Cod Almighty | Diary
Baste my steaming puddings
23 July 2019
The manufacturers of the new lighting installation on Town's TV gantry are coming over from the Netherlands next Monday, and the groundsman will have 336 positions on which to hold a board on the pitch. If I'm honest, I'm not even close to understanding any of this, but if gantries and galvanised bespoke metalwork are your thing, get over to the club's newly superb new official website and knock yersen out.
We've done this topic, so I shan't dwell, but your original/regular Diary saw the new floodlights for the first time last weekend and can pronounce with some certainty that they look exactly how you would expect new floodlights placed onto old towers with the top sawn off to look. By the by, an excellent taxi driver informed me that there is a disproportionate number of hair salons in Waltham, and his tale of challenging a passenger's homophobia earned him a healthy tip. More taxi drivers like that, please.
Transfer talk now, and Town are rumoured to have had a second bid rejected for delightfully named Dundalk full-back Cameron Dummigan. The consensus among GTFC fans is that the squad could use another central defender and some kind of creativity from somewhere in midfield, somehow, pretty please, but if we want two players in every position then our new RHJ-less state of existence will need to allow for some kind of back-up for Luke Hendrie at right-back. Although isn't that Hewitt lad supposed to be able to play anywhere along the back four? Oh, I dunno. Midfield creativity anyway. Pretty please.
In today's ticket news, tickets are now available for a variety of forthcoming football matches, should you wish to attend any of those. I think I probably will at some point, but there's enough residual goth in me still to render the mere thought of going outdoors completely intolerable in this weather.
Doesn't 3 August seem very early to be starting the actual season? We always get ourselves worked up about a new campaign and looking forward to the opening fixture or two, but there's inevitably something languid and dispiriting about watching players who are often still working up to full fitness lumbering about in the fierce heat of mid to late summer. Give me a big coat and the fierce chill of a lashing November northerly straight from arctic Norway. That's when the season has really begun.
Back in the here and now, it seems that Town have managed to fix up two pre-season kickabouts at the same time, neither of which are expected to feature a first-choice line-up. So that'll be interesting. Michael Jolley stated the other day that the Doncaster and Peterborough games would be for his first team, while tonight's trip to Scarborough Athletic would offer some 'game time' for younger players. Now it emerges that there's also a game at Craig Disley's Barton Town (to use their new official name), where presumably the under-12s will get some exposure and a chance to be snapped up by Middlesbrough or Reading and left in the cupboard under the stairs. Enjoy whichever of the two you're going to, if you're going, or both if you're hot on astral projection.