Cod Almighty | Diary

Damned if you do

27 November 2014

"This skint sums Grimsby up nicely! Shit town, shit club, shit cunts!"

First up, let's not pretend we're shocked or offended – still less hurt – by Kegan Everington's "controversial" tweet. It's the sort of thing we ourselves say about Grimsby all the time. It's just not the same when it comes from other people.

We're allowed to slag off Grimsby as much as we like. We're the ones who grew up there, watching our dads' jobs dwindle away as the fishing came to ruin. We're the ones whose life chances were blighted by a culture of low expectations and insularity. When we talk about Grimsby, we do so by bringing to bear all the black (and occasionally white) humour we can muster. It's a coping strategy. Our hometown is brought low, and it still holds us down. Even if we respond by moving away to build a life in a place less browbeaten and diminished, we never quite escape it entirely.

For non-Grimbarians it's a different matter. That's not a coping strategy: it's snobbery. Your scorn will be met with indignation and sometimes fury.

So, how to react to Everington? Exactly how bollocked do we want him to be when the FA and his club haul him in?

Well, your original/regular Diary is more amused than anything by all this. Am I going to use this space today to retaliate with a withering summary of Everington's brief footballing career thus far with Town's struggling neighbours Lincoln City? Am I heck as like. As if I can be arsed with that. Do I want him banned for life? Neh. Like Paul Hurststs when confronted with Garrrrrrry Hill's bizarre post-match comments on Tuesday, I'll keep my dignity.

Everington's intervention was prompted, of course, by Skint, the in no way exploitative series, which should certainly not be categorised as 'poverty porn', from the entirely responsible broadcaster Channel 4. Skint presents a picture of pessimism which is fairly unrelenting. Given what happened to our once-mighty industry of seafaring – and the appalling vacuum of local leadership and inspiration which has dismally failed to fill the gap since the fishing collapsed – it's understandable that people should feel that way.

Town's non-chairman recently referred to North East Lincolnshire's nascent green energy industry in his efforts to contextualise plans for a new stadium at Peaks Parkway. It was one of those solemn and quite moving occasions when John Fenty made sense. Wind, wave and biofuel power ought to be the force that can put Grimsby back on its feet.

For that to happen will need the vacuum of local leadership and inspiration to be filled. And at ground level, you and I might need to believe a little more, and sneer at Forest Green Rovers' efforts to establish a carbon-neutral stadium a little less. Perhaps we should be a bit more indignant about Everington's tweet. At any rate, given some of that belief and leadership, North East Lincolnshire might just have the last laugh.