Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 27 February 2007

27 February 2007

Sorry if yesterday's Diary sort of flippantly skipped over the news, like a thrown flat stone skimming along the surface of Chapman's Pond. Your diarist was feeling pulled under by the weight of gravity, or work, anyway, and it was Monday and Town had lost and everything. You know how it is. Where are we up to, then? Martin Paterson might be off to Wrexham, that's where. The teenage Stokesation returned to, er, Stoke last week after trying a bit too hard to score a goal in his final game with the Mariners before his loan spell was brought to an end by more deplorable administrative blundering by GTFC those pesky official regulations, which apparently won't stop him being signed by Town's rivals in the race to escape relegation from the fourth division. The increasingly unreliable BBC Sport website reports that the Welsh strugglers fancy a bit of the Patster and, while this might leave many a Mariner crying into his or her beer, it would be infinitely preferable to the horrific alternative rumoured last week - that the small object of all our recent footballing desire was on his way to Boston.

With Luton's Michael Reddy still broken, Gaz Cohen still sorting people out, and Isaiah Rankin still aerobically inappropriate, it has fallen to Danny North to pick up the Patto baton, and this month he has seemed to justify some of the infinite faith placed in him by Lord Buckley. North is, of course, a product of Town's cyclical youth system - which tends to produce a few good players all at once, but then the next lot have to get on their bikes and look for work elsewhere - and with the likes of him, Andy Taylor and Straight Peter Bore coming through the ranks all eyes are trained on Neil Woods's team for the next emerging starlets. Another item of news the Diary languidly failed to bring you yesterday was that, for a second successive season, v' yoof have been doing dead well in a cup competition you didn't know existed, two Taylor goals having pulled the team back to a 4-4 draw in a weekend quarter-final against King$ton Communication$ FC Bratz, which Town then took on pennoes. If they're not too busy mugging your gran for her new ringtone, the Mariners' adolescent conquerors will face Chester at home in the last four.

In other, more recent news, Ciaran Toner has been nominated for the fourth division player of the month thing, sponsored by some shitty company or other, following his rejuvenated performances against Boston and Bristol Rovers and his rubbish performance partly redeemed with a well-taken last-minute winning goal against Wrexham; and GTFC have said sorry for the club's website being down at the weekend. There is, however, still no sign of an official apology for the downtime of the team throughout the month of January. See ya tomorrow!