Cod Almighty | Diary

Ten exercises to keep your bottom in top form

4 October 2017

It's a busy couple of days for Town in non-first-team football, with a reserve fixture at Rotherham this afternoon hard on the heels of last night's B team business against plucky Scunthorpe. The main item of note is a return for Akwasi Asante, the forward brought in from Solihull Moors by Marcus Bignot last season only to suffer long-term knack. After getting his first run-out for seven months this afternoon, Asante will score twice in Town's next reserve fixture at home to Darlington, at which point goal-starved GTFC fans will remember that he was supposed to be the next Omar Bogle, overburden him with expectation, spend three months calling unsuccessfully for his return to the first team and watch him shipped out on loan to Scarborough Athletic.

No, there's still no sign of Sean McAllister, but your original/regular Diary is also excited to note that this afternoon's kickabout will also feature a couple more of Russell's Special Trialists. During his first spell with the Mariners in the mid-2000s, of course, our agent-reliant manager was wont to ship in Special Trialists by the pound – a Belgian left-back here, a Congolese playmaker there! – and has shown every sign of reprising these hilarious antics second time around.

Unfortunately for all of us, the usual way of trialists was subverted during the summer of 2017. Instead of giving them a few games and signing the ones who look the best, Town opted to give them a few games, send the ones who looked best back to the Danish second division, and sign the ones who were left over. What will come of this afternoon's shenanigans we can all of us only guess, and having said all that I'm guessing it'll turn out to be that kid who spent last season playing up front for Boston United.

Meanwhile the Shropshire Star newspaper carries an interesting interview with Paul Hurst about a promising young player who followed him to Shrewsbury from Blundell Park – seemingly without anyone at this end knowing much about it. Christos Shelis is a 17-year-old centre-half who has just been given his first professional contract by the Shrews and sounds every bit the golden prospect. Why did we let him go? Did you even know about him while he was with Town? Me neither. What's the betting he just stopped turning up for training one day and nobody at the club actually noticed?

Yeah, and finally, Town fans who bought advance tickets for last night's B team thing were accidentally overcharged by a couple of quid, and we all unquestioningly believe GTFC's explanation that it was Scunthorpe's fault, don't we? Good.