Cod Almighty | Diary

Hollo who?

31 December 2019

Cod Almighty are the exact opposite of "in the know". We are "Outside and ignorant" and proud as hell of that fact. If you have come here expecting to read anything about Ian Holloway, log off, let your hair down and get ready to party like 2019 never happened. 

What shall we write about instead? We've two items on the agenda.

Let's start by saying welcome back Brandon Buckley, whose loan to Cleethorpes was cut short in time that he was available for selection against Crawley. Does that signal he is being lined up to provide creativity in midfield when and if Ethan Robson returns to Sunderland? Surely not. More prosaically, Joe Starbuck, who has been featuring on the Town bench lately, was poorly. The two facts may be connected.

They say of the 1960s that if you can remember what happened, you weren't there. They will surely write of the 2010s that if you can remember what happened, you'll wish you hadn't been there.

One of the lowlights was the return of Russell Slade. Back in February 2018, it was obvious to everyone that John Fenty had made a major blunder in bringing him back to Blundell Park.

Obvious to everyone except Fenty perhaps - Slade himself surely knew it and was hanging on for the compensation. The board held a meeting to discuss the position, and decided to keep Slade on. Mariners Trust representative Jon Wood spoke against the idea, but Fenty prevailed.

Afterwards, the Trust issued two statements. One made sense. It said Wood had spoken against Slade but had been outvoted. That was quickly retracted and another put in its place. It was garbled nonsense, intended to give the impression that Wood had been persuaded of the wisdom of keeping Slade.

When garbled nonsense issues from Grimsby Town, you always suspect Fenty is somewhere behind it. The irresistible impression was that Fenty had leaned on the Trust to say what he wanted them to say. An impression reinforced when the next day, the Trust chair, Paul Savage, resigned.

Middle-Aged Diary rakes up this old episode because it looks like Fenty is up to his old tricks. in his pre-Christmas statement, he was careful to say the Trust was behind his (let's call it a) strategy, and a day or two later, sure enough, the Trust issued its own statement which can be paraphrased, in all its pointlessness as: "We agree with John."

A trade union is only as good as its members. If the same is true of supporters trusts, then all those claims that Town fans are the best in the League must be well wide of the mark.

It's new years eve and a time for resolutions. How about making ours to do something about the way the opinions of fans are so easily ignored at Grimsby Town?