Cod Almighty | Diary
Keep it dusty, yeah?
26 October 2023
When all is well, the fans make more noise at Blundell Park than they do on social media. When all is not well, the fans make more noise on social media than they do at Blundell Park.
It feels like everyone has had their say on the current predicament the Mariners, and Small Burst in particular, find themselves in. Honestly? I’m not sure what else your West Yorkshire Diary can add.
But since you’re here, I’ll give it a go.
Voices are discerning and opinions are rife. Those voices and opinions largely agree with one another, in that none of us wanted or expected to see us sit 20th in the table in late October, especially given our summer transfer business.
Yet within that general agreement we still have fans falling out with one another as they clamber for moral superiority and one-upmanship based on nothing more than clairvoyance and, to some degree, universal certainty.
The Hurst Out brigade saw this coming in January 2022 of course, when the Mariners lost 1-0 at Wrexham while former caretaker manager Anthony Limbrick made insightful observations working as BBC Radio Humberside’s expert summariser that night.
Obviously, all of what happened between then and now is just a footnote. Hurst got us promoted, sure, and we made it to the quarter finals of the FA Cup for the first time in over 80 years, setting a competition record of beating five successive teams from leagues above us along the way. But, you know, he’s boring, he’s short, and worst of all, worst of all, he’s from Yorkshire.
Of the many managers we’ve had since Alan Buckley departed for West Brom in 1994, only two have left this club to manage at a higher level: Russell Slade (Yeovil) in 2006 and Paul Hurst (Shrewsbury) in 2016.
Laws, Swain, Buckley, Lawrence, Groves, Law, Rodger, Buckley (again), Newell, Woods, Scott, Bignot, Slade, Jolley and Holloway were either sacked or didn’t have their contracts renewed. And one ran away. The general trend, then, is that managers come here to ultimately get sacked. And that’s your universal certainty.
Just look at the data. It’s a managerial graveyard. I often wonder how the Blundell Park hotseat is perceived within football. Go to Grimsby and get sacked, eventually. As a Grimsby fan you can, if you like, on day one declare the new manager is crap and that he should be sacked because, one day he will, and you can claim you called it before anyone else.
Since we’ve been such a keen customer on this managerial merry-go-round, how’s it been working out for us? Well, four relegations and two promotions since 1994, leaving us two divisions lower, would suggest the general trend is nothing to write home about — unless it’s a postcard to your mum saying ‘Town are shit. Sacked another manager. New one’s shit. Boo! Sort it, Managers.’
Since both Slade and Buckley were sacked after they’d returned to the club, it leaves Hurst as the last manager standing to have managed us and not been handed his P45, or told he hasn’t got a new contract. He cupped his ear once, he left us for Shrewsbury, and he managed Scunny for a bit, so, naturally, he was in negative equity with some fans when he returned. One promotion and an epic FA Cup run later, it’s done little to change minds or win back hearts. The recent poor results and poor performances haven’t helped, admittedly.
This isn’t me making a case for Hurst. You see, it’s perfectly possible for a fan to be upset and disappointed with the team’s form and results without calling for the manager’s head and being a little bitch about it. Manager sackings always take the headlines, but really, historically, for us, they’ve done very little to change our fortunes. There’s something much bigger at play here.
I’ve read Jason Stockwood’s excellent book Reboot. In it, he talks about a culture of testing and learning, and accepting that we won’t always get every decision right. He talks about investing in the right areas, at the right times. This investment can go unseen by stakeholders, whose only care tends to be share prices, dividends and the bottom line.
Giving every employee a proper decent laptop at Simply Business and taking them on a holiday when he first went there was a massive outlay up front, he says, and is not every CEO’s way of improving a floundering business. This investment wasn’t seen or felt by shareholders initially, but structurally it put in place some vital foundations.
Granted, being the chief exec of an insurance company isn’t the same as being the chair of a football club, and I’m sure Jason would be the first to say that. But there are human parallels at play here. 1878 Partners sought Hurst when they first took care of the club, and they’ve since backed him. But this isn’t about Hurst; it’s about having confidence in a board that is building a well-run football club that allows any manager, any player, any non-playing staff, to come in and do their best.
Hurst, for now, isn’t getting the best out of his players. It’s a concern, but what isn’t a concern any more is the infrastructure and environment that surrounds him. Where once a downward spiral would inevitably lead to the sack given the lack of support in the cultural sense, I would now argue that there is no better place, and no better people to be around, than at Grimsby Town, where you’ll be given the best chance to turn things around.
If you’re really driven by one-upmanship, maybe the best position to take right now would be to back the manager, and the board, and enjoy the moment in a few months’ time when you can say you always knew things would be alright.
A result at Donny this weekend will lift the mood a little. And if it all goes to pot, well, you can have a laugh at my expense. Oh he of too much faith. UTM!