Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 21 February 2008
21 February 2008
In the heat of battle many things are said and done which are regretted later. Or, at the very least, not really meant. Unless you're Neil Warnock, in which case the only thing you'd regret would be not swearing quite enough. Sam Hird, on the other hand, is a case in point. Tactically substituted after just 19 minutes of Town's rubbish 4-1 defeat by Dagenham last weekend, the young loanee's last action in a Grimsby Town shirt before returning to Doncaster was to storm angrily to the dressing room without so much as a by-your-leave, and in fact he may even have angrily ripped his Grimsby Town shirt off at some point. Undeterred by this outburst, Lord Alan Buckley remains interested in signing Hird permanently when his contract at Donny runs out in the summer - and undeterred by being substituted after just 19 minutes, Hird remains interested in such a move. "We'll just have to see how things go in the summer and I'll weigh it up," he is quoted unangrily in the Grimsby Telegraph. "I know Grimsby are interested so that's nice." Perhaps Alan and Sam will be like one of those couples whose constant arguments and fighting ultimately only prove their mutual love - though the Diary will refrain from speculating as to which one might be Ozzy and which one's Sharon.
Friday football is shit, and so the Diary applauds Town's next opponents Wrexham for having moved this weekend's fixture back to Saturday 23 February from the obscene and unnatural position it had previously been switched to. But have they remembered to tell everyone? BBC Sport puts up the empty pages that will later be filled with team news on the day before a fixture takes place, and so it is worrying that they've done one for the Wrexham game already and not for any other games in the fourth division. True, the BBC is not Sir John McDermott, and thus makes mistakes from time to time. But the Football League still seems to be sending four match officials over to the Racecourse Ground for a Friday night fixture. Let's hope their budget runs to an extra night in a hotel.
"2pm target time for publication?" begins an email from Durham Diary. "Why didn't anyone tell me? Please extend apologies to anyone who has ever tuned in at 2pm only to find I was, in fact, still in bed. Go on, admit it: you're all jealous." Admit it? I don't think we ever concealed the fact. Are you still OK to do tomorrow's Diary, then, Durham? "Anyway, I went on the SNOS today and was greeted by a picture of Isisisiaisiasiasih Rankin and an enormous caption reading '4 day trial only 99p'. Do you think this is a spot of wishful thinking on Town's behalf? In that had we been given a 4-day trial of Rankin for only 99p prior to re-signing him we would, probably, have instead resigned him?" Well, that's how it worked with Laurens ten Heuvel.