Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 13 September 2004

13 September 2004

Following the events of the weekend, we are one step closer to the still distant yet strangely appealing possibility of Darren Mansaram making the journey from official scapegoat (see also: Coldicott, S) to official stick with which to beat board/manager because he's not in the team (see also: Cooke, T; Jevons, P; Hockless, G). What your Diary means, of course, is that Russell Slade's decision to bring in two loan forwards with even less experience than Mansaram while shipping the much-improved Flash out on loan to Halifax looks, at least in the short term, even more bizarre after Saturday, when Chris Williams and Paul Robinson seemingly did little towards averting Town's sad defeat at Macclesfield while Dazman had a blinder in the Shaymen's 4-0 win over Forest Green, scoring the first and setting up the fourth.

GTFC director Michael Rouse has resigned from the board. The only information the Diary has ever received about Rouse from my flock of specially trained surveillance cormorants is that he has a penchant for unpleasant cream-coloured suits, and so we need concern ourselves with him no longer. Town reserves were supposed to be playing Huddersfield's reserves today, but they're not now. It's going to be on Wednesday instead. I think I'll go back to bed.

Colin Cramb, who never quite lived up to his amazing stats in Chammy Manager, is staying with Shrewsbury for the time being. That's in real life, I mean. The stereotypically temperamental forward performed so outstandingly last week on trial for the Mariners' reserves that Russell Slade managed to be impressed in spite of his not actually watching the match, and in the absence of information to the contrary from Town's official website, fans had presumed that Cramb's trial was continuing. OK, the Diary had. It has fallen instead to the Shrews' local paper the Shropshire Star to reveal that the transfer has collapsed. "The Grimsby thing fell through because they couldn't agree the move with Shrewsbury," explains Cramb, adding: "It was to do with wages." Which sounds a little contradictory to this jaded daily news summariser, unless the player's current club were insisting on one of those clauses whereby Town would have to pay the nephew of Shrewsbury's chairman £12 an hour to spend all day on eBay or something.

Gillingham Football Club very kindly or foolishly stuffed 50 big ones into Town's trouser pockets last season for the privilege of inheriting Alan Pouton's injury record - foolishly, one would imagine - and are repenting at leisure by loaning the player back to his native north-east: Hartlepool, to be precise. "Alan has a good range of passing," Pools boss Neale Cooper enthused in his minimalistically titled local paper The Journal last Friday - one day before the player lined up in his new team's 3-2 defeat at Oldham and caused £12,000 worth of damage to the Boundary Park scoreboard with a misplaced through ball to Richie Humphreys.

Finally today, staying on the subject of ex-Mariners, the Diary is indebted to Mark Stilton for bringing to my attention another non-League fixture graced by a plethora of the buggers - and just for once, it didn't involve York City. If you've wondered recently what happened to Liam Nimmo - a regular fixture on the bench of Town's first team as recently as last season - then the answer is he's scoring hat-tricks for Spalding United in the Unibond League. After notching all three goals in their 3-1 win over Kendal at the weekend, the Nimster was replaced by Jamie Lawrence towards the end of the match; I dunno if it was the same one, but former GTFC trialist Brett Chittock, keeping goal for the south Lincolnshire side, was headbutted by Kendal's Lee 'The Pieman' Ashcroft after 62 minutes, resulting in an instant red card for the Mariners' record signing. Wahey!