Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Wednesday 16 March 2011
16 March 2011
It would be asking a lot, even of a high-achieving and very clever businessman like Deadly John (Topcon), for him to control the weather. But a referee's response to the weather is a different matter. And after last night's abandonment at Blundell Park - with the Mariners losing 2-1 to Rushden & Diamonds and down to ten men - all attention is focused on the chairman's apparent dialogue with the match officials just before they stopped the game.
It seems to your original/regular Diary that if the opposition manager isn't hopping mad in such circumstances, then he isn't doing his job properly. And in the aftermath of the abandonment Justin 'Jim' Edinburgh is duly giving it loads. "I feel the referee has been weak and been forced into a decision he didn't have to make," says Edinburgh. "I have never seen a chairman down on the touchline talking to the referee before. [Deadly John (Topcon)] was trying to get it called off." The Diamonds manager, like his colleagues at Darlington and Kidderminster, recently made clear his preference for life at a small and utterly skint club over the prospect of one year and the sack at the circus that Fenty has made of GTFC. And who would blame him? After this outburst, there wouldn't seem much likelihood of him changing his mind.
Speaking of Town's search for a manager, there's nothing very much to report today. That never stops the Grimsby Telegraph, though, so let's try and emulate our professional betters by reporting on nothing very much. Former Donny and Darlo hoofmeister-general Dave Penney seems to be the bookies' new favourite after his dismissal from a ten-minute shift with Bristol Rovers. The issue of the bookies' favourite is entirely meaningless, though, and I'm sure I saw something somewhere the other day about Fenty going back to Mark Cooper with some sort of pre-contract deal so he can see out the season with Darlo first. No, I can't remember where it was, but that's still about as firm a basis for journalism as most of the Telewag's recent coverage of the issue.
What's the fall-out from last night going to be, then? First, let's consider how the fog affects the red mist. Concerning the red card issued to Darran Kempson, the match will stand, and Town's misspelt youth will incur a one-match suspension. Concerning the various red cards previously issued to various GTFC midfielders, the match will not stand, and they're still as suspended as they were before the fog came down. Unfair? You want fair? We live in a country where unemployed people are demonised as lazy scroungers by the same Chancellor of the Exchequer whose spending cuts cost them their jobs, and who has barely needed to do a day's work in his life because his father Sir Peter Osborne, 17th Baronet, handed him a £4million trust fund.
Let us turn next to the dwindling number of supporters who can both afford to attend GTFC matches and still bear to watch their club reduced to wreckage by its bungling chairman. Town's superb new official website has today announced a load of stuff about ticket stubs, refunds and rearrangements for the Rushden match. Read it if you like, but you'll be wasting your time. When you turn up at the ticket office with last night's stub, you'll refer to what the website says about getting a ticket for the rearranged fixture for half price. The ticket office staff will just look at you as if you're talking Latin, go off to try and find their manager, come back alone, shrug their shoulders again, make a noise like a honking goose and hand you three tickets for free along with a box of 24 clothes pegs.
But let's remember where the blame really lies for the culture of shrugging incompetence that hobbles every aspect of the club's operations. In true Tory style, of course, one of Fenty's first acts as chairman was to cut the pay of Town's backroom staff, some of whom were already being paid less than £10,000 a year. If someone did that to me, I don't think I'd be too bothered about ensuring a first-rate customer experience in the building going forward either.
The most recent outbreak of infantile squabbling in the boardroom served Fenty very well. Peter Furneaux's sacrifice conveniently deflected all the anger from the chairman's shameful conduct surrounding the sacking of Neil Woods. So let us at least hope that last night's fog doesn't turn into another smokescreen. Because for the 50 or so minutes that were played, the Tell the Telegraph exercise was exposed as hollow yet again as Town looked utterly clueless. Let's hope it isn't blamed on the conditions, because Rushden were playing in the fog as well, and it didn't seem to disadvantage them quite so much. Should Mooro's battling Mariners salvage at least a point from the rearranged game, Fenty's quiet word with the referee last night will clearly prove to be the most successful act so far of his entire term as chairman.