Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 23 May 2013

23 May 2013

So the Mariners Trust will have a place on the board at Grimsby Town Football Club, sometime soon. What will this mean for the club and the fans? It will, in theory at least, give the fans a say in the running of the club. Join the trust, inform it of your opinions, ask the fans' representative to raise your concerns in the boardroom. It's a direct link between the supporters and the decision-making processes at Blundell Park. Only the worst kind of cynic would retort that nothing has really changed since the club has basically been run for several years on the basis of John Fenty's instant reaction to whatever he reads on the Fishy messageboard.

Your original/regular Diary has often found myself in two minds about the idea of fans' involvement in the running of clubs. Whenever I think about it, at first it sounds like a wonderful thing and entirely to be encouraged. Then a few days later, it suddenly seems like less of a good idea, when I go to a match and consider a seat in the boardroom being given to the bloke in front of me who spends 90 minutes singing on his own about the Yorkshire Ripper and shouting things like "kick 'em in the compound".

The case for supporters' involvement, furthermore, is not exactly helped by the extraordinary spectacle of Chris Parker, the Mariners Trust chairman - the Mariners Trust chairman - telling the Grimsby Telegraph he doesn't actually think football clubs should be owned by their fans.

One of the reasons Town supporters often give for not joining the Mariners Trust is that they see it as too cosy with Major Shareholder Flagsmasher Fenty to make any difference. This, too, seems unlikely to be changed by today's interview with Chris Parker, who adds meekly that Fenty "sometimes gets a bad press". On the contrary, it seems to me that, given his record in charge of our club, Fenty has got off remarkably lightly in the media. The Telegraph in particular appears to have left the asking of awkward questions to David Burns at Radio Humberside, opting instead for a role amounting essentially to flag-waving and voucher-printing.

Perhaps this is not altogether surprising, taking into account the way Councillor Fenty (Con) tends to react to criticism. Some current members of the sports team at Riby Square may not have been around when GTFC's sponsorship by Jarvis ended just one year into a three-year contract and the Grimsby Telegraph very conspicuously refused to ask why. But some of us have long memories.

So on balance, will the arrival of supporters in the boardroom be a good thing or not? Ultimately I have no idea at all. But I tend to think we might as well give it a go. Just look at the record of the businessmen who've been running the show up to now. Whoever you put in charge, they'll be hard pressed to make a bigger bollocks of it than that.