Cod Almighty | Postbag
Postbag: with the option of a several letter extension
14 July 2011
Your letters in the last few days have been dominated by a single issue... must I call it Connellgate? If you feel you have read far too much about this already, scroll down a bit, as there are letters on other subjects.
Trial of the century
Well you seem to have egg on your face. Alan Connell has said he knows nothing about an extra year option on his contract. Why don't you get your fucking facts right before you start writing such shit on your shit web-site. Because nobody usually comes on your shit web-site you have to go and promote it on the Fishy. We don't want you on there either. I just hope GTFC have the guts to take legal action against you.
from Dave Bell
Letters Ed responds: That would be an interesting case. For the defence, our main witnesses would be John Fenty and the official site webmaster, admitting to stating Connell's contract included a third year option. The prosecution's argument would have to be that no rational person should assume that statements made by Fenty and the SNOS are accurate... we're doomed.
Publish and be damned
What's that noise? It's the sound of Codalmighty back-tracking. How about telling your two readers YOU FUCKED UP AND GOT IT WRONG? I bet you won't publish that matey.
from Dave Bell (again)
Letters Ed responds: Seems our two readers make up in assiduousness for what they lack in numbers. And besides...
Our reader writes
I'd just like to thank the whole team for providing the Cod Almighty website just for me. I didn't realise I was the only person who looked at this site. I'm most grateful.
Your reader
from Martyn Wyburn
Letters Ed responds: Martyn wrote after the Diary used Dave's letter on Tuesday.
Connell in the shop window?
Dear CA,
I sit and bang my head repeatedly against my computer this morning. Why doesn't Fenty just stick Connell in Ramsden's window?
There could be no clearer indication that he is laying the groundwork to placate fans by saying "we had to sell him or he could leave for nothing at the end of the season" than the article which CA quite properly brought to the attention of the dwindling band of GTFC faithful today. Apart from being at worst a lie and at best obfuscation, it just makes the club look like complete tossers, and I have even more admiration for Connell for (so far) keeping a dignified silence through all of this.
If you have a 30-goal striker, you hang on to him for dear life. I appreciate last season may have been a one-off, and Alan's form slipped towards the end of last season, but even so he's the best we've got at the moment. What can we possibly gain by selling him to a direct competitor? If a Championship side came in and offered half a million plus I understand that a small club like us would have to take that. But a poxy 65k-100k? Would Crawley have taken that for Tubbs even if they hadn't gone up?
I repeat the request made in my last email for the management and chairman of GTFC to SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT CONNELL if you genuinely wish to keep the best player we have "in the building".
Cheers
from Chris Beeley
Letters Ed responds: Thanks Chris. As there are one or two people determined to misconstrue anything published on Cod Almighty, we'll make clear that we have been careful, in reporting this issue, to avoid conspiracy theories. But, as the next letter suggests, bad communication inevitably makes people wonder what the club is trying to hatch.
Ignore the haters
Hi everyone at CA Ivory Towers!
Just an email to say I read every day, and I find the Diary so valuable when I go on holiday and want to come back and see what's happened over the last week.
I'm pretty flabbergasted that people feel the need to resort to abuse, and to be honest, I don't understand why. You reported the facts as they came to light. The original SNOS page was deleted. The way the article from the club was worded made it an accusatory tone of someone else printing wrong about the Connell deal, when the SNOS is as much to blame as anyone else. And finally, they decide to publish such a correction at a point when there are rumours flying about everywhere about Connell moving away to league rivals Luton. From those points, is it actually surprising to some people that others thought something was wrong? And so what if it wasn't a hint to Connell's departure? The way it all occurred made it sound like it could be, putting a damper on what was actually one of the most positive season build-ups we've had since Newell (yes I know it turned out badly but...).
Why was the original webpage on the SNOS removed in the first place? On the SNOS messageboard, "Admin" often states that they can't change webpages because that is down to the website host; they have to request it. So the website host just happened to take that one article down for a set amount of time did it? Without "Admin"'s request? The rest of the website was fine. Even if "Admin" didn't request it, even they must realise it's a tad coincidental?
As Richard Lord stated in his email (published in the Diary on 12 July), the club could have easily worded their statement in a different way to prevent this kind of backlash in the first place.
Please keep up the good work, and ignore the "haters" (or as they're known to anyone not in my generation, "arseholes").
from Name supplied, as they used to say in letters page
Letters Ed responds: Thanks very much for your sympathy and support. I won't take another line from old-fashioned letters pages and say "This correspondence is now closed"; if anyone has a coherent statement of what they think Cod Almighty has done wrong in this episode, we'll be glad to hear from you. But for the time being, let's move on, more or less.
Grimsby media domination
Dear Cod Almighty, You might want to consider a quick name change ahead of the fixture against what could be our rivals for promotion on 13 August. What will Sir John of Fenty say if he thinks you are favouring the codheads on the opening day of the season when we all know that haddock is much better bred?
While haddockalmighty.com doesn't have the same ring to it, it could be more loyal, for 13 August at least. And we don't want to see any organisation connected with the mighty GTFC tarnishing the reputation of this once great club. Maybe you could do a deal with your webmasters and buy the domain name haddockalmighty.com on a two-year contract with the option of extending for a further year. But you'd better check that with Alan Connell's agent first.
UTM
from David Martin
Letters Ed responds: You've seen through us. We had hoped to manoeuvre the Connell contract controversy to shut down Cod Almighty, have our takeover of all Grimsby-related media outlets approved, then relaunch as the Daily Haddock. However, Cod Almighty is an unquestionable authority on matters of geography...
Grimsby is not in Yorkshire
Good morning, Just to let you know that during my job search I noticed a fairly grave error in Monster's location search facility. You will be relieved to know that I directed them to your website and my new friend Marcel will hopefully work tirelessly to sort this out. See below.
from Customer 07/06/2011 05.10 PM
Letters Ed responds: Why is the town of Grimsby classed as being in Yorkshire on your location parameter. It isn't, it never has been and it hopefully never will be. See here. From: Monster Customer Services: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 10:33:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: Job Search Response (Marcel [name withheld]) 10.33 AM Thank you for contacting Monster Global Customer Services. I understand that from your email that the G
Coming soon Rough Guides
Hi there,
I was just wondering if you will be doing your excellent "Rough Guides" again.
Cheers
from Les Brechin
Letters Ed responds: Thank you Les. We're planning to cover the teams new to the Conference over the next few weeks. We are always glad to welcome new authors, so if you would like to write a Rough Guide, or anything else for Cod Almighty, or appear in the next postbag, or just hurl some abuse at us, postbag@codalmighty.com is the address to use.
Connel [sic]
Our tracker thing is fucking shit amd we got our facts wrong so lets blame the Club for getting it wrong. Dont cry, it will be alright tossers
from Anonymous
Letters Ed responds: Note: we originally published this email as being from Rob Andrews. He has contacted us to deny sending it, and is attempting to find out how the email could have been sent. In the meantime, we are happy to accept his assurance, and remove his name as the email's author.