Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 29 November 2005

29 November 2005

Once upon a time, before the Cod Wars had finished, not in a galaxy far, far away but at a muddy football ground in the Black Country, a 16-year-old substitute called Tony Ford became the youngest player in the history of Grimsby Town Football Club, just weeks after leaving school and signing for the Mariners. By the time he signed for Stoke City in 1986 Ford had racked up more than 400 appearances for his hometown club, scoring 60 goals, and returned to feature in Alan Buckley's famous teams of the early 1990s, where he played in another 70-odd games. Spells at West Brom, Mansfield, Scunthorpe and Rochdale took our Tone's career total to 931 appearances - the all-time English record for an outfield player - and the player received an MBE for his efforts in 2000. In his current capacity as assistant manager at Rochdale, Ford will be returning to Blundell Park with his team next Tuesday and will be signing copies of his biography, The Tony Ford Story by Keith Haynes and Phil Sumbler, in the club shop before the game. Smart!

Some might say the Diary can be a little cruel to Town's official website, but today if I wore a hat then I would take it off to the club's online organ in delighted admiration. GTFC are auctioning off the shirt worn by recent failed trialist Steve Slade for his one appearance for the club in the Light Commercial Vehicles Trophy match against Morecambe, attended by barely more than 1,000 spectators: not, by any reckoning, a must-have piece of memorabilia for even the diehardest of Town fans. Rather than try and pretend that lot 2,493 is as desirable an item as, say, the underpants worn by Wayne Burnett when he scored at Wembley in '98, the OS has made a virtue of the shirt's unique selling point and marketed the auction by admitting that "Steve Slade is a name that Town fans will struggle to remember in years to come" and that his shirt was worn "for just 55 minutes". You just have to admire the sheer chutzpah of this one, and the Diary looks forward keenly to next week's auction for the left sock worn by John Thorrington in his second-half cameo at Loftus Road.

Russell Slade has denied, with a laugh, a rumour made up last week on a disreputable football gossip website that he would be loaning Manchester United forward Giuseppe Rossi, which nobody believed in the first place and the only surprising aspect of which was that anyone was bored enough to ask Slade about it at all. It's a bit like Town's last season in the second flight, when the side was being thrashed roundly on an almost weekly basis and the Diary fired off a lame-ass gag about Danny Coyne having a repetitive strain injury after he had to pick the ball out of the net so many times, and the BBC picked it up and reported in the team news for the next match that Coyne was doubtful with a back strain.

And finally today, David Weir has not threatened to "do" Alan Shearer.