Cod Almighty | Diary

Transfer News Explosion Players Scandal Romp

2 September 2022

Growing old is rubbish. There is a myth that age brings increasing wisdom, but in my experience age is more likely to entrench stupidity than create new insights. So treat the following with caution.

You can only judge a player once he has played several games, if not a whole season, for the club you support. Players can have brilliant reputations and be useless, players can come out of nowhere and be brilliant. In my years as a Town fan I've seen so many players who arrived with a shrug of the shoulders turn out to be Town heroes, and players who arrived with a fanfare being zeros.

When we bought Clive Mendonca from...erm...Rotherham (fill in your own research here) I remember seeing a poem from a Rotherham fan which read:

Clive Mendonca
Rhymes with plonker
This is apt

Yet he turned out out be GTFC's best striker of the last 30 years. Dave Gilbert came from Northampton to a wave of indifference, and when this small, squat man appeared on the pitch there was a feeling more of bemusement than anything else. He was fantastic. Then think of people who came here who we expected to be any good: Micky Lyons, Micky Gilligan, Richard Brodie. All duffers.

The turnover of a modern football club is remarkable. Check out this page for an insight into how many players come and go in the course of a season.

A football club is like a train station threse days. Let's all greet the new arrivals at platform BP. We've signed Hunt for three years and he will become part of the furniture here. His previous loan spell started brilliantly, and he takes great set pieces. We also have two young strikers on loan. They come with good reputations. They may be great. They may not be. Welcome everyone. Fingers crossed.

Tomorrow we take on Omar Bogle's Newport. Since Omar left the building there have been constant rumours of him returning. I've always hoped his reluctance to return wasn't based on the time he was minding his own business in Tescos and an unnamed CA diarist walked past him, punched the air and shouted "OMAAAAR" at the top of his voice. If so, that diarist, whoever he was, is very sorry and I won't do it again.

Name droppers, eh? Don't you hate them? Pathetic. Anyway, I was chatting to Max Crocombe at a footy tournament last Sunday and he gave me a couple of insights I thought I'd share. Doig, he reckons, is a tactical genius. The loudest people in the dressing room are Pearson and Waterfall. Players are much more interested in the Boycott Cup than the fans because they all want to play at Wembley. Hurst is quiet and thoughtful. Max Crocombe is a lovely lad (he didn't tell me that, I'm telling you now).

So things appear pretty set fair. We've started well. Best of luck to anyone planning to go to Newport and I hope your souls survive the darkness. If there is anything that feeds a soul better than three away points I've yet to come across it.

UTM.

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