Cod Almighty | Diary

Contains at least one puerile joke

28 June 2022

Middle-Aged Diary writes: "What did you do in the pandemic?" the children of footballers will no doubt ask in decades to come, and some will be able to reply that they, and their careers, survived.

In the summer of 2020, Grimsby's new signing Stephen Wearne was released by Middlesbrough, one 19-year-old among countless others without a club and with a future which was at best uncertain. He was picked up by Sunderland to play in their under-23 team and last season went out on loan to Torquay, where he made 14 appearances and scored three goals before he picked up an ankle injury.

Wearne does gratitude: to the coaches at Sunderland who rescued his career; to the first-team squad members he was able to train with and from whom he learnt so much; to Gary Johnson and his team at Torquay. But football clubs don't take on players out of charity - they picked Wearne out from hundreds of others looking for any opportunity because they saw in him something worth keeping in the game.

He jumps through all the signing-up interview hoops. Did he have other offers? Was it an easy decision when he heard a club like Town were interested? Does he think we have a great bunch in the squad? Are the fans fantastic? All present and correct, but by describing our play-off wins Wearne (if we'd offered him a longer contract, would the man from County Durham have changed his name to Humberne?) does it with conviction.

Whether Stephen Wearne is as good as we all hope we'll have to wait and see, but in the meantime he sounds like a typical Paul Hurst signing, and there are worse things to have.