Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 18 March 2009

18 March 2009

Everyone's probably a bit tired and emotional and in need of some light relief, so let's begin today's Diary with a little game. Can you spot the difference between these two pictures?

If you need help, here's a clue from today's Grimsby Telegraph:

When asked if the club had severed ties with the players, Newell replied: "Have we? They were [still with the club] when I left this morning."

Half the time at Grimsby Town Football Club, there are some good people doing great things and their efforts are ruined by shambolic, embarrassingly awful, fist-in-mouth humiliatingly dogshit communications and admin which would embarrass an amateur side. The other half of the time, it's just all shit.

Sometimes the shambolic, embarrassingly awful, fist-in-mouth humiliatingly dogshit communications and admin have relatively little effect in the grand scheme of things. Take for example the occasion when club staff posted this sign at the ticket office in the run-up to a cup tie against a first division team:

It was incompetent, but it was also funny and it didn't do any harm. But sometimes the shambolic, embarrassingly awful, fist-in-mouth humiliatingly dogshit communications and admin can be more questionable. There was the 'Ladies' Day' in November 2003, when Town lost at home against Tranmere and the club's official website headlined its match report "Ladies' Day Ends Bosoms Up!" There was the attempt in July 2005 to justify the switching of home fixtures to Friday nights, when the site argued that the previous season's Friday night game against Oxford had "proved to be a winner with Mariners fans"; the attendance was 4,777 against an average for the season of 4,943. There was the friendly at Gainsborough in July 2007, when the website directed travelling Town fans to Southport. As long-term Diary readers will know very well, we could go on. And on.

And so it was last night. The Mariners are at their lowest point in their entire 130-year history and struggling to retain their status in senior English professional football. The club is running a range of promotions to maximise support for the team, following up the hundreds of free coach seats to last Saturday's game at Chester with cut-price tickets and cheap buses to home games. The Grimsby Telegraph is mucking in with an energetic campaign to rally the local community around its club before it's too late. Despite another defeat at Luton yesterday the players put in one of their better recent performances and even the fans actually supported them. And while all this is going on, of course, the serial incompetents who are responsible for the club's communications are botching the job once again: this time an announcement about the unexpected departure of players - comprising two long-serving first-teamers and the squad's entire permanent goalkeeping staff - with potentially critical implications for both team spirit and the image of the club in the eyes of local people, at a time when the Mariners' very existence depends on both.

At the end of it all, we're not clear as to the status of Barnes, Newey and Montgomery. But we can surmise fairly safely that, like Richard Hope and Martin Butler before them, they are being ushered out of the club because they can't do their jobs, they can't justify their wages, and they're undermining the efforts of the rest of the team to keep the club alive.

That's all fair enough. But it loudly begs the question of why Town's communications staff are still in a job.