Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 12 September 2006

12 September 2006

There is a first time for everything, and barring disaster between now and this evening Town will be playing at Rochdale without the fixture being postponed because of a waterlogged pitch. Indeed, the playing surface at Spotland is said to be in tip-top condition this season, having undergone... um... whatever it is that football pitches undergo to put them in tip-top condition. The same can not be said, of course, for Grahams Rodgerses'ses'es squad, with two important strikers injured and missing the first half of the season and - thanks to the club's official website for telling us - most of his efforts in the transfer market having come to naught. As if all of that were not cause enough to strengthen our Grimbarian pessimism, Peter Beagrie is reported to be doubtful for tonight's match with whatever it was that meant he had to be substituted in last Saturday's win over Walsall. If we wish to disown our gloomy birthright and consider our glass half full, on the other hand, we can take solace in the news that Martin McIntosh and Sir John McDermott are fit, not to mention the cheery tidings that likeable former Mariners defender Simon Ramsden - who scored his first goal for Dale in the corresponding fixture last season - is writhing in agony on the sidelines.

Paul Bolland has, as everyone knows, recently returned from abduction by aliens to reclaim his place in the Mariners' team from the poor robotic imitation that had replaced him in the meantime, and his considerable efforts in last weekend's victory have been recognised with a place in the Football League's fourth division team of the week thing. These teams are chosen by the Press Association, don't you know, so it's all dead proper journalism and not at all like Teamtalk, which is reporting that Macca "hobbled off during Saturday's 2-1 win against Walsall". Yeah, course he did, Teamtalk. Just like the match saw a healthy attendance, Peter Bore is nothing special really, and Gordon Brown had nothing to do with all that hoo-hah last week about getting rid of Tony Blair.

After his email quoting the News of the World was quoted here yesterday, Guest Diary wishes it to be known that he "does not buy or read" the Sunday shitrag of that name. "I got the info from the BBC sport gossip page," he explains, adding: "I did, however, buy a copy of the Morning Star a few weeks ago." Insert your own left-winger joke here.

Last up today is Mark Wilson, who seems to have found a fatal flaw in one of yesterday's emails to the Diary. "I don't know Dean Brown," he writes, "and I have nothing against him, but I do suspect that he was either under the influence of alcohol or mind-altering drugs when he tried to build a door with fireproof wood. Wood is flammable - that's why you have a wood-burning stove, as opposed to (say) a stone-burning stove." Mark's logic seems unimpeachable - until he asks of yesterday's correspondent: "Didn't he write The Da Vinci Code?" Dean Brown's email was, of course, much better written than The Da Vinci Code.