Cod Almighty | Diary

How can you adapt The Woman in White for TV and not have the bit about Grimsby?

8 May 2018

It's a lovely day in Manchester, and Middle-Aged Diary can't help feeling charitable, so I'm going to help John Fenty out by writing the statement he should have issued on Sunday.

I'd like to apologise to you, to Michael Jolley and to the players of Grimsby Town for my uncouth behaviour after Saturday's game. With hindsight I appreciate it was a mistake to get drawn into a row. I was concerned that refusing to talk to fans might have generated some ill-will but I realise now that simply acknowledging your loyal support (for the manager and players, not for me) would have been far more appropriate.

I am really sorry that the incident will have distracted attention from the achievements of Michael and the players in changing the club's fortunes in such a short space of time.

If he had really wanted to make a statement worth making, Fenty might have gone on:

I would like to think that such behaviour on my part is uncharacteristic, but I am forced to accept it has become all too typical of my interactions with you. I recognise that improving links between Grimsby Town Football Club, its fans and the community is a priority. This is not simply a matter of organising open days but of showing ourselves to be truly open to dialogue and to outside ideas. I realise I am not the person to make that happen.

I will therefore be stepping up my efforts to sell my share in the club. Until then, and to help facilitate that sale, I have instructed the rest of the board and the chief executive to consult with the Mariners Trust and draw up proposals for a new decision-making process for the club, in which I will play no part.

But let's not let John Fenty have the last word. The focus must be on the players. It must be a strange, ambivalent time to be a footballer whose contract at Grimsby Town has one month left to run. Some of them we know we shall never see in Town colours again. One or two indeed may be wondering if their playing careers are at an end.

Whatever the future may hold, every one of them has in the last few weeks done everything we could have asked of them, and more. It is only the unlikeliest of chances that any player will be reading, but just in case: thank you, and our thoughts are with you. We wish you all the very best.