Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Friday 17 March 2006
17 March 2006
As a young man your Guest Diarist was advised to try everything once, except incest and folk dancing. And the more you think about it, the wiser that adage is. Sadly I was an attendee at the Cleethorpes folk festival sometime in the mid 1970s and so succumbed, under the influence of about eight pints of Watneys bleedin' Red Barrel, to the latter pursuit. Not a pretty sight, and the passing years have not really mellowed the experience. A bit like all the times around then we used to drag ourselves off to Bury in the moggy van to watch Town draw in the most dispiriting series of matches that I ever had the misfortune to attend. At least we are at home tomorrow. For similarly nostalgic and somewhat masochistic reasons I've listened to the worst album ever made again this morning: Inner Views by Sonny Bono. Sample lyric: "Your mother's cooking sturgeon/Your sister's still a virgin". That's what happens when you feed a Republican acid. You should have stayed on the Red Barrel, Sonny, then you might have missed that tree. But I seem to digress.
Your Guest Diarist's older sister lives at the posh end of Bury and, in response to an email this morning, has reported that none of her neighbours ever mention the football but adds that Bury has a very nice market and that she often bumps in to Corrie cast members in Ramsbottom. Especially that young lass who went off with Status Quo. So perhaps it's better to rely on the Bury official site for news. This tells me that Bury have woken up to the fact that they need to score a few more goals and taken young Jon Daly on loan from Hartlepool. Daly is a 23-year-old, tall, hot-headed Irishman, and hopefully does not have a penchant for debut goals. Bury manager Mr Casper was daft enough to engineer the closing down of the club's messageboard last week because the people posting to it were "spreading unneccessary negativity". I suppose fear of Conference football had something to do with it. In an embarrassing volte-face he re-opened it 24 hours later.
Town, on the other hand, need no new players to jolt their season back into life, and are inured to fans' criticism of their ugly playing style. This is because they signed a load of players in January and Mr Slade just don't care what they have to do in order to finish in the top three. Not that some of the new signings have perceptibly increased the strength in depth of the squad yet. The signing of new midfield players suddenly made us realise the value of Ciaran Toner - in a similar way that getting a Totopoly set made you realise how good Monopoly actually was when you were twelve. Horses or no horses.
The Telewag tells us that Mr Slade is likely to rest young Mr Reddy's groin tomorrow so that he will be firing on both barrels against Lincoln next week. Let's not think too hard about that analogy, shall we, gentle reader? So it looks like Cohen and the Lump up top tomorrow, with the only speculation remaining being about the right side of midfield. Parky or Mendes. Mr Slade told the Telegraph that Parky has looked sharp in training and may get the nod. So that seems to be a bit of a hint really. Or maybe the manager was referring to Parky's astonishing arithmetical prowess as revealed in his interview with the Telegraph: "I think sometimes it's better to win and lose games rather than draw games. A point isn't a great accomplishment these days at times. If you lose a game and then win the game after that it gets you more points than two draws." Eat your heart out Andy Holt - not a graph in sight. See yer.