Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 26 July 2006

26 July 2006

Grahams Rodgerses's assistant manager has been revealed as Stuart Watkiss - or Stuarts Watkisses, as he will undoubtedly be rechristened on the streets of Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Wozza, as the Diary has decided to call him for the time being, began his managerial career at Mansfield, where his playing days ended in 1998 and he replaced Tony Ford as youth team coach, bringing a number of players through into the Football League before eventually becoming manager in 2002 and guiding the team to promotion. He was rewarded with a three-year contract extension and sacked six months later. Then he managed Kidderminster and didn't do very well but, to be frank, nobody would have done very well at Kidderminster at the time. As a player the Wozmeister, as I will call him for the rest of this paragraph, started out at Wolves at around the same time as Rodgerses, booo nepotisms or whatever booo, before a spell in part-time football during which he worked for the Post Office, and Town fans will be hoping he can stamp his mark on the job by delivering some first-class football at Blundell Park. Yes, I am after a job on the Grimsby Telegraph.

"It's great to announce that the board of directors have granted recently appointed Town manager Graham Rodger a testimonial match," beams the Mariners' official website today, in a piece littered with more 'misplaced' inverted 'commas' than Freemo market ('DISH CLOTHS' 5 FOR £1!!!). The question readers are most likely to be asking, though, is that if GTFC think it's so great to announce that next Monday's friendly against Leeds is being for the benefit of Mr Rodgerses, why didn't they do so until two days after Leeds announced it?

In other Grimsby news, town leaders have announced plans to build a new training establishment for the seafood industry on the Europarc industrial estate. The proposed £5m Humber Seafood Institute, according to Fish Update, would be financed jointly by the Government and - bizarrely - the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, and eventually expand to become Britain's first 'fishing university'. Academics are already being recruited to teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses covering overfishing denial, advanced Europe-blaming, and the thermal and optical performance of the yellow sou'wester.