Cod Almighty | Diary

Next stop: Lucarly's

2 September 2019

Trentside Diary writes: Whisper it if you dare but all feels pretty good around the Mariners at the moment. I never want to get too excited this early in a season, but we can still enjoy the work and planning of the last 18 months or so coming together nicely. We’re scoring goals, we have an exciting squad with some talented youngsters in the mix and fans are loving it.

This feels better than the 2015-16 season when we crawled out of non-League oblivion. A six-year wasteland where we had some fun but too much riding on the matches meant we didn't enjoy them until the final match was over. The only bright spot was fans coming together for Operation Promotion. Sorry forgot, that didn’t really happen did it?

In a difficult week for football generally a few have seen the sad demise of Bury as validation of our illustrious non-chairman. Hmmm, if you like. No. We're still here and I’m grateful to everyone involved in ensuring that, including all those who buy a ticket week in, week out. But many other clubs recovered far more quickly from the financial hole left by the collapse of the ITV deal all those years ago.

Money put in to buy shares or as loans isn’t the same as giving money to the club. If ever this was in doubt, you only have to look at those occasions when Nunty has said that he wouldn't want his money back. That’s right. He never has. If a takeover deal is on the cards, and he takes his money out, I do hope he has the common decency to deduct all perks and expenses he has enjoyed. Does he pay for a ticket every week, along with those for friends and family? Does he pay for his lunch in McMenemy's? I very much doubt it. If he does, fair play. If he doesn't, that’s 16 years worth of tickets and dinners to be offset please.

Back to Bury. Hundreds of fans went along on Saturday to what should have been a home game against Doncaster Rovers. Any genuine football supporter would be devastated to see this mess happen to their own club.

We seem to dislike the idea of regulation in this country. Or those with the loudest voices dislike it. We look at clubs in Germany where there are stricter rules around ownership and many think "It couldn’t happen here. It wouldn’t work" but then many of us actually want the Football League to do more. There has to be a model for financing clubs that makes this kind of demise less likely. For example, a cap on wages so unscrupulous egoists can’t just bring in players above the team’s current level to drag them up the league. A restriction on what clubs can do with their grounds; they have to own it, or lease it in perpetuity, with restrictions on any loans against it.

England women's team manager Phil Neville has said that the heart of Bury has been "ripped out" by their expulsion from the English Football League. His mum was club secretary and his late father had been a director. "I'm devastated," said Neville. "It's disgraceful. Bury, after 125 years, no longer has a football club. The heart of the town has been ripped apart. Now it's up to the Bury people - myself included - to try to put some heart back into a town that relied heavily on a football club."

You can only imagine the impact on his family. The Football League really does have a duty to do something to stop these people who acquire a club as a vanity project and buy themselves a league place by bringing in players on considerably more per week than players at other clubs in the same league. Take Adam Rooney, allegedly on £4000 per week at newly-promoted Salford. How can the likes of Town or Bury compete with that? Hang on a minute: aren’t there a couple of Nevilles putting money in there?

But for those of us who don’t trust the Football League, the Against League 3 protest continues on Tuesday with the Internet Mariners taking on Iron Bru at Lucarly’s in aid of Scunthorpe Hospital Children’s ward and The Rock Foundation Grimsby (Not some nutty religious lot as I first assumed but a local charity supporting vulnerable young people in the Grimsby area and providing a food bank for those in need). You can donate via JustGiving or donate non-perishable food items on the night.