Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 13 October 2010

13 October 2010

Hello, readers - it's your original/regular Diary here, wondering why the news of trialists always seems to fall to me at the moment.

Last Wednesday, you might recall, the SNOS referred to a "Chelsea midfielder" called "Lee Sawer" who was on trial with GTFC, when it turned out the player was called Lee Sawyer and had been released by Chelsea in 2009. This week the club's official web organ has pulled out all the stops and correctly named Town's new trialist Netan Sansara, a left-sided defender who recently spent a couple of seasons with Walsall. Sadly for the Blundell Park web team, they managed to rename him "Santara" further down the page, where they included him in a starting XI for yesterday's reserves game against Middlesbrough. Then they managed to repeat the trick exactly when they reported the result. But overall, let's give a little credit to GTFC's communications professionals this week for at least having a brave if ultimately unsuccessful little attempt at not making themselves and the football club look like complete fucking amateurs who would have been sleeping on the street long ago had they attempted to make a living in any other industry out of their endless fucking rank incompetence.

There are those who might argue, of course, that all this is secondary to the game. That, while Town's stiffs lost the game by four goals to two, the double strike by Tom Corner strengthens the case for his return to the first team in place of the largely ineffective [*looks up his name*] Danny Carlton. That, in the context of Town's ongoing problems in central midfield, it may be significant that Lee Sawyer played another 90 minutes. That, given the tongue-twisting six soft goals the soft sods shipped in the past two games, another run-out for Rob Atkinson may also be noteworthy.

Certainly all of this is worthy of mention, and debate. It's just that the Diary has noted Sansara talking about prejudice against Asian footballers. And I'd be tempted to suggest that the repeated inability or unwillingness of a football club's official website to achieve the very basic requirement of correctly spelling an Asian player's name is not going to help put that situation right any time soon. Although it's worth remembering, of course, that Town's official website has many times proved itself unable or unwilling to correctly spell the names of players with all manner of ethnicity - including white Englishmen, French Africans, and natural born Gamibians.

"We got Ademeno for a realistic £10,000 at the compensation tribunal, which will no doubt infuriate the creepy Crawleys and their convicted crookster of a shouty manager," observed Guest Diary here last Friday. GD's prediction of anger is as accurate as his character reference, as we are now able to marvel at the supreme irony of Steve Evans moaning about injustice. "We turned down a £50k bid the day before he signed for Grimsby so for a tribunal to decide that is baffling," bleats the odious Crawley boss - which immediately begs two further questions. One is why the tribunal should be expected to pay any attention to which bids a club does and doesn't happen to turn down. The second is why anyone should believe a word Steve Evans ever says.

Cod Almighty, you may have noticed, has been lacking a match report here and there due to Tory spending cuts. This isn't a satirical joke - it really is due to Tory spending cuts. The CA team have been forced to spend the time we'd normally use covering GTFC on union business and finding new work to replace that which the Tories are seizing away. Fortunately, diary reader Chris Beeley is on hand to give us his account of Sunday's proceedings at Kidderminster. Over to Chris:

Went to the game yesterday - will someone tell Town kick off is at 3 not 4? Great second half preceded by abysmal first, as per Thursday. Just one or two thoughts 'cos you'll probably have a much better match report available than anything I could write [oh, the irony - Ed].

1. Kempson is fast turning into the player the Town fans love to hate/bait, and he's losing confidence accordingly. It's not really his fault that he is repeatedly exposed by our almost complete lack of a midfield, though.
2. Was Mr Woods so impressed by Craig Levein's tactics last week that he thought three central midfielders and no wide men were going to win us the game when he made his substitutions yesterday? What's happened to Tom Corner?
3. Cummins looks overweight to me and Hudson looked much livelier when he came on; Alan Connell is too good a player to resort to play acting - I'm sure one example of this earlier in the game (which the referee noticed but didn't deem worthy of yellow) cost him the important decision later on when his standing foot was taken as he prepared to shoot for what would have been the equaliser.
4. I was impressed with young Samuels. He was a different player from when I saw him against Histon at BP.

Thanks, Chris - always good to hear from you, and that's certainly filled a gap in our coverage. One day all match reports will be like this. You know, when we're all having to work 120 hours a week because the Tories have abolished the minimum wage.