Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 6 September 2004

6 September 2004

If Special Guest Diary thinks Fridays are slow news days, he ought to try Mondays. All that ever happens on Mondays is whoever happens to be managing Town at that point saying: "Ooh, no, we're really good, honest; we just were a bit unlucky/got robbed by the ref/didn't get the run of the ball/are having a bad run of injuries/need to start converting our dominance into points" (delete as applicable). That said, I am able to report that Darren Mansaram had a stormer of a debut for Halifax, having come off the bench nine minutes in to make a major contribution to the side's 3-2 win at Hereford, and to road safety. I haven't got anything against Chris Williams personally, and he's quite good on the ball; I just can't see why we've sent out a 20-year-old striker on loan to build up his confidence and brought in a 19-year-old striker on loan who doesn't have any confidence.

Speaking of strikers, Town are rumoured to be interested in fat waster Adam Proudlock, who has turned out to be no more use at Hillsborough than he was at Molineux, and who a few years ago rejected a loan move to Blundell Park because he didn't want to be involved in a relegation battle - and then moved to relegation-threatened Sheffield Wednesday. Owls boss Chris Turner has lost patience with Proudlock's lardiness and tardiness, but a number of other clubs are believed to be keen on the player, and the pies in Oldham ought to prove a bigger attraction than anything the Mariners could offer. Two new trialists will line up for the reserves against York this afternoon, though: Ashley Hudson is the son of former Chelsea and Arsenal legend, it says here, and I'm sure I heard a fan on the radio last week saying Colin Cramb was the worst player ever to appear for whoever it was they supported. Fans, though - what do they know, eh.

And yes, we had a letter from a solicitor. I always nurtured a fond hope that the first such missive Cod Almighty would receive would be from the legal representatives of Carlton and Granada TV, ordering us to stop denouncing their clients for welching on the millions of pounds they owed to football clubs, and we'd become involved in a terribly exciting high-profile courtroom wrangle in which the Diary, Letters Ed and Mat Hare would be catapulted into the limelight and universally hailed as fanzine heroes, standing up for the ordinary supporter against the corporate pillagers of the game. Instead, this is the last you will hear on the matter, as we are hardly likely to derive much kudos when the lawyers get shirty about a half-arsed slanging match between a provincial journalist and a sociology student with too much time on their hands.