Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 12 July 2004

12 July 2004

Well, another day, another trialist, as they say in North East Lincolnshire. Monday's new arrivals, if you haven't yet given up trying to keep track, are a couple more forwards: a Frenchman, Amadou Konte, and a Pole, Tomasz Moskal. With three goals in nineteen appearances for Górnik Polkowice last season, Moskal boasts a strike rate superior to just about every other Town forward in the last two decades; while the Grimsby Telegraph has done a bit of homework on 23-year-old Konte (can't wait to hear that in a broad Grimsby accent), who arrives from Italian Serie C1 side Paterno Calcio, and reports that he scored three in ten games for current European champions Porto in the 2001-02 season but is looking for a fresh start after an injury-blighted campaign last year. At six foot four he is likely to be under consideration as either the central striker in Russell Slade's threatened front three or, as budget cutbacks at Blundell Park mean a shortage of stepladders, as official club lightbulb changer.

Entirely by coincidence, third-tier Colchester are giving a trial to a 23-year-old French striker who also appeared for Porto and Paterno Calcio and is also six foot four. His name is Amadou Conte, though, so he is clearly a completely different player.

Town's new midfielder Terry Fleming, who sounds to the Diary like a sort of hybrid of Des Hamilton, Alan Pouton and Tony Gallimore, or in other words like what we in Grimsby are wont to call "a right one", has been talking a good game to the Grimsby Telegraph. "This club has a lot of potential," announces Tel. "It still could be a first division club. We have to get the results next year to achieve that." Now that's what I call ambitious...

It is on the subject of Mr Fleming's colourful past that Dick of Legbourne has despatched another of his very welcome emails to the Diary. "So the GTFC OS claims that Terry Fleming is to join the ever swelling ranks and become a Mariner!" begins Dick. "Sorry, been on the cat-nip again. Anyway, Fleming might be coming from Cambridge, and he might have a long throw too, but he's also an ex-Imp and one that can't lie very well either. If I remember rightly this Fleming chap whilst playing for Lincoln got himself booked in one game and later on in the same game found himself going into the ref's book once more. 'Aha!' thought the then impish winger, 'I know what I'll do - I'll give a fellow teammate's name to the ref, and try and avoid being sent off.' He did and... he did. Not until later when the ref sat down with his mates did he realise that he'd been done. He didn't get away with it for long though - think he got a lengthy ban for dishonesty. Welcome Terry. Can you pass your tips onto Craney - he might want to try that one."