Cod Almighty | Article
by Jack Sargent
13 April 2021
The only surprise is so many accepted it for so long: Jack spells out the 20-year long misery of supporting Fenty's Grimsby Town
It is hard to imagine what sort of legacy John Fenty wanted to create for himself when he joined the board and later took control of Grimsby Town as majority shareholder until now. But his epitaph will be a number of unwanted records.
Three relegations (maybe four)
When Fenty - a name I will write far too often, and hope now never to have to repeat - joined the board, Town were in the second tier of the Football League. By the end of 2002-03, when he increased his stake to 25 per cent, we suffered relegation. The following season and another relegation as he became club chair in 2004.
Some of the blame at least for those must attach to Fenty as a member of the board, and yes there was the collapse of ITV Digital, but the 2010 relegation was all his. The wonderful Matchday Mariner cartoonist Jim Connor depicted the death of Town in a graveyard scene, summing up perfectly how we all felt at the time. With mourners - legends of the club - surrounding the grave, its headstone reading "1878-2010".
The only moment during Fenty's tenure that we can talk about as some form of success - a resurrection - was the play-off win in 2016 and the return to the Football League. But the feelings were as much of relief as joy, and the togetherness from that season can be attributed to the hard work of the Mariners Trust more than anything else. It was a position a better custodian would not have had us in.
"Don't dig up the grave just yet" Fenty probably said, maniacally tapping his fingers like Mr Burns. This season we are back on the brink; we haven't built on our return to the Football League, we've reverted to type, reliving the death throes of 2010. Get your pencil ready Jim. Fenty has his nails lined up in a row for the next coffin. History repeats.
Our winless, goalless runs
During Fenty's stewardship, we've had our three worst winless runs...
- 24 games from 10 October 2009 to 27 February 2010
- 20 games from 16 December 2017 to 2 April 2018
- 18 games from 16 August 2008 to 8 November 2008
... our sixth worst - 15 games from 5 October 2019 to 29 December 2019 - and an 11-game winless run from 2007 creeps into our unwanted top ten.
Hand in hand with those go our two longest runs without scoring...
- Six games between November and December 2019
- Five games in January from /10/19 to 29/12/19
... and our two worst losing streaks
- Eight games from 24 March 2008 to 3 May 2008
- Seven games from 26 December 2006 to 26 January 2007.
New light
Fenty's is, in short, a record of monumental failure. I have heard horror stories of the way Fenty runs his companies, and Lloyd Griffith has highlighted how that has been translated into running the Mariners. No surprise, except that it took so long for the discontent to become widespread among the fanbase and even as recently as December, chair Philip Day was claiming the protests came only from a minority. To support Grimsby Town during the worst time in its history - as the stats prove - has tested us, broken us, taken us to our limits. I don't think I can suffer another 20 years of the same. We deserve better.
The only solace we can take at this stage is that there is light at the end of this long, dark, 20-year tunnel. 20 years of misery, repeated failures, mismanagement, and penny-pinching might just be coming to an end. I hope Jim redraws his cartoon as "the death of the Fenty era: 1997-2021", as the club is given a new lease of life.
Enter Jason Stockwood, Andrew Pettit and their company 1878 Partners, soon, surely, our new owners. They know the dire state of what they are acquiring. However, there's reasons to feel optimistic as outlined in their aims, to:
- Modernise the value, operations and capabilities.
- Move GTFC up through the divisions.
- Be at the heart of the community
- Become a beacon of pride
- Establish a culture of inclusion
To add to that, we have a manager we can have faith in, to put a team out that will give everything to the cause. I can feel that breath of fresh air already!
From what I've read about Stockwood and Pettit, they seem to be moral and ethical men, the antithesis of what we've experienced over the last two decades. They care about their employees, their welfare, their happiness in and out of work. The kind of people you want to work for. Hopefully, they care about this football club, this town and these fans.
Give us hope.