has occurred in Mr Crane's case, and that he is experiencing pain and swelling when bending the knee. He may need cartilage to be transplanted from an undamaged area of the knee: a notoriously expensive and unreliable treatment which requires a lengthy period of recuperation before the joint can again withstand the rigours of professional football. So it's bad news for the Mariners' bank balance but a great day for Anthony Williams.
Elsewhere on the interhighwaywebnet, BBC Humber Sport has had a facelift, but still doesn't really feel like covering Grimsby Town Football Club, whose official website is inviting you to email John Fenty, Noddy, the players and, hell, just about anyone at the club you feel like, as it were. Which is nice. I think I'll see if any of the team fancy meeting us in Gulliver's this Friday.
Emails to the Diary continue to pour in on all manner of subjects, and today we have an email from Sean Fieldsend, who writes: "Hello CA. First and foremost I must comment on how brilliant your website is, if awards were given for this sort of thing then your website should definitely deserve one." Thank you very much, Sean; as a matter of fact, awards are given for this sort of thing, but the people who give them expect you to ruin your site by putting their banner ad on it. "Now to my point," continues SF. "I have read this website diss the OS for being shit on more than one occasion and I have finally started to agree with you, either this or I am going mad. Admittedly maths has never been my strong point, but Grimsby's new trial striker Gregory Thil (yes, another one) appears to be able to bypass the laws given to humankind, as the OS states he was born March 1980, yet miraculously only manages to be 23!!!!!!!!! Maybe he's some sort of God? Or maybe he's slightly worse than Darren Mansaram? I guess time will tell."
Well, if you ask me, everyone should get the hell off of Darren Mansaram's aching back (myself included). On Tuesday night Sestanovich was getting nothing but applause for the sort of thing - run... run... run... shoot and miss without looking up - that Flash would have got murdered for by the Pontoon. As far as the OS goes... well, they should just let me do it, obviously.
And in the last paragraph to be etched out in Word 2000 by your regular Diary before the weekend, Daniel Braithwaite has emailed again, this time on the subject of Cod Almighty's recent interview with Russell Slade. "I thought that this piece was excellent and really enjoyed reading it," says DB. "However, it is now a little old and would like to see a more recent interview with the supreme one, so as we used to say to Paul Groves, and Nicky Law and the other dozen managers in the past two years, get it sorted!" As long as you don't start booing CA for substituting me when my liver packs up, Dan.