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Diary - Friday 5 June 2009

5 June 2009

Grimsby Town chairman and Conservative councillor John Fenty shared his continuing dreams for the club with us humble fans today, writes Guest Diary, via a free-to-watch answer session with the redoubtable Mariners World interviewer Dale Ladson. Coun Fenty (Con) showed his Tory colours by telling a poor student from Hull that he hoped he could find a way to buy a season ticket despite the club not offering any discount scheme to adult students at all. Fenty said, and I paraphrase, that overall ticket prices had come down and so if a few students lost out then they should console themselves that prices had been reduced for the Main Stand dentists. He carried on in similar vein, explaining that it didn't matter that junior tickets had gone up from £20 to £50 because not many people bought them. In that case surely you would have hardly lost more than a few quid by leaving the status quo, eh, Mr Fenty? And preserved a nice dose of goodwill to 'hard working families'.

In answer to a pertinent question about Rob Jones (the player Fenty allowed to slip through his fingers because he said you can't pay good centre-halves as much as lower league strikers) the chairman confirmed that Town will receive 15 per cent of any fee in excess of the undisclosed amount for which Town sold Jones. I am reliably told that the word 'undisclosed' is code for £150,000.

In answer to another good question about Town's Fentydome design being surely well out of date by now, ten years after it was drafted, Fenty's tone became dreamy. The project has been skewered by the recession, he told us, but in his mind the stadium remains at the forefront of modern stadium design, yet without ever being unaffordably expensive. One assumes he imagines that the sun will always shine there and the birdlife will clap their wings in delight as they flutter over the adjacent skies. A place where the clogged car park will be emptied in eight minutes after the match (by magic - Fenty has seen the future - and it's called Harry Potter).

Fenty went on to explain that even with a recession he was in active discussion about an exciting but admittedly unfeasible alternative to a retail anchor tenant. Also, if people like ice skating why don't they start a petition - the Fentydome would welcome them. The alternative doesn't have legs, he confessed, but hey, we all need a dream. And Fenty, by way of reply to a question about what the future holds for Town, is convinced that in ten years' time, Town will be living that dream, occupying a superb new stadium and playing "at least" Championship football. The former will only happen if the council wins the Euro lottery or Coun Fenty masters hypnosis and assumes total control of its budget, gentle reader, and the latter, some would say, is about as likely as, well, ermm, that.

The new Harry Potter film is out soon - hey, perhaps we should groundshare with a quidditch team. See yer.