Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 13 June 2005

13 June 2005

Ding ding ding! Official club announcement! Town could be in line for a few quid if the Football League's legal action against its former advisers proves successful next February, according to a statement on the club's official website. The League is suing the suits who it says should have made sure that the scumsucking pondlife of Carlton and Granada couldn't welch on their contractual obligations to pay it loads of money just by closing down ITV Digital. And GTFC, it appears, have successfully lobbied to have the £138m that the League could be awarded distributed among the 72 clubs according to the divisions they were in for the outstanding period of the ITV Digital contract rather than to where they are now. Anything that would mean loads more moolah for Town and loads less for Hull is fine by the Diary, so join me in crossing your fingers. After insisting for most of yesterday that the announcement would be made on Sunday, and then sheepishly altering the page to say Monday at about six o'clock in the evening, the Mariners could clearly do with a few quid to invest in their web department.

Not to mention, of course, their transfer budget. We all know that Forfar were "insulted" by Town's "ludicrous" offer for Paul Shields, but did we know exactly how insulting and ludicrous it was? Yes, now that Loons chairman David McGregor has very helpfully gone public with the details, explaining that Mr Russell Slade "has since... admitted that the offer was a joke and that annoys me even more." So what did this comical bid amount to in pounds of the realm? Five thousand quid up front, it transpires, is the paltry sum that Russ waved hopefully in front of McGregor shortly before being escorted from the premises shouting back: "But it worked for Torquay and Martin Gritton!"

In case you missed it, the honours list thing came out at the weekend, and Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, seems to have decided that 690 appearances in professional football over a period of 18 years with the same club are really not that big a deal, and hence that John McDermott, far from warranting a MBE, CBE, KBE or OBE, and still less a knighthood, should count himself lucky to have food on the table at all, let alone the fact that he is not used as a slave to clean the Duke of Edinburgh's body with his tongue. All of which sounds to me as good a reason as any to storm the gates of Buckingham Palace and execute the entire monarchy.

Jon Maloney. Former Doncaster defender. Aged 20. Wanted by Town, Scunny and Northampton. Probably going to York instead. As you do. Scott Kerr. Scarborough midfielder. Town target. Tapping-up scandal last summer. Now leaving Scarborough. Possibly still Town target. Probably going to Lincoln instead. Or Barnet. As you do.