Cod Almighty | Diary
A long winter's night
22 December 2020
At the risk of sounding like John Fenty or one of his clan, you do all know that no one has ever made a penny out of Cod Almighty, don't you? Well, no one at Cod Almighty itself, at least: perhaps in Cornwall there is a pub which every Monday evening holds a competition to see who can find the most cultural references in Tony Butcher's latest match report, with a generous cash prize at stake.
Middle-Aged Diary only asks as the Mail presumably paid someone to cobble together what masquerades as a report but is really just a randomly assembled collection of clippings about Grimsby Town. The CA diary editor (or "custodian", as he likes to be called) would have been tutting if it had been submitted to us: "We pay you too much. Yes, I know we pay you nothing, but that's still way too much." I'm not going to share a link to it: bad enough I had to read it in the interests of research without you generating them any advertising revenue.
Anyway, quoted in that "report" is Alan Rutter, chair of the Mariners Trust, saying Fenty has got the club out of a lot of "bother" over the years. Rutter has now said that the quote used by the Mail hack (never was the word "hack" so appropriate) was part of a longer conversation; let's hope he also explained that Fenty had caused most of the "bother" himself.
Rutter affirms that he agrees with the statement the Trust issued on Friday which said that a change in ownership of the club would be desirable, and welcomed positive talks between club chair Phil Day and potential investor Tom Shutes. It also discusses the concept of fan ownership, which it seems to regard as a backstop if the talks with Shutes fail. Fan ownership has usually come about when clubs have failed, but that does not stop us organising to have as full a say as possible in the club, both now and in the future.
The idea of a shareholders united group - fans with small numbers of shares each joining together to make sure their voices can be heard - is one which has been discussed over several months. I'm delighted that Sarah Mann and Tom Sargent have taken steps to put that on a practical footing. Follow them on twitter to find out more about what they are doing and email shareholdersunitedgtfc@gmail.com if you are willing to use your shares - and they would remain your shares - to help build our collective strength.
To return to standards in journalism, Cod Almighty reader Ian Jackson has emailed in response to yesterday's diary. In what he admits is a lengthy email, he cites the increasing use of the "gotcha" question and ex-manager Michael Jolley's difficult relationship with BBC Humberside, to say that nowadays the interviewee has no real right of reply: the journalist always has the last word. This seems to me to have little applicability to Ian Holloway, who can always find an outlet ready to quote him: his views are always likely to be given precedence over any other personality in Grimsby.
Ian concludes "Don't mistake current levity and eccentricity for incompetence, in a world of having to embrace all behaviours and differences in the world, you can't and shouldn't mistake 'individualism, character and verbosity' for not being very good at a job. Give it space, and a bit of time and wait, be patient. Those asking the questions don't have their job on the line, they can ask questions of a bloke on the sensitive issue of his job and his livelihood, but they happily keep their own job when he's been sacked. They don't get him sacked, but they certainly don't go out of their way to be respectful to his situation at times." Again, I'm not sure this has any applicability to John Tondeur, who in the difficult situation of a post-match interview when emotions are likely to be running high, sticks to his job of asking the questions any fan would expect to be asked. Maybe I'm old fashioned: I'd quite like it if our manager just answered those questions or explained why he can't rather than expounding his views on climate change or whatever, but I agree Holloway should not be judged on what he says but on what he does.
What he does today is prepare a team to play Bradford City tonight. City, like us, won on Saturday having lost three and drawn the other of their previous four matches. It is the only game in the fourth division: whoever wins will go into Christmas feeling a little easier over the distance between them and the bottom two places in the league.
Town's squad may or may not feature Pierre Fonkeu, the 23-year-old Cameroonian forward who has been at clubs in Belgium, France and Bulgaria as well as Norwich City without seeing a lot of first team action. The club are waiting on international clearance before completing his signing. Ian Holloway puts it a bit more colourfully than that, naturally.
The days are getting longer. Let's hope the nights soon start getting shorter as well.