Cod Almighty | Diary
Making the right voices be heard
17 November 2020
The last time Grimsby played Hull City, in 1998, we beat them 1-0 and followed it up with a win over Scunthorpe, completing a Humber double on our way to winning the Football League Trophy. Football administrators, with the compliance of our board, mean that competition is no longer legitimate, so there is no legitimate game tonight. Casual Diary won't be on iFollow tonight: my £10 will go to the fundraiser organised by Karen Tees in memory of Matt, to aid Alzheimer's sufferers. Maybe you'd like to do the same.
Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport will today hold a stakeholders' meeting for those involved in football, to discuss the impact of the current crisis. You won't see much about it on the BBC website, presumably for the same reason that, with no top flight games last Saturday, there was no Final Score. You can read about Pickles the Bear getting a MOTDx makeover but nothing about a meeting which potentially affects football at every level.
Represented at Dowden's meeting will be the FA, Premier League, Football League, Women's Super League and Kick Racism Out. No fans' groups, and no representatives below League level. So no input from the 32 million fans who paid their cash to watch League football last season, and the impact of the pandemic on the 293 clubs in the four tiers below the Football League, watched by some 150,000 people each week, is clearly of no interest. Given their record on protecting footballing traditions and the less wealthy clubs, one shudders to think what this particular meeting will propose.
One thing it won't be discussing is any proposed sharing of football's wealth during the current crisis. I refuse to use the word bailout. According to Grimsby Town chair Philip Day, we can expect the first cash imminently from the £50m to be shared between clubs in divisions three and four. Although it has not been settled how this will be shared out - if it is based on attendance, Town would be 28th in the pecking order - the clubs seem happy enough. Day hopes it will be shared equally amongst the 48 clubs but is confident we will have a healthy bank balance come May.
That may placate those supporters who are unhappy at our start to the season, and our transfer policy. Paying out vast sums does not equate to success but there should be a balance. None of the monies received should go to any member of the board. It should not be forgotten the board turned down a buy out proposal because they were not convinced the prospective buyers could see us through a crisis financially. While fans have stumped up royally since the shut out began, we are yet to see the colour of any board members cash.
When the club encouraged us to buy shares earlier in the year, I was happy to do so and just this week I received my share certificate. I am now entitled to attend the club AGM and ask questions. How much harder those questions would be to ignore if we got together to form a shareholders united group is an issue I have touched on before. Watch this space. UTM