Cod Almighty | Diary

Keep calm and buy me a pony

2 June 2015

Ten years ago the viability of Grimsby Town Football Club was threatened by the emergence of a tax debt of around £720,000 left by a previous regime. A campaign to pay it off was launched in early 2005 under the name Keep the Mariners Afloat.

This used a variety of fundraising methods. Some sounded grand: "Promotion Of The Club's Profile By Local Dignatories, The Council And Various Media". Some sounded straightforward: "Higher Attendances". Some sounded frankly mystifying: "Protected Trustee Loan Account". But in an age before crowdfunding was actually a word, it was mostly – like the Waters and Bonetti whiprounds and the Project 88 survival plan before it – about passing round a bucket.

One year down the line, Keep the Mariners Afloat had raised around £25,000, and the club's then chairman John Fenty said the campaign, "to be quite frank, has run out of steam". The tax debt was paid off anyway. If your original/regular Diary ever knew the details of how, I certainly can't remember them today. Whatever the truth of the club's financial situation at the time, it was noteworthy that Town were believed in early 2006 to be swatting aside bids of £300,000 for permacrock-in-waiting Michael Reddy.

Yesterday the resurgent Mariners Trust launched Operation Promotion – a digital passing-the-bucket scheme intended to boost the funds available to Paul Hurst as he prepares the squad to Go Again next season. High on his list of priorities, presumably, will be replacing Carl Magnay – Town's player of the season who yesterday left the club to join fourth division strugglers Hartlepool United – and signing at least two strikers who can hit the net with something approaching reliability.

Astonishingly, it took just eight hours for donations to smash through the target set for eight weeks. At the time of writing, adding in £5k from the trust and £20k from Grimsby's latest lottery millionaires Lee and Susan Mullen, the OP totalizer stands at a very healthy £51,840. Get down, Shep!

Not only that, but there's an "unprecedented interest" in season tickets and a reported 10 per cent hike in the playing budget provided by directors before Operation Promotion (can't find the link for that now, sorry). All told, you'd reasonably expect Hurst to be chucking fat wodges of cash left, right and centre-forward, and Town to be crowned non-League champions sometime around February.

Now, I don't want to have to be the one who says it, but… why didn't Town get promoted in 2015? Was it because the manager didn't have enough money to spend on players? Or was it because the manager's unnecessary tactical caution meant we dropped several points in games we ought quite comfortably to have won?

I know, I know. It's still brilliant, Town fans are ace apart from the dicks with smoke bombs, shut up and take my money. Seriously. I'll stick 25 in this afternoon, I promise. And tactics can always be changed, can't they.

Speaking of investment in the club, it's almost three months since Town's board established a 'working group' to try and do something about that awkward business of a £22million funding gap in the plans for a new stadium. (The composition of the 'working group' was not made public, but we know it's "headed up" by director Stephen Marley.) Why is three months significant? Because the club said the group would report back in three months' time. If nothing is forthcoming by the end of June, surely people will want to know why!

Come to think of it, was it Project 88? Anyway. Oh, and there's a friendly against Boston United. T'ra for now!