Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 11 November 2008
11 November 2008
Last week ex-Carlisle midfielder Neale McDermott joined Town on trial, and Town's superb new official website announced that Kidderminster forward David McDermott had joined Town on trial. Clearly chastened by the panning it received for its gaffe from the Worcestershire media, the SNOS has today reverted to its long-standing practice of simply giving the wrong playing position for incoming trialists. Credit where it's due, because the site seems to have got the umlaut present and correct in the name of "former Gretna midfielder Mickaël Buscher", but every other source the Diary discovered during my painstaking 28-second Google search insists that he plays up front. Wikipedia adds that Buscher is a 21-year-old Frenchman who scored twice for Gretna in eight appearances last season after joining from Nice, while the Daily Record reports that the player has also trialled with Hearts. Any old how, he's playing for the reserves at home to Barnsley tomorrow and, the SNOS adds, has recently taken his search for a new club as far afield as Gamibia. I mean Tunisia.
You have to admire Mike Newell's chutzpah for trialling a Frenchman and signing a Democratic Republic of Congolian within days of telling the supporters' trust Q&A thingy that he wasn't after any foreign players. You have to admire Mike Newell's ability to look good in a jumper with a shirt and tie. And if you've got any admiration left after all that admiring, and you can read a blog-style article on a mainstream news website without gagging at the stupid comments people leave at the bottom, you might care for a look at this thingy about Mr Re-Newell on the BBC. The gist of it is that he's driving all over the country every night to look at potential new players; apart from that there isn't much you won't already have read a gajillion times in the weeks since the your man got the job (apart from a section of gibberish about golf) but there's a smashing moody photo in black and white which makes him look like somebody out of one of those American films about laconic men in suits who shoot each other.
Thank You is the headline of a new item on Town's superb new official website today. Is it, as the Diary's first instinct suggested, thanking supporters for sticking (to some extent) with the club through the worst run of results in all 130 years of its existence? No. It says: "THANKYOU to everyone who has already done their Christmas shopping online through www.gtfcdirect.co.uk - especially those who have taken advantage of the fantastic Wii offers at Play.com." In fairness, the club's online retail portal thingy is probably a decent way of helping to pay off Martin Butler raising much-needed funds for GTFC, though one earnestly hopes that in the subsequent pronouncement "We'd also like to the person who booked at Hotels.com" the missing word isn't 'spoon'.
Tom Carpenter is also concerned with ambiguity on the internet. No, really - he is. That's why he's emailed the Diary to say: "Alarmed to see on the Telewag site the headline I'll shift dead Woods. Until I discovered the 's' was formed by the intersection of Mike Newell's neck and collar. However, in the spirit of slating the local media: is this any way for the club to simultaneously announce the passing of a club legend and the decision of the manager to move into undertaking?" If it ever were to happen, Tom, I think that would be quite a good way for the club to announce it, but in the meantime would anyone actually notice if Chris Llewellyn were replaced by a fossilised tree?