Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 11 July 2011

11 July 2011

Mardy Diary writes: "Connel: Our tracker thing is fucking shit amd we got our facts wrong so lets blame the Club for getting it wrong. Dont cry, it will be alright tossers" says the email from someone who can't even spell Connell correctly. But did we? I thought Friday's diary was all about facts and getting them correct: the club announced that Connell had a one-year option, then a year later it said he didn't, then it removed the original article and then put it back again.

So, what could possibly be the explanation? Well, with no correction or clarification seemingly appearing on the club's website, we have to delve a little further to find out. And so it was, on the club's official messageboard that the "admin" had made it clear: "It was anticipated that Alan Connell would sign for the club on a 2-year + a 1 year option deal last summer. The player and his agent were not happy with that deal and Alan eventually signed a 2 year contract. As for the conspiracy theory, the link seems to be working okay and we have no intention of deleting the said article". Here's the post, in case it happens to - I dunno - disappear at some point:

Let's look at that second point first, and let's be clear that this isn't any kind of conspiracy theory but a matter of rank incompetence on the part of the club. The page was temporarily removed from the club website, as it was working first thing in the morning and disappeared not long after Friday's diary went up. But don't take our word for it: plenty of other people noticed this on The Grim Outlook, The Fishy and the club's own messageboard. The article reappeared later, dated 8 July 2011:

So back to the initial point: Alan Connell was originally going to sign a two-year plus one-year option, but changed his mind. OK - no problem with that. That happens all the time in negotiations and you can clearly see how the confusion arose. However, it does leave one question: why is it that the club's website chose to announce the signing of Alan Connell on a two-year plus one-year option before the contract was even signed? Even if they were a little premature with the announcement, why didn't they go back and correct their original article after the event?

We're not suggesting that Alan Connell didn't sign a two-year contract, by the way - for the confused who think this is some weird conspiracy theory. No, we're happy in the belief that Connell signed such a contract. The issue here is the club's official media outlet choosing, rather randomly, to point an accusatory finger at other people and suggest that they were promoting an untruth, even though that very fact emanated from their own source. Even the Telegraph, cautious as it always is where Fenty is concerned, has pointed out that it was misinformed originally.

But this isn't a big deal, really: if they'd made a mistake originally and since corrected it - fine. But again, it is the nature of how they choose to do business. Rather than fess up and apologise or even quietly correct the original source without saying anything, they choose to go straight in on the attack and expect the fans to just sit back and take this. And where does it leave them? It leaves them stood there gormlessly staring into the middle distance with their piss-sodden and shit-flecked kecks hanging around their ankles once more.

And to top it all off, after all that, someone has the temerity to suggest it's Cod Almighty who has our facts wrong: someone apparently in a senior position at the council, who works in some capacity at the club and is close friends and golf partner to the Fenty family. And he does this by emailing abuse to us where he can't even spell the name 'Connell' correctly. This, my friends, this is the issue.

It makes me wonder whether, even if we do gain promotion, the club can really achieve anything while it continues to be 'non-League' in the way it chooses to go about business. It acts with unapologetic arrogance and treats the fans with utter contempt, even when things are going reasonably well on the pitch. Because it doesn't matter what the players or management do: there'll always be someone in an official capacity at the club willing to stick their over-sized clownshoe in their gobshite mouth.