Cod Almighty | Diary
Clear that evil mud out of your soul
16 December 2020
BOTB diary writes: What? Me? But I do frothy nonsense!
Can I have Thursday's diary back please? You know, when I could talk about any old bollocks? Because at the moment the shit is getting real, and discussions about who is the least unfunny out of Hale and Pace won't butter any parsnips. I'm sure you all know but the situations we find ourselves in are these.
Firstly, football situation. We're shit, and we know we are. Last night the season reached a new low. Losing by five at Tranmere is bad, but losing 3-1 at the worst club in the Football League (stats don’t lie except when out of context) is badder. Their first goal was a beauty. The second goal wasn't, and the third was what happens if you never bother to address a goalkeeping crisis that's been holding the club back for years.
Many people are castigating team manager Oliver "Ollie" Ollieway, and indeed he must shoulder some of the blame. My personal view is he underestimated the toughness of this division and thought he could style his way out of the league with a bunch of children, pensioners, pub footballers and anyone who could play keepy-uppy for 10 minutes at Barrett’s. Indeed, this might be enough to leave this division, though not by the planned exit. Most of us have spent a chunk of our lives watching football at this level and we all know which teams get relegated. They always have one or two decent players, put a few passes together every now and then and have no backbone whatsoever. This team, as befits a team sponsored by Young's Seafood, looks like it has been filleted.
Secondly, shark-eyed nutsack situation. I've always thought our beloved non-chairman was a complete anchor, stopping the great ship Grimsby Town from sailing away into the sunlit seas of the upper divisions. (That didn't quite make sense, but it's gone now, move on.) Something else I've always thought is that small towns are great breeding grounds for dodgy dodgyness and shifty shiftosity. The national media don't care and the local media are too lazy and too scared to investigate. The police are too busy sending out drones to catch dog walkers and fining my 83-year-old father for doing 34 miles per hour along Barnoldby-le-Beck main road on a Sunday morning (as a random example) to worry about the way the local mafioso operates. The way it works is this: thick people with huge ambition, huge greed and huge egos dominate power structures because they are the ones who are interested in obtaining access to them. So the news that the non-chairman has been consorting with a known criminal barely registers, for me anyway, on the miffometer. It's the way things happen in places like this.
What does send the aforementioned miffometer into the dangerous red zone is that this known criminal was all set to invest money into the club. This, to a normal person, would be the cue for lots of questions, pointed figures and Paddington hard stares. For the anchor, it seems like a normal day's work. What does this say about his morality, his worldview, his sanity? Where does the potential property development, new ground and grant structure fit into this? I don't know, though I know a man who does. Perhaps everything is above board, non-suspicious, legal and lovely. But the key point is this: it doesn't look good, does it?
Inasmuch as an organisation can be a role model, a football club should be one. Like the church or the government - or at least the government prior to this one. There is a responsibility to society that comes with perceived centrality. Football clubs should represent sporting values: honesty, integrity, truth. Maybe ours still does: I'm not making any accusations. But if something smells bad, there is a chance you are going to find something rotten buried in the yard.