Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Friday 18 July 2008
18 July 2008
Last Friday, your Guest Diarist trumpeted - well, tooted anyway - the fact that Town had come through the first week of pre-season unscathed. Since then the first friendly was washed out, the second was a debacle from the Town performance point of view - leading Mr Watkisses to use the word 'dysfunctional' and Lord Buckley to be "very disappointed" with the performance of certain, unnamed players - and Bosh has done his ankle big time. In an interview with Dale on Mariners World, Buckley really put the shits up me as he muttered about how bad the injury looked and that he might have to go in to the market for a replacement. But the official site today reports that the X-ray came back all clear and that the injury will take weeks not months to heal, in all probability.
Buckley sounded concerned that losing the first match to the weather (the Winterton game has been rearranged for this Monday, by the way) will mean that tomorrow's home game against Oldham might be a bit one-sided. Apparently, although the players have done a lot of conditioning work, they need to be taught almost from scratch how to play football again. In the light of that statement a tenner plus petrol and the rest is a big ask from those fans who are not lucky enough to live within walking distance of Blundell Park. I think if you have a season ticket it might be free though. If you have, presumably you will know that; if you don't then it doesn't affect you, gentle reader. I might go, I might not.
Cod Almighty is sponsoring Tom Newey next season. This has been made possible by all you lot who have been kind enough to buy our T-shirts. So if that's you then you are sort of sponsoring him as well. Why Newey? Well, we said we could sponsor somebody from one of three categories: kid, hero or Tom Newey. The Newey category is the sort of player you could not possibly jinx by sponsoring him [we were quite wary of the whole thing after the way we put the hex on Des Hamilton - ed.], i.e. someone so erratic that any outside force could not influence performance either way. The voting was close but Newey it is. Perhaps we can get him to do a guest Diary one week?
The other thing Buckley moaned about, quite rightly, was the fact that he had got a long way down the tracks towards signing an experienced striker last week, only for the player to stop returning his calls. Buckley feels he has too much youth and not enough experience available up front but unless said chap rings him "in the next 48 hours" (which should be up about... now!) he will be crossed off the list.
Well it wouldn't be a Friday in July if we didn't run a story about an ex-Town player, Boston United and possibly dirty money. Last July I ran a story about how Boston were trying to poach former Town terrier and Kinkladze nemesis Wes Parker from Gainsborough. There were rumours of falsified application letters and even that Mr Parker had tried to buy himself out of his Gainsborough contract using monies from we know not where. Well, this season those pesky Pilgrims have had another, much more successful go. Parker is apparently a Skegness-born rabid Boston fan so he has turned down York and been made captain, presumably fulfilling his boyhood dream.
My feeble slack-arsed research for the previous paragraph inevitably led me to visit the always-excellent impsTALK site. Idling away a few minutes, as you do, I was delighted to see the lads have emulated CA and done a Rough Guide to their new division in a new league. It's just a shame Town remain stuck in the same old division all the time these days, so we've lost the will to do them ourselves any more. So if you need a good laugh and feel it might be prudent, due to a lack of confidence about Town's future, to know a bit more about the league Boston have ended up in then here is the place to be. See yer.