Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 5 May 2005
5 May 2005
Having taken a look at a player called Jermaine and then decided not to bother, the big boss guys at GTFC have remembered the other thing you need to be taken seriously these days as a forward-thinking, going-places club, and decided to issue one of their occasional new statements about that new stadium thing. BBC Humber has recently quoted Positive John to the effect that if Town don't get their arses in gear sharpish then they will "lose the allocation", whatever the chuffing heck that means. Today, then, the club has explained that it is "hoping to obtain grant assistance towards funding a feasibility study, that would include obtaining planning permission", which still doesn't mean much to me, but if they don't get planning permission by 2007 then it's all over. Oh, and the site lacks "credabilty", as well, apparently (the plot of land at Great Coates, I mean, not www.gtfc.co.uk), which means eight out of ten people who own lots of shops, when asked whether they'd like to build another one near Town's new stadium, go "ha ha ha ha" and put the phone down.
Concussed centre-half Rob Jones is staging a festival of self-pity in an interview appearing now on the club's OS. "It is massively disappointing [to have to relax in the stand drinking tea on a sunny day escaping any blame for your team getting tonked at home by Southend]," laments the lanky defender. "I've been in and out a lot this season, but I think I've proved in the last four games what Rob Jones is all about," adds the player, supplementing his defensive arsenal of heading, marking and blocking with a world-class display of referring to himself in the third person.
So, OK, I got around to a bit of digging about Sir Brian Maw-thingy's two-penn'orth about the future structure of the FA. The governing body is being examined in something called the Burns review, which is receiving submissions from the Football League and the Premier League giving their views about how things should be done. Most of what Sir Bri has proposed on behalf of the Football League doesn't look terribly interesting, really - it's all "this is how many seats should go around this desks and these are the tedious suits who should sit in them", when it ought to be "RAGE! REVOLUTION! DEATH TO CHELSEA!" - but what is worthy of attention is the fact that the Premier League, in contrast to the FL, has refused to make public its submission to the Burns review. The only reason the Diary can conceive of for this is that it would reflect badly on the Premier League, because it's probably all "MORE MONEY FOR US! DEATH TO THE SMALL CLUBS!" A bit like the people who are least willing to tell you who they're voting for always being Tories.
What next? Why, it's an email from Michael Shelton, aka Durham Diary, who wishes to announce: "They do things differently up north." How so, MSakaDD? "Now that it's cricket season, Peter Moores has become director of the National Academy. Hence the Durham County Cricket Club website runs a headline about an interview with Peter Moore. Oh to be back home where people know whether names end in an S or not." Indeed - it's only a week, after all, since a contributor to CA's letters page demonstrated that, although the time of Bobby Cumming may be long past, we Grimbarians still remember that his name really ended in an S. Got a punchline for us, then, Mikey? "Good luck to Slades and the squad for next season." Lovely.
That's it from your regular Diary-dude, then, for the final week of this only moderately disappointing season. Come back tomorrow, though, for a generous helping of guesty goodness, and come back again after that for, umÂ… well, we'll blow up that bridge when we come to it. Thanks for reading.