Cod Almighty | Diary

The GTFC Anchorman

17 February 2022

Mr Target Demographic writes: Much to my delight, it’s not exactly been a slow news week at Town, as it often can be when it falls on my time to write a diary. With Michee contract talks, Cup actions for the youth and Maguire-Drew on the mend I can’t say I’m lacking content this time around.

All right I’ll concede, not the most interesting set of topics, it's no 2-1 last-minute winner at a local(ish) derby but necessary ones nonetheless. The biggest of all perhaps the positive feeling that came out of early non-official contract talks with Efete. It must be said watching him since his return to the squad, his quality is obvious. I’m sure scouts of rival clubs aware of his contract situation could see it too. To hear the player come out and say he wants to stay, and that there is a clause that would keep him here, is one less worry I have regarding Town. That said, if a league club wants to take him away for a large fee, I doubt the board would reject it.

In other news, even after taking the lead through youngster Louis Adlard, Town’s Academy XI were unfortunately knocked out on penalties. I know very little of the youth set up to be totally honest, apart from year-in, year-out Neil Woods sets the expectations for the youngsters higher and higher and seems to achieve them. I would even go as far to say our youth development is one of the best out there among our division and the two above it. Looking at just the past two seasons, we’ve seen two of our youth players sign for Premier League clubs and others being watched closely. Maybe this is something everyone else has already realised and I’m only just getting this now. Positive news if nothing else.

Moving on from Town, I’ve got a tricky decision to make in the coming months as, if I get the grades predicted in my exams, I’ll have the choice of different universities to pick from and football is somewhat a pull factor for me. For example, I went to York University for an open day and I’m glad I did because it turned out I didn’t really like it. One of the factors why I felt I didn’t enjoy it was the social element and part of this was football related. At York the campus is isolated from both the city and any sign of football. Contrast this to Newcastle University where St James Park is right next to campus. With the size of the stadium and hype around Newcastle at the moment it was certainly something that enticed me to want to apply there.

It may sound to many of you that I’m basing my decision of university on football. Which is partly correct but at this point I’ll take anywhere that would accept me. I have my Mock Examinations coming up in two weeks so this will probably give a good indication whether it will be St James Park or the York Community Stadium. Wish me luck, I suppose.