Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 10 March 2011

10 March 2011

Well, it's Thursday again and the fall-out from Woodses' sacking has been rumbling on for two weeks now. It is getting boring. Minor changes in the boardroom, speculation on new managers, not even a midweek game to distract us. Unfortunately there is no getting away from it. We're almost at Saturday though, and at least when there is a game on we can hear about the team and the focus will be on the pitch instead of on the upstairs/car park shenanigans of the board; well, for 90 minutes at least. But that's Saturday, so for now it's me, your Part-Time Diary, to whip through any Mariners-related developments that have occurred in the last 24 hours. It's going to be manic.

We're going to start at the top and work down because at the minute the first team isn't getting a look-in. I can't even remember the last Tell the Telegraph from a grovelling and apologetic yet ever-optimistic player. So it's straight to the boardroom and, following on from Furneaux's resignation yesterday, the Telegraph exclusively - beating of competition from numerous daily nationals - got the story of his 26 years on the Grimsby board. The website only gives a teaser, of which a personal highlight is the nonsense sentence "I met various directors and former chairman FA Would there and they heard I was very interested in Grimsby Town Football Club." You see, kids, a spell checker just doesn't replace proofreading. The full story is in the proper paper version of the Telegraph and possibly worth a read. Possibly with a capital P.

Furneaux's resignation has not immediately led to Mike Parker jumping back on to the board as many had expected, although, as many others had also expected, the problems run deeper than that. Of course, we fans are not privy to information regarding the details of the problems or the likelihood of them being sorted out, but we now know it wasn't just to do with Furneaux.

So there will probably be more board sorting and squabbling in the near future. Parker is tied in to cover losses for at least next season and is joint owner. So it does seem likely that he will eventually take up a seat on the board, but these things never run smooth at Grimsby. It will drag on for a while yet, I think. Parker is confident that it hasn't had any impact on the appointment of a new manager. We'll probably never know, but any employee considering a job offer from a new employer would probably view one of the owners walking out and another director being ushered into resigning to be a potential reason for staying well away.

Now we move down to the dug-out. Grimsby don't seem to be any closer to appointing a manager, maybe a little bit further away with targets reported to be turning offers down. Today's new rumour is Mark Stimson, Stimmo to his friends, presumably. He joins yesterday's rumour Ian Sampson (Sammo) on the long list of potential new bosses. Boston have requested that their management duo be struck from the list, although there has been no approach. Be careful, Boston - you can bet John's already salivating at the prospect of a 2-for-1 manager sacking sometime in 2012.

Fenty opened the talent pool up the other day, saying: "The criteria remains [sic.] people with knowledge of the Conference but that doesn't preclude managers with Football League experience." So, er, basically he's on the lookout for someone who's definitely been a manager somewhere before. Which probably rules Dave Moore out, despite his fine record so far, not that Dave would even want the job. He is happy being physio, better job security. So no manager yet, and no real news on it, again.

Onto the pitch and Ademeno has continued his latest return from injury by playing for the reserves in a 2-2 draw with Hartlepool yesterday. Ademeno got 70 minutes so will be hoping to make yet another comeback this weekend as he attempts to topple Gazza in the comeback charts. That's it on team news; all this board/manager stuff is well and truly getting in the way. Let's hope we get something else to talk about on Saturday and we can focus on the pitch, because football's about the shirts, not the suits.