Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 10 June 2005

10 June 2005

"Fenty fails to sign free-scoring Forfar forward for a fiver". Hello, Miss Guest Diary here drafted in at short notice to fill the gap left by your more regular guest diarists. I thought I'd try my hand at tabloid-style hackery to bring you the news that Town have failed to sign Paul Shields from Forfar after making an offer their manager describes as "insulting quite frankly". Do we give a damn? My first thought on reading this news story was: "If Town have got money to spend on players, why can't they use it to improve the contract offer to Stace, everyone's favourite yard-dog." And my second thought was: "Why do Town need another striker when we've got Redds, Gritts, Parky, Northy and Heggo".

You can tell I've been perusing my season ticket renewal leaflet, which features pictures of the above - plus Rambo, Macca, Craney and Jona. Where do these nicknames come from? Is there a special FA rule which says if your name ends in a vowel you shorten it and add an 's' (hence Reddy to Redds) but if it already ends in an 's' you take that off and change the end vowel (so Jones to Jona). And why is Gritton "Gritts" and not "Gritty"? We need some clarification, some proper rules along the lines of "I before E but not after C" which I remember from my junior school English classes. Any suggestions?

Some late-breaking news yesterday from BBC Humber was Carlisle's "capture of former Grimsby goalkeeper Anthony Williams". Williams is described as being "ever-present"; one of those expressions which seem only to crop up in football new stories. My favourite is "rounding the keeper" - can the verb "rounding" ever be used in any other context? I digress. My first thought on hearing this news was: "Well that's one relegation place taken care of for next season."

I haven't been able to find any other news (not that I tried very hard - I think all this trawling of teletext and the internet for transfer news is a male thing) but, following on from yesterday's diary, I do have a summer reading recommendation for you. This book is not about football, or even about sport, but I found it to be an enjoyable and thought-provoking read: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. You'll gather by the spelling of 'traveler' that it's an American novel, but give it a go anyway. Cheers.