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Cod Almighty | Diary

Send big dogs after her that bite her bum

25 May 2016

Wicklow Diary writes: Yesterday felt horrible and yet we as supporters had the easiest part to play. For Paul Hurst and the players released, it must have been hell. The confirmation today that Conor Henderson was not offered a contract brings the total departures to eleven including Jon Nolan.

The contrast between Henderson and Nolan is stark. With similar ages and similar Big Club academy backgrounds, Nolan grasped the chance offered and has reversed the trend in his career. Some will grumble that he owed it to Hurst and Town to stick around. It's alright for us to get sentimental but look at Shaun Pearson for an example at what can happen when a player does. Nobody expected him to be spending most of the season on the bench for us when the bright lights of Barnsley beckoned last summer. Don't get me wrong, Shaun obviously had different priorities and is settled in the area. His brilliant attitude all season must have been at least partly founded on this. However, from a purely football and financial point of view, Nolan has a good opportunity at Chesterfield and good luck to him.

Good luck too to Henderson and the others released. It's particularly difficult to lose the lads like JP, Clay and Robertson who were at Wembley in 2015. We shared the low with them. In the past week we've seen that they felt the same as us about putting it right. On a positive note, most of them should get signed up in the Conference and I wouldn't be surprised to see a reversal of the York-Grimsby feeder club relationship. The exceptions are Sunter and Bastock. Both have been unlucky with injury at a critical time for their careers and it is difficult to see where they can go from here. All the very best, fellas.

The positive for us is that such a dramatic and ruthless clear-out suggests Hurst has an ambitious shopping list. Get your helmet on, Matt Dannatt – if the rumour mill doesn’t produce some quality signings, you’ll be the first to get it.

Thankfully for John Fenty, majority shareholder is a position insulated from ruthless clear-outs. Hurst cut players who he deemed weren't good enough to make the step up to League football. Mr Fenty spent several years out of his depth in the League and we have the relegations to prove it.

The revelation may get my Cod Almighty contract cancelled, but I have some sympathy for John Fenty. I have no doubt he is a genuine fan. For him, the dream of having a few bob and owning the club you love turned to a nightmare. What does he do? Walk away and leave the club in a mess, even if it was of his own making? Who would want to look in the mirror every morning knowing Town have descended into non-League under their stewardship?

Put yourself in his shoes. You wouldn't want to walk away from your club with the most dramatic slide in its history as your legacy. Even if walking away or taking yourself out of future decision-making completely was the best thing for the club. I was genuinely happy for him when we were promoted and part of this stigma was lifted.

The happiness was still there even after seeing footage of his embarrassing interruption of Omar’s pitch-side interview. I take TV Fenty merely being cringeworthy as a result ever since this nugget on Sky (at 1min 36secs):

Rubbish joke? Stupid? Offensive? Sexist? Mrs Wicklow reckoned it ticked all the boxes at the time and still does.

All happiness toward him was replaced with anger on the way to Wembley on Sunday when I read his comments in the Non-League Paper about the League 3 proposals. He skipped def cons 5, 4, 3 and 2 with statements that are so insane they are difficult to believe even he could utter them.


Putting Premier League reserve teams or under-23s into the pyramid won't "enhance attendances". It will kill teams like Grimsby Town. I obviously can't prove it but this is a fact. I would have zero interest in watching Town being a sparring partner for Man Utd under-23s or anybody else. Never. Under any circumstances and in any competition. Crikey, I felt cheated when Derby played a few of their reserves at Blundell Park in pre-season; don't ask me to pay to watch it pretend to be part of a competition.

The entire league would be pointless. We may as well watch a kickabout on Cleethorpes beach. Incidentally, transpose the brain patterns that created Fenty's comments on to the stadium project, and Cleethorpes beach with buckets for goalposts is probably where we'll end up. Can a man who has so little understanding of the fundamentals be trusted on any of the big decisions for Grimsby Town?

Things are going to be difficult enough on our return to the League. We've only been gone six years but we're like Charlton Heston returning to Earth in Planet of the Apes. Things have changed. Player salaries in division two averaged £325,000 a year last season. Our average is probably around £40,000. I laughed earlier in the season at Premier League Stoke paying bazillions for players, but get this – little old Brentford's payroll last year was 18 million quid. That's over twelve times what we paid out. What is the plan for us to get back to division two in a world where players are on six thousand pounds a week?

The clincher in Fenty's comments? "The Premier League will be advantaged". Mega LOLZ. Nothing is as "advantaged" as the Premier League: that's the bloody problem.

It brings to mind an Eddie Izzard bit on the national anthem. God save the queen? No-one is more saved than the queen. "The queen lives in a very big house, she has barbed wire outside, and people with guns in front of that. That's one saved fucking queen, I'll tell you! That's the problem, she's overly saved!"

Maybe Fenty is one of those kids in the schoolyard who attempts to dodge the wedgies by getting pally with the bullies. The FA and Premier League could address the stockpiling and stagnating of young talent by introducing 25-man squads with a cap on total salary spend across the squad. They have used the grotesque and unchecked greed at the top of football to create a bad environment for player development and then they ask the clubs they are killing to help them? Fuck off.

The Mariners Trust downplayed the article as being Fenty's personal opinion and not that of the club. This would be fine except he is the majority shareholder. Fenty in charge of Town is like an equality minister who votes against gay marriage (another fine Tory invention, that; thanks for the heads-up, Devon Diary). Or a member of parliament coming to a climate change debate and telling everybody authentic wild west Kerry gibberish that God controls the weather. The video of this is genuinely funny/terrifying if you have a couple of minutes and can understand the gibberish.

Cash in your chips and leave with a positive legacy, John. Thanks for the money, your efforts and for not just giving up on the club, but hand control over to the Mariners Trust for a few seasons. They'll give you a shout when we have the cash to cover the benign debt. We won't even embarrass everyone by asking exactly who made the decisions that racked up the debt in the first place.