Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 4 October 2004

4 October 2004

Rather than copy and paste this story from The Scotsman about Terrell Forbes' appearance at the Old Bailey last Friday on charges of rape, and pass it off as my own work, I will summarise it for you. The former QPR defender, who enjoyed another excellent game for the Mariners later the same day, was granted bail, along with his five co-defendants, until the trial itself begins on 15 November. Which seems a bit pointless to the Diary: I thought he was already out on bail, because the courts had allowed an amendment to his bail conditions so that he could stay in Meggies while he plays for Town, but there you go. I only watched This Life because I fancied that girl who played the temp.

Should Forbes be found guilty next month, his place in the GTFC backline could be reclaimed by Rob Jones, the Dock Tower-sized centre-half who arrived in the summer from Stockport with mixed reports but looked quite good until acquiring knee-related distress back in August. Jones made his comeback in the Football League Trophy defeat at Carlisle last Tuesday and sat out the profligate 1-1 draw against Cheltenham on Friday night, but is reported by the Grimsby Telegraph to be back in action as the reserves travel to Boston tomorrow. And because he is not a foreign trialist and this is not the club's official site, who are we to suspect otherwise.

Colin Cramb may very well have spent most of Friday evening wondering how many more good positions Ashley Sestanovich would squander before Russell Slade would do the obvious and substitute the former for the latter, but at least he was in Cleethorpes to watch. Darren Mansaram's excellent season, you will be interested to note, has continued with a third goal for Halifax, this time in the Yorkshire side's 2-1 victory over Exeter on Saturday. The Flasher opened the scoring early in the second half and could already have had at least one more in the first were it not for an apparently over-officious linesman. In case you missed it at the end of last week, Mr Slade has insisted, as a condition of Mazzer's second month on loan at the Shay, that the player can be recalled to Blundell Park at 24 hours' notice should Sestanovich continue to play like a man with an obsessive fear of fire and throw matches away.

"Sheer genius," writes Phil Watson - not about Ashley Sestanovich, but about the Diary's poem about Ashley Sestanovich (below). "Made me laugh out loud, which not much does. Thanks." No, thank you, Phil - it's nice to get some validation, since I'm not sure Mrs Diary appreciated it quite so much when I was sitting up in bed at seven o'clock on Saturday morning with a pen and notepad in my hand, murmuring: "Ban... can... dan..."