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Diary - Thursday 31 January 2008

31 January 2008

Two years ago the table-topping Mariners were doing so much business during the January transfer window - bringing in Junior Mendes, selling Luton's Michael Reddy to Luton - that your poor overworked Diary was forced to keep adding updates all afternoon on deadline day. Today, in stark contrast, the only sound emanating from Blundell Park is a little whisper about Town knocking back Dundee's enquiry for Nick Hegarty and a sotto voce repeat of the news we already knew about Lord Alan Buckley wanting to keep Sam Hird and Blond Bob Atkinson on loan for the rest of the season. The club's superb new official website wishes to reassure us that club officials now know the rules - that season-long loans must be finalised by 31 January - so there won't be a repeat of last season's Princess Martin Paterson debacle as the manager spends this afternoon yapping frantically to his counterparts at Barnsley and Doncaster. And that, reader, is just about your lot. By the by, the term 'emergency loan' still seems unnecessarily alarming to the Diary, although given Town's league position at the time of Hird's and Atkinson's arrival it may not be entirely unjustified.

Grimsby Town reserves will be renamed Grimsby Town reverses if their years-long run of opposite form to the first team's goes on much longer! The second string couldn't stop winning during the first XI's calamitous form earlier this season, and now both sets of tables are turned backwards, inside out and back to front, with a 3-0 defeat for Stuart Watkisses's side at home to Barnsley yesterday. Justin Whittle, Straight Peter Bore, Peter Till, Isaiah Rankin, Andy Taylor and Nathan Jarman couldn't stop the Tykes taking a three-goal first-half lead, and while the SNOS insists that Town's stiffs turned in "a much-improved performance in the second period", the Grimsby Telegraph shrugs: "The second half was a non-event as both sides lacked creativity." We have a difference of opinion, Geoffrey, as that Tory comedian/gameshow host used to say on the telly in the 1980s.

That's yer lot from me for the week then, but come ye back tomorrow as Guest Diary assesses Paul Bolland's ankle and rubs his chin sagely at Buckley's latest waggish pronouncements on Mariners World. Bye!