Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 17 October 2005

17 October 2005

If somebody told you Town were signing a 34-year-old centre-half who is currently with the club that is bottom of the entire league, and he can't even get in their first team, you'd probably say: "Booo Slade booo, sack the board, kill whitey!" And that would show just exactly how much you know, sunshine, because that was Town signing Paul Futcher in 1991. Don't be too cynical, then, about the fact that Town are trialing a 30-year-old striker whose career in the four senior divisions has yielded a total of seven goals. Steve 'No Relation' Slade began his career with Tottenham and moved in 1996, for a fee of £350,000, to QPR, where his 27 league starts and 42 appearances as a substitute brought him six of those seven (including one in a 3-0 win over Kenny Swain's shortly-to-be-relegated Mariners side in April 1997). After that Slade played a handful of games apiece at Brentford and Cambridge before slipping into non-League in 2000, where he has worked his way through a multitude of part-time sides scattered across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Essex (the most recent that the Diary can find being Barking & East Ham United of the Southern League Division One East). The new Bradley Allen, anyone? Oh, go on - smile.

Supporters who will simply die if they don't get a glimpse of hotshot Slade the Player almost immediately are advised that the trialist will, strangely, be eligible to play in tomorrow night's Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy game against Morecambe (or so the Mariners' official website tells us, anyway). Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, the one-match suspension Tom Newey incurred by collecting his 280th yellow card of the season at Cheltenham on Friday will apply for this game, and with far more important things to worry about than the possibility of a £½m payday at the tournament's Millennium Stadium finale, Slade the Manager is planning to 'rest' several of his first-team squad. With expectations thus diminished, it'll 'only' cost a tenner to get in on Tuesday, and only the Beer Stand will be open. Live the dream.

Next, more of the Diary's increasingly desperate attempts to squeeze a story out of Town's increasingly desperate attempts to squeeze a few more quid out of next week's League Cup game against Newcastle. A couple of days last week, you will recall, the best we could do for news was whether the club would be allowed to put up a few more seats in the corner between the Osmond and the Beer Stand, and at times we were reduced to wondering who was going to be at the meeting where they decided, and arguing with GTFC's official website about when the meeting was going to be held. If you are reading these words then I will assume that you've clicked on to today's Diary without assistance and hence came through last week without chewing off your own arms in exasperated boredom. You will no doubt be thrilled to learn today, then, that provisional approval has been given for an extra 228 seats, though the club's request for permission to install 600 was refused. Please do embarrass yourselves and the ticket office staff by asking for additional tickets for the Newcastle game.