Cod Almighty | Diary

Solidarity

9 February 2021

There's not a lot today. In a fairly full programme of division four games this evening, all the sides around us are in action, and it will be good for morale if Newport beat Southend rather more convincingly than they beat us. There's no Town game: even the reserves' game with Scunthorpe has been put in the deep freeze. In fact, there must be a fair chance quite a lot of the League programme will not survive the weather. Let's pause to hope it doesn't stop the Mariners putting in a full week at Cheapside, then move on.

Middle-Aged Diary was tempted to use the blank to fill out the details of the theory I hinted at when we were meant to play Barrow (a game now arranged for 23 March): that if it hadn't been for Alex May, Michael Jolley might still be Town's manager. But the reasoning is clear enough: Fenty's evident disenchantment with the club after being forced to sack Russell Slade; the whispers his shareholding was up for sale bringing forth not only Tom Shutes et al but also May, who reminded him of the money-making potential if he could retain his roles at club and council for a year or two; and then the need for a compliant - if not complicit - and distracting figurehead in Ian Holloway. I could fill out the faint circumstantial evidence backing up my thinking, but it is by the by now.

Except that there are so many innocent victims of our soon to be ex-custodian's playing of roulette with a community's pride: good players and - in Anthony Limbrick - a good coach discarded, some treated shamefully; and new players fed an idle promise of a career that Holloway was never going to be in a position to make good on in the conditions of this Covid-hit campaign. We have read a bit about patriotism lately, with the Labour Party preparing to wrap itself in the Union Jack. Personally, I've no time for an unthinking defence of any country, any ideology, or any club. I love Town, which is why I like to see them do right by the people who depend on them, and by the people who have been prepared to serve them well.

It was revealed last week the club tried to loan out Alhagi Touray Sisay back to a League of Wales club, a tall order when their season is suspended. He now faces a whole year taken out of a short career to kick only his heels, not even his name on the shirt when he made one brief League appearance for the Town. These are hard times for any out of contract footballer, made harder when they were fed a line. The patriotism I can believe in, the love for our club I feel, recognises that we look out for each other. Because of Fenty and Holloway, there are going to be people who, whenever they hear the words "Grimsby Town" feel bitter, and that hurts our pride.

Middle-Aged Diary is spending a lot of his free time in the British Newspaper Archive, word-searching the word "Grimsby": for every reference to our football club, there will be many to fish and some to trawlers lost at sea. We take our nickname from a profession which, more than most, knows that safety depends on mutual trust, on solidarity. It could be that another victim of Fenty's May flirtation will be our League status. No one welcomes that, but even if it proves to be so, our lowest point was not the loss of league status, but losing sight of the respect a club owes to its employees and its supporters. From here, we can only improve.

Up the Mariners.