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Diary - Wednesday 23 November 2005

23 November 2005

Now that another transfer deadline has been invented, lots more transfer tittle-tattle has belatedly sprung up around it, and changes could be afoot at Blundell Park before Thursday. Though not half as bad as everyone thought he would be, Town's former Scunthorpe midfielder Terry Barwick still stands as much chance of being played regularly as the current Sigur Ros album and is, accordingly, discussing a loan move to the York City Home for Discarded Mariners. Town's official website speculates wildly that new players could be arriving to fill the sizeable gap that will be left if hefty centre-half Tony Crane follows Barwick out of BP pending the completion of work to widen the exit doors.

This evening Town's youth players take a break from happy slapping Christmas shoppers at Freshney Place to travel to Lincoln in the second round of the Midland Youth Cup. The Mariners' teenage kickers take on their Impish counterparts after seeing off Tamworth in the tournament's previous round, and I'm not quite sure how a football club with a ground next to the sea can qualify to enter any competition with the word 'Midland' in its title, but that's not the point.

If you haven't already bought it, read it and ate it for your tea then you really ought to be aware that Grimsby Town Supporters Trust has published a book of cartoons by Jim 'Tales from the Park' Connor, with whose splendid work you may be familiar from the pages of Sing When We're Fishing and Town's matchday programme. Ten quid, ideal Christmas gift, etc. This is probably also a good time to remind you of the excellent buy.at portal thingy, by which GTFC fans can raise cash for the trust while buying books and DVDs and things, and which in the Diary's opinion really doesn't get enough publicity, assuming that the cash-raising deal is still in place. Check it out; send the link on to your non-Diary-reading and even non-Town-supporting mates; and do something good while you relieve your dirty consumerist urges.

Oxford-area Mariner Andy Lumbard has emailed the Diary on the subject of the travel guide currently showing on Town's official website. "You have brought the pedant out in me," he writes. "The pub by the ground really is The Priory and ? Although as for a pre-match pint I was under the impression it was for homers only." Surely the OS wouldn't direct travelling GTFC fans to a pub they weren't allowed into? That would be terrible! "Might I suggest the couple of pubs in Sandford-on-Thames, about as far from the ground as the Rutland is." Well, Andy, you must be in considerably better shape than the Diary, is all I can say, since the Rutland is about 200 miles from the Kassam Sta... oh... right, I see. "Expect some pretty hefty roadworks on the A34 after leaving the M40. It is down to single carriageway contraflow on weekends. It would've been OK if it were a Friday night!" Shhhhh!