Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 6 June 2008

6 June 2008

Although, for perhaps obvious reasons, the superb new official site won't admit it, there is no way that Town will be allowed to sign Rob Atkinson. How does your Guest Diarist know this? Because the Sheffield Star told me. The article points out that the Barnsley management team feel he has the makings of a decent centre-half, and they are not wrong, are they?

The article goes on to describe the potential Oakwellian centre-half pecking order thus: "Atkinson could be pushed into Barnsley first team squad if, as expected, Lewin Nyatanga does not return in July. That could make Atkinson third choice centre-back behind Stephen Foster and Denis Souza." However, if Mr Nyatanga graced the Barnsley turf with his presence after all, there is, I suppose, the faintest glimmer that we could borrow Atko again for a while. And that would be very nice indeed (he says, in a sort of hopelessly positive way).

Meanwhile Town's favourite utility player, scorer of few but great goals and exciting free kick taker (when they give him the chance) has been allowed to sign up for another season, along with the best goalie we have never played. Well, not quite never, but not perhaps often enough to keep him sharp. Thus the names of Clarke and Montgomery can be added to the alarmingly large number of players whose contracts expire a year from now. Conspiracy theorists will make much no doubt of the fact that a dozen or more players have one season left at Town before their contracts expire: Buckley's last chance, we need to manage without players for a year or two while we try to raise some money for the Fentydome, etc, etc.

Whatever the reason, as it stands we will only have Hegggaarty, North, Taylor and Bird on contract next June, which will make for interesting times indeed.

The Cod Almighty T-shirt man has let me know that a few Hull fans have ordered the new Justin Whittle T-shirt this week. And, despite their lofty status at the moment, there are quite a few more who can still be bothered to hate Grimsby. He also says that if you are a person who is much smaller than average, or a big fat bastard, and you are thinking about getting one then you should order this weekend as, after the first order run, sizes S, 2XL and 3XL and bigger won't be carried as standard. The reason for this is that otherwise the tiny profit we make (which will be heading to GTFC, by the way) will be sitting in the T-shirt man's spare bedroom as unsold stock in odd sizes. Due to popular male demand, the girly tight-fit ones will remain available forever, however.

So we've had some emails from Diary readers. Felix Oliver-Tasker has been to the windy city for what he describes as a 'short holiday break'. There he watched the Chicago Cubs play a baseball game and was pleasantly surprised that he got a really good seat for just over fourteen quid. Felix says: "I know baseball is only glorified rounders but it was comparable to going to a Premier League match." The point being, presumably, that it is cheaper than watching Town or a Premier team. But there is a solution to this, gentle reader. Get your bosses to pay you in euros. A euro is worth 17 per cent more pounds than it was a year ago, just like the dollar is worth an awful lot less than it was before the Iraq war started. So baseball might look cheap nowadays but when you convert your euros then Town's tickets will look cheap too. Erm, won't they?

Have I made your brain hurt? Well, medical man Felix goes on to share this with us: "To end with a joke that's going around the department, she was only a clap doctor's daughter but she knew every man that mattered."

And that slightly irascible psychologist from Peterborough has been going on again trying to explain that he was only trying to impersonate Homer Simpson when he was ranting on about Knebworth and Genesis and that earlier in the week. And begging us to call it quits. Now I understand why the scriptwriters on The Simpsons get about a million bucks an episode these days. Even the guy who does Homer's voice gets $400,000 an episode for just reading the script out. It's because they are both clever and funny. It's hard to be both, I reckon. Me? I'm just a lawnmower... you can tell me by the way I walk. Time for my tablets I think. See yer.