Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 2 September 2004

2 September 2004

As deep ends go, being thrust into a struggling second-flight team as a lone striker at the age of 18 is pretty much the footballing equivalent of having to retrieve a brick from the bottom of Scafferbaffs while wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown and slippers. Such was the fate of Darren Mansaram, though, within weeks of signing his first professional contract with Grimsby Town Football Club - not that his myopic detractors bear any of this in mind when myopically detracting - when a far more helpful introduction to the rigours of the full-time game might have been a loan to a lower-division side. Now that Town are a lower-division side, they have to loan him to a Conference side, and at last this looks likely to go ahead, Halifax being Flash's likely destination.

Town's official website says nothing about the above-mentioned transfer being a loan, in fact, leaving the reader to infer that Dazman is Shay-bound in a permanent kinda way, but more reliable sources such as Sporting Life and the Grimsby Telegraph attest to the transient nature of the switch. "Hopefully it will make him sharper and work out for him," explains Noddy. "He will benefit from more experience." Aye, and hopefully the spectators who boo Flash for nothing worse than their new best mate Ashley does on a more frequent basis will desist. I bet they're the same sort of rotten buggers who rang up Radio Five Live the other week to have a go at Paula Radcliffe. Why won't you change? Change and be nice.

Our Russ is still after bringing in a loan striker in time for Saturday's visit of Rochdale, though whether this will be Paul Robinson XVII, who turned out in yesterday's reserve match at Scunthorpe, is not yet certain, probably because it sounds like Slade didn't even see the match ("By all accounts, Paul did okay for the reserves," he tells the Telegraph, giving the Diary the chance to fulfil the ambition of an academic lifetime and use the phrase 'my italics'). In as much as its result is important, he missed the second string go down by two Scunthorpian goals to one Graham Hockless free kick. And won't it be funny how nobody moans about Hockless's omission from the first team now that the club has a new chairman.