Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 30 September 2008
30 September 2008
Get through managers at the rate of one a season? Rearrange a fixture to help Bastard Franchise Scum win the league? Announce that a Friday night game against Oxford "proved to be a winner with Mariners fans" despite an attendance below the average for that season? If Town officials are looking for ways to make the club into an integrity-lite pariah of the Football League, they could do no better than sound out Steve Evans as a candidate to replace Lord Alan Buckley as manager - and, blow me, that's exactly what they might have done. After Deadly John (Con) revealed yesterday that his eight-name shortlist for the biggest job in North East Lincolnshire football "includes some additional candidates who have not applied", Evans' current club Crawley Town happened to mention that the crook in their dugout had been the subject of an approach from another club. "I told them immediately that he was contracted to Crawley Town Football Club and unless they paid the amount for his release stated in his contract then they could look elsewhere," said Desperate Dan-jawed director and co-owner Phil Jarman. Crawley currently look a reasonable bet to win promotion to the Football League under Evans, just as Boston United of the Northern Premier League once did before them.
If convicted fraudster Evans were to take the reins at Blundell Park, principled Town supporters could at least console themselves with the knowledge that he wasn't the GTFC board's first choice for the job. No - the GTFC board's first choice for the job was Dean Windass. Despite the club having stated publicly that interviewing for the post begins only today, it is a fact that the veteran King$ton Communication$ FC striker has already been offered and rejected the keys to the manager's office at BP. How do we know this is a fact? We know because the Daily Mail says so, and who could possibly doubt so authoritative a source given the Mail's cast-iron record of accuracy about Christmas being banned, crime 'spiralling out of control', the introduction of a minimum wage being certain to cause record levels of unemployment, half the world dying of bird flu, the other half being blown up by the large hadron collider, and climate change being caused by cows and Muslims?
The Diary may or may not have heard from an equally reliable source that the manager's job is actually all but guaranteed to former Brighton boss Dean Wilkins, but that's not to say we can't look ahead. It may have come around a little too soon for him this time, but who's to say that one of Wilkins' successors in the hotseat might not be cult Mariners hero Gary Jones? Our beloved Lump has taken his first steps into coaching this week with a post as assistant manager at Colwyn Bay of the Northern Premier League, and just to confuse any disgruntled Town fans who are tempted to transfer their support to Llanelian Road for the season, one of the first signings of the Lump era has been cult Mariners anti-hero Dave Challinor.
"I applaud the efforts of both Barnet and the Mariners for their performances on Saturday," writes Tom in an email to the Diary. "Sadly, however, I have to say that this kind of activity will never replace football." Tom declined to include his surname but it should be pretty obvious to all of us who he is.