Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 30 March 2012

30 March 2012

Mardy Diary writes: You may have seen recently another story about an incident involving an ego-driven chairman, this time at Bournemouth. The local rag, the Bournemouth Echo, was banned after a series of spats caused by what the club saw as negative reporting of the management and governance of the club. The paper stood its ground and was subsequently banned from press conferences, before being banned altogether. Some reminders of 'Ambulancegate' and Fenty's spat with David Burns there.

What is interesting here, though, is the response from the Echo. Instead of caving in and going begging to the club, they called their bluff and pulled all reporting of the football club from the paper. Good on 'em. While no-one likes to see their club needlessly beaten up by reporters on a regular basis, there's nothing to be gained from a neutered press either locally or nationally.

Back to the Telegraph then, and it's clear that it has been pretty much afeared of the club since the wrangle over the ambulance (or lack of) back in 2003. What we have had since is a largely insipid, albeit space-filling, series of interviews and articles with players and managers and the like, which tell us nothing and rarely probe beneath the surface. There have been a large number of significant events at the club over the years that could have warranted some serious journalistic investigation. But instead the paper has chosen to become just another platform for Our Great Leader, John 'Not Con' Fenty. When Fenty moved earlier this year to prise overall control of the club back, there wasn't a single probing question from the paper. Now the dust seems to have settled somewhat on the deal, we still await further comment from the Telegraph. Personally I won't hold my breath.

Radio Humberside, to its credit, did continue to ask difficult questions after its many run-ins with the club. But even it backed off somewhat after their last spat, with Tondeur noticeably nervous in his questioning of club officials for fear of being booted out of the ground. David Burns was not so coy. While his approach rankled with a number of fans, he did at least have the strength of character to push the club on certain issues. Sadly, since his change in position at the station, that little bit of bite seems to have gone, and even the phone-in seems to have lost what little quality it had.

So while it may be easy to accuse some of negativity in their coverage of the club, it's worth remembering that there's room for both positive and negative comment. Certainly last season Cod Almighty took flak from some quarters for what people considered to be an excessively positive overview of the club, whereas this season the accusation has been that we've been negative. The truth, of course, is that the fanzine runs contributions from a number of different people, who all hold different views on different aspects of the club, and so generally the views are quite mixed.

Anyway, it was our tenth birthday last Friday and nobody even sent us a card. You negative bastards.