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Diary - Wednesday 26 August 2009

26 August 2009

Brian Stein - the Peter Taylor, some might say, to Mr Re-Newell's Clough - takes charge of his first reserves match tonight since succeeding Stuarts Watkisses as Town's assistant manager, and let's hope the wage budget isn't exhausted for the sake of the three or four young trialists who'll be in his team. Louis Lavers is already familiar to GTFC fans with an excessive interest in the minutiae of trial players and a good memory for names, as the teenage Watford left-back turned out for the Mariners in the big pre-season win at Winterton Rangers. According to the club's superb new official website, he'll be joined by Manchester City right-back Chris Ramsey, former QPR midfielder Chris Arthur and possibly another midfielder but the SNOS doesn't know who or it's not allowed to say. The visitors to Blundell Park for the game are third division Leeds United, who are threatening. Oh, hang on, there's another bit... who are threatening to send a line-up with some players you've heard of, including the likes of Enoch Showunmi, who I suspect our own Mr Newell signed for Luton many years ago, and David Prutton, who was really good in the Diary's last game of Football Manager, also many years ago. It may even have been Championship Manager back in those days, in fact.

More than half a week after the event, the club has still not deigned to explain to anyone without a Mariners World/Player subscription the mysterious absence of Nick Hegarty from the Town squad that lined up against Bury last Saturday. What a good thing, then, that the willing ginger winger can be found in today's Grimsby Telegraph doing just that. Turns out Heggs has been carrying an injury since the end of pre-season, but Town have been playing him anyway. "By the time we played Crewe and Rotherham, I was taking a lot of painkillers," says yer lad. "But it finally gave up on me last week and it wasn't fair on the other lads to play if I couldn't be at 100 per cent." Cue a bunch of perma-furious Daily Express readers pouring irrelevant bile into the comments box about what a disgrace it is that the Mariners' leading and most consistent goal provider of the past two years is even on the payroll, let alone in the team.

That's all today then - and with Town and Leeds reserves playing this evening, I'll leave you with a nice little story from the days when their first teams would meet on a regular basis. Cheerio.