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Diary - Thursday 8 December 2005

8 December 2005

He hit the headlines for scoring That Goal against Tottenham on a dreamy night back in September but in the three and a bit months since, Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala has proved himself all too dispensible to the Mariners' fourth division promotion challenge. Since missing his club's 3-1 win over Macclesfield last month for his country's friendly against Tunisia (which was abandoned when fans invaded the pitch for the third time), the DR Congo international has not been the first name on Russell Slade's teamsheet; and even when he returned to the starting line-up against Rochdale earlier this week, the Mariners' four goals all followed JPK's subbing-off after 60 minutes. Today's news, broken by the Grimsby Telegraph, that Kalala could miss this Saturday's game against Bristol Rovers is unlikely, then, to worry the manager and supporters (still less Ciaran Toner) as much as it would have a couple of months ago. The Diary, naturally, is more troubled by the fact that the Telegraph website illustrates the story with a photograph of Michael Reddy.

Town's youth players will have plenty of evenings free to abuse customers walking into and out of their local Spar shop now that their run in the FA Youth Cup is over. Against Port Vale last night the Mariners' non-international bright young things did well to reduce a three-goal half-time deficit to a final score of 3-2, with goals from Andy Bird and Danny North, but it's Vale's youngsters who progress to a third round tie against Brighton and Town's who resume the pursuit of anti-social behaviour orders.

And on that anticlimatic note, your regular Diary bids you ta-ta for another week, leaving you for Friday to the mercies of fate and substitute diarists. Oh, but if you know a builder around Grimmo who does loft conversions, could you please email diary@codalmighty.com with details. The Diary's mum is moving house in the new year and fancies getting the attic done up. Ta! See you at the weekend.