Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Friday 20 August 2010
20 August 2010
"There are players who are not fussed if they play or not. Hopefully we've got rid of them out the club" says manager Woodses in a conversation about the desperate-to-play-football duo of Charlie and Lewis. Ademeno and Gobern - Town's fourth and fifth dimension. The pair arrived back in to first team training on Thursday and proceeded to demonstrate, we are told, that they are fit and, ermm, good. Woodses lapsed in to his boyish giggle again as he described how Ademeno had banged in loads of goals in a special training session of six versus six on a tiny pitch. This was a cunning plan based on the theory that the opposition will desperately try to cramp Town's style and crowd them out. Gobern, the manager revealed, looked bright, had good feet and with an injected toe wasn't far away from at least a cameo appearance as well. The reason they had both reappeared looking fit and possibly ready Woodses explained was down to 'fitness expert' Ben Mortlock who had arranged daily double training sessions with the pair over the last six weeks. A combination of his youthful enthusiasm to get them fit (even when they could hardly walk, let alone run) and their own desperation to play football has cheered your Guest Diarist up no end.
Town will be on the telly on my birthday. Well bugger me the home match against Luton on September 4th will now kick off at quarter past five and be shown on Sky channel 433 now known as Premier Sports. The league have signed a three year deal with an interesting revenue-share. After a 'nominal' (unspecified) number of subscribers to the channel (who will pay £6.99 a month) all other subscriber revenues will be equally split between the TV company and the league. Well, actually it is slightly more complicated than that so you had better read the press release if you want to drill down properly in to the deadly fine print of the deal. If you can't be arsed then I'll tell you now that there will be 30 matches broadcast per season including all the playoff games. The rest of the time for your money you get to see: "live Gaelic Games (GAA), the Airtricity League of Ireland and the Australian Rugby League (NRL) in the UK". Premier, an Irish start-up company highly likely, one would think, to experience severe cash flow problems unless the minority sports fans it has targeted dig deep and subscribe, also holds the rights to show archived classic Gaelic football and hurling matches in the UK. Setanta still owe me bloody thirty quid having mysteriously double-debited my subscription in the last few months so taking a punt (ha!) on another Irish start-up will probably take me about three or four pints and a bottle of red before I say sod it and sign up.
If you want to watch that clever free kick Town scored at Crawley there is a rather competent fan film of it on that YouTube The superb new official site mght try to bully folks in to thinking they have exclusive bloody access to this and that but stopping stuff like this takes some doing, eh? Given a choice between the Blunderside commentator (the ever-excellent John Tondeur) and the bloke doing it on the pay-per-listen Mariner Player I'd take the free BBC iplayer feed any day. Because it is free and because it is better frankly.
"Just a reminder that season tickets can still be purchased for the forthcoming season, just print off a form here and take it to the game tomorrow and see Avril with your money." The Cod Almighty pre-match fact file exhorts you to visit the Hayes & Yeading official web site but the preceding quote from that place is just loverly. Bless 'em and credit to their fans. They might not have many but I bet they love that team don't you? And if you see them down the Grimsby Road tomorrow don't abuse them - grin and shake them by the hand. By the way if you want to slack off for a bit and have a laugh go to this excellently designed site.
Diary regular Eve Barnard has been on to us this week saying: "I thought I'd let you know about a slight fashion faux pas that occurred during the York game last night. My friend and I were horrified to see that we had both decided to wear a blue and white striped jumper for the evening's entertainment. How embarrassing! Thank goodness for James Booth's link yesterday (see Wednesday diary) regarding historical town strips, which proves we were actually wearing the town colours, albeit from 1878, and not, as someone suggested, dressing like Frenchmen less the beret and garlic!" Yes Eve, I have the same dread fear every time I wear my camel 1950's coat that someone will come up and ask me to take a shilling round-robin.
Being odds-on to beat a league struggler tomorrow feels strangely worse than the prospect of going to 'high-flying' (in your dreams shitface) Crawley somehow. But let's hope it is an entertaining game with a few goals and that we get to see Lewis and Charlie - even if only to wave to them as they warm up down the touchline. See yer.