Cod Almighty | Diary

The silly season starts here

6 June 2016

How does Alan Green irritate the tits off me? Let Middle-Aged Diary count the ways.

OK, no I won't. But one thing I've noticed is he's a great one for engineering his commentaries to make sure he gets on the news bulletins. While most commentators will spend much of their time telling you that anything might happen (so "keep listening"), when a team scores an 80th-minute goal, Green will happily yell: "And Suchandsuch scores the goal that takes Anycity to the top of the league."

It might sound like a hostage to fortune, but actually it's a shot to nothing. If Othertown equalise in injury time, he can always yell another soundbite, knowing that no-one will remember his first. Either way, he gets to hear his own voice in the headlines as he drives back home.

What has this to do with the price of fish? In a shock move, has Radio 5 Live swooped for Radio Humberside commentator John Tondeur, offering Green as a makeweight in a deal also said to include VIP tickets for all UK Bruce Springsteen gigs?

No, I'm just reflecting that I am about to be the first diarist to write the name of Max Wright, the 18-year-old winger who on Friday signed his first professional deal with Town. And that if I choose to write "the first step in what is sure to be a long and illustrious career", it's a Green-like shot to nothing. Everyone loves a winger, so let's hope Wright gets the chance to show us what he can do, and that this is the first diary entry of several.

At about this point, a reference to James Vardy (he used to play in non-League, you know) is mandatory. Let me use him to offer my commiserations to Omar Bogle, whose flu has denied him what will (we hope) have been his last chance to play for England C yesterday. He'll just have to set his sights at a higher level of representative honours.

Should he happen to have any Welsh ancestry, I commend him to Chris Coleman for no better reason than Omar Bogle being an anagram of Bale Groom. From a profilic partnership with Pádraig Amond to international honours alongside the Real Madrid footballer. Remember, you read it here first.

Unless I'm writing complete and utter rot, of course, in which case you should do the decent thing and forget you ever read this.