Cod Almighty | Diary

Tighter than a shark's arse

17 July 2014

London Diary yesterday told you who Town have signed. Your original/regular Diary will today tell you who they haven't. And first up, Adam Geoffrey Hinchliffe. The former Sheffield Wednesday midfielder scored a belter at Scarborough last Saturday, which was good enough for many Mariners fans, but the club's uneasily impressed team manager isn't having any of it. "He scored a good goal and you could tell he could play, but he wasn't quite what I was after in that midfield area if I am to bring another player in there," Hursts tells the Grimsby Telegraph today. While some fans have taken to social media to express their disappoint and imply that they know better than the manager, Telegraph reporters have already breathed a loud sigh of relief at being spared the effort of remembering that the player's name is Hinchliffe and not Hinchcliffe.

And we're not signing Craig Clay, or at least not yet. Clay, it emerges, is the midfield trialist who replaced Hinchy when the Mariners played Harrogate Town on Tuesday. A graduate of the Chesterfield youth system, Clay-y is currently playing part-time for Worksop in the Northern Counties East League. He played a couple of dozen times for Chezzy in the fourth division in the 2012–13 season and then went out on loan a bit last term. The player will get another run-out for Town in Friday night's game at Matlock. He is only 22 and I can't find anything very exciting about him, so I can only conclude we're just looking at him because he's played for York City.

Who else are we not signing? We're not signing a striker called Ryan Bird, who is registered to Portsmouth but went on loan to Cambridge last season, because next season he wants to try and actually play for Portsmouth instead of going on loan again. Fair dos, I suppose.

And finally, one more player Town aren't signing is Kevin Kyle. The then GTFC manager Paul Groves enquired after a loan deal for the Scottish international forward in November 2002, only to be told that Kyle had decided to stay and fight for a place in the Sunderland first team, so a bit like Ryan Bird except 12 years ago and with Sunderland instead of Portsmouth.

Now 33, Kyle features in today's Mirror having taken up a menial job on a Shetland supply ship for £400 a week. It's a bit of a comedown from the £10,000 a week Kyle was getting at Sunderland. This is, of course, still more than GTFC legend Sir John McDermott was being paid after club saviour and fridge magnate Honest John Fenty had his way with Macca's contract. But Ryan Bird, if you're reading, you might just want to take a look.