Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 31 July 2006

31 July 2006

As Steve Livingstone once said to John Achterberg, you've got to ask yourself a question: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? The Diary certainly does, because whoever penned Saturday's unauthorised pirate Diary has saved me the trouble of telling you all about Town's friendly against Stoke last Friday night. Hooray!

So that just leaves today's transfer news, and Grahams Rodgerses has signed an exciting young central defender, who can pass the ball and read the game superbly and is strong both in the air and on the ground, to partner Justin Whittle in the heart of the Mariners' back four as the new season kicks off against Boston in five days' time. No, he hasn't. I'm only joking. It's still going to be Fen Butcher, and Town have still only signed four players this summer to replace Rob Jones, Marc Goodfellow, Jean-Paul Kalala, Steve Mildenhall, Curtis Woodhouse, Glen Downey, Junior Mendes and Andy Parkinson. And Jermaine Palmer and John Lukic, if you want to be all spotty and trainspottery about it. You do? OK then. Sort it Rodgers, etc etc. In the diesel age there's never been anything to replace the 31 class BR loco.

So that just leaves the team news for tonight's Cod Almighty-commentated friendly against Leeds. Town's official website tells us that Luton's Michael Reddy is broken again, while Gary Cohen is still broken. Gary Croft is quite broken, and Paul Bolland is a little bit broken. "The number of free juniors is issued," adds the OS mysteriously. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Oh, and there's some stuff on the internet somewhere about Leeds wanting to sign Luton's Michael Reddy. You never know, but it looks very much like somebody has put two and two together and come up with a life-size model of a brontosaurus wearing turquoise stilettos.

So that just leaves your emails to the Diary. First up it's the Meggies Rockchick Manhunter, who shows that whether the Leeds rumours are true or not, Town's star striker is being closely watched in some quarters. "I'd just like to inform you that last night," she writes, "whilst visiting a local cinema, EVB, Ms Wildthing and myself spotted none other than the long-term injured 'Super Mike', Luton's Michael Reddy, and he was wearing flip-flops and purchasing a Cornetto. Now come on, is that the behaviour of a man with a groin strain??!! We all know that eating ice-cream based products makes you fat and wearing flip-flops makes you walk funny. Both actions therefore could aggravate and prolong his current injury. Don't our players care any more? All this and the season hasn't even started yet." MRM fails to address the real issue here, though, which is whether Reddy was sitting too near the front and thus risking an aggravation of the neck strain he is still carrying after two seasons of Sladeball.

Well, today's has been quite a good Diary after all, and is all the more satisfying for having taken me all of five minutes to knock out, instead of the usual tortuous seven. "Noticed how the auction for naming the gates finished at 28-Jul-06 23:46:18 BST?" asks Loughborough Mariner, and I must admit that I had not. "Think it is a cynical marketing ploy to catch out people tottering in from the pub on a Friday evening feeling a little tipsy? Imagine waking up the next morning with a hazy recollection of spending a few hundred pounds on something useless and then getting your credit card statement showing that you've bought a pair of gates on eBay! Perhaps our commercial department aren't as inept as they seem!" Well spotted, LM. Similarly, perhaps someone from the club will be treating Ken Bates and Kevin Blackwell to a few shandies the night before the next transfer deadline.