The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Just gimme some truth

4 December 2014

 

 …but please don't hold that against him.

Your original/regular Diary met the late Peter Furneaux only once, and only for a minute or two, and what struck me most was the cut of his suit. He seemed to me to inhabit a world of rotary clubs and golfing luncheons which was a million miles removed from my humble plane of bus passes and shabby overcoats.

So I will have to leave the personality tributes to those who actually knew him. But what I will say now, in the week of his passing, is exactly what I've said for the past ten years or so: I could never understand what it was that some Town fans seemed to have against him as a chairman or director of our football club.

To dwell now on differences of life and style, in fact, would be to miss the point. We don't want the people running our football clubs to be like us: we want them to be good at it. And while Furneaux's record on the board at GTFC was not perfect, it was remarkable. It was on his watch that the club appointed the legendary Alan Buckley as manager and enjoyed its most sustained period of success since our last relegation from the top flight in 1948.

Bizarre, then, the demand of the angry mob that pitched up at Blundell Park in March 2011. The club was in turmoil following relegation to the Conference, another shock managerial sacking, and a promising vice-chairman's acrimonious departure. Furneaux had long since vacated the role of chairman and already made clear his intention to leave the board at the end of the season. When John Fenty, to his credit, went to hear what they had to say, what did the mob decide was the necessary change to end Town's horrific decline? They told him Furneaux needed to quit the board immediately instead, two months earlier than planned.

Perhaps more bizarrely still, they got what they wanted. I would like, one day, to ask members of that mob how surprised they are that the granting of this demand somehow failed to lift the Mariners almost instantaneously back to the second division.

Though these people were highly vocal, my impression is that they were just a noisy minority. Our old buddy Donk Dawson is one of many who have come out in praise of the ex-chairman this week. "He and George Kerr came to present the trophies at my Sunday league football club dinner in Caistor a lot of years ago," he recalls. "They stayed the whole evening, got well stuck in (bladdered actually!) and were very friendly to all." Whatever rarefied sphere I imagined Furneaux to live in, it seems quite clear from tributes like this – and many others are doing the rounds – that he tended to have time for people.

And today I'm struck both by the story Furneaux told, immediately after his rushed departure from the boardroom, about his arrival there a quarter of a century earlier, and by the dignity with which he told it.

"In 1985 I, a former programme seller and out-and-out fan, was invited to join the board. I felt unbelievably proud, as I do to this day.

"Money was then required and I mortgaged my house and gave £50,000 as a loan. Problems arose and I found myself chairman, fortunately with an excellent gentleman Bill Carr as vice-chairman.

"We appointed Alan Buckley from non-League – a decision that was greeted with derision at the time. He and Arthur Mann were, in my opinion, the most valuable acquisitions made by GTFC and the club punched above its weight for years, progressing to what is now the Championship."

Read the rest over in the Grimsby Telewag archives.

I don't suppose he got everything right, but on balance his record speaks for itself. Tellingly, among the million or so words in recent books covering this period in Town's history, there's not a bad one about Peter Furneaux. Now, our sympathies to his family and friends. And whether you wear a shabby overcoat or a posh suit, let's remember the good times, because they wouldn't have happened without him.