The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Getting to know you

2 February 2021

There is somewhere a sketch where someone says "Look it is really very simple" and then recites a slippery, shifting rhyme that only further entangles an already complex position. Welcome to Cod Almighty's summary of yesterday's transfer dealings.

Intriguingly, for those who assumed the return of Paul Hurst would consolidate James McKeown's position in goal, we have a new goalkeeper. Jake Eastwood has been with Sheffield United since his mother had her 12-week scan, but has wandered the United Kingdom in search of first team football, including a spell at Scunthorpe under Hurst. It is not disrespectful to say the players arriving at Cheapside are unknown. They are to us, and how much did we know about Pádraig Amond, Wayne Burnett or Dave Gilbert before they arrived? But to Hurst, they are at least known unknowns, and that is clearly the way he likes it: to fill the squad with people he can trust.

Eastwood is 6 foot 3 inches tall, and thus gives a couple of inches to Joe Bunney who has played for Rochdale but was most recently with Hartlepool. He is a left-sided defender. Middle-Aged Diary always thinks of full backs as short and dapper: basically I expect them to look like John McDermott, but Gregor Robertson was on the rangy side, and he did pretty well for us. Bunney seems to crop up most often in reports as a wing back. He joins us as a free agent.

Joe Adams, according to Wikipedia, was born in "Wales". Middle-Aged Diary was about to get on my high horse (or "ceffyl uchel" as my "O" level Welsh just about stretches to) and make an important geopolitical point, until I browsed further and saw that Soccerbase contradicts Wikipedia's dismissive entry, replacing it with the equally vague "England". Too late to offer Dale Ladson advice, but his first question to Adams should clearly not have been "What kind of flexible midfielder are you?" but "Where were you born, and we need a postcode please?" Adams is only 19 and at Brentford academy, but not so callow: he was at Bury when they folded.

Talking of intrigue, note the URL address on the official site article about Adams, ending "lets-hope-this-hyperlink-remains-unguessed". What is that about? Is it wishful thinking that Adams is such a hot signing the club were paranoid a rival might get wind of the loan deal through some website wizardry and scupper it?

The options for offloading players are limited with no non-League football happening. Perhaps Graham Rodger was deployed yesterday to regale managers with the tale of how Paul Futcher went in nine months from unable to get a game at bottom-of-the-League Halifax to mainstay of a second-flight defence, but if so, no one bit. Danny Preston has probably gone back to Nottingham Forest, and something in Hurst's tone of voice suggests we may see a few contracts paid up in the coming weeks.

There's the big picture, and then there is the even bigger picture. It is a bit harder to care about the circumstances of individual players than it usually is just now, when we have seen few of them in the flesh, and when we are in a relegation battle. Then, above Grimsby there is football as a whole, and the prospect of towns like Grimsby losing their clubs altogether if the Conference shuts up shop. Of course we hope Town will not go down, but let's hope that someone does. And let's hope that the players we do care about - the Cliftons, Wrights and McKeowns, respond to the competition and put in the performances we need to make sure we are not relying on the misfortunes of others more deserving than we would be if we finish in the bottom two.

Next stop Newport, or "Wales" as Wikipedia would put it.