Cod Almighty | Diary

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

6 January 2015

So what can we tell you about Ollie Palmer, who has joined Grimsby on a month's loan from Mansfield? The striker is known to his mother as Oliver and his mates as 'Bath'. (No danger of a chalk-and-cheese partnership if we can find someone called Huntley.) He is 6' 5" tall, so insert your own 'in the event of floodlight failure' joke here.

Palmer was prolific over two years at Havant & Waterlooville, with 37 goals in 64 appearances, but has just nine to show from his 54 appearances for the Stags. As late as last March, then Mansfield manager Paul Cox was talking of his "raw potential". However, the picture emerging from this thread is probably familiar enough to anyone who has reflected on the careers of Dayle Southwell or Andy Cook, for instance. If nothing else, Palmer, who will turn 23 while he is at Blundell Park, has something to prove.

If the Mariners social media have been remarkably quiet about the signing of a new striker (and after all, a few days ago one of the whips with which Paul Hurst was being beaten was his failure to sign a goalscorer), it is because our only-chairman-when-he-wants-to-be has managed to put himself in the spotlight yet again, to the worst possible effect (yet again).

Miss Guest Diary touched on this yesterday but the story has developed. The context is everything. A thread on the Fishy was rubbishing a rumour about player discontent and the club being put in administration. There was in short, nothing to see here. Then, in response to a comment that if the club went into administration, Fenty would not get his loans back, Getyourfactsright (the name by which it has been confirmed Fenty posts on the Fishy) wrote:

Peter loans in the club have nil bearing on going into admin or not. THEY NEVER HAVE.

Admin has never been an option purely because it's about funding the future. Not funding loans being called on or debt of any sort RELATED TO GTFC

The only CALLABLE debt we have is with the bank and yes they could call shots but never while the club Is a going concern.

I.e. AS LONG AS SOME LUNATIC IS PREPARED TO FUND FOR-CAST / ACTUAL LOSSES.

IF YOU KNOW A LUNATIC PLEASE RECOMMEND OUR CLUB.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOU GIVING THIS ONE A WIDE BIRTH AS I DONT REMOTELY CONSIDER MY LOANS/SHARES AT ALL.

WHY DOES ANYONE THROW GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD!!!!! THEY MUST BE A LUNATIC

NOW THAT THERES PILLS FOR DEMENTIA , THEY MIGHT MAKE ONE FOR ME TO CURE LUNACY.

To no-one's surprise, this intervention did not have the desired effect, unless the effect desired was to produce responses which were at their kindest when they were to the effect that one should not mock the afflicted.

The post was made at quarter to midnight, a time when all messages need to be read with a degree of tact, especially if the poster has the humility to request that tact in the sombre morning light. Instead, Fenty went on to announce that he's not going to post on the Fishy any more "due to the extreme and unfair interpretations of some of my posts. Not to mention the vile and abuse [sic.] I endure."

We are a club in desperate need of leadership. We are a club that deperately needs someone in a position to say: "Mr Fenty, you really should not say that, and you will not say that." Bear in mind that we are talking about the man who, if Hurst goes, will make the next managerial appointment. Any success we enjoy will be a matter of luck while John Fenty is allowed this licence to bring the club into disrepute.

The quote is a cliché, but some quotes become clichés because they are so apt. Bearing in mind the money John Fenty has poured into the club (and the diminishing returns from that investment), we must repeat Leo Amery's speech addressed to Neville Chamberlain in 1940 (itself a quote from Oliver Cromwell):

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.