Cod Almighty | Diary

Don't let Fenty creep out of the woodwork

22 September 2021

A month into the season, and Grimsby Town's first team, women's team and youth team are all unbeaten. The first team are drawing crowds which, as James Findlater points out in the Telegraph, exceed those for many clubs two flights above us. They are also crowds of people who seem happy to be at Blundell Park, even when we fall behind or, as on Saturday, don't play especially well. Something has changed at the club in the last few months; if only we could put our fingers on what it could possibly be.

John Fenty, the man who until five months ago was majority shareholder of the Mariners, made his presence felt at the weekend on the Fishy. Miss Guest Diary and Daubney Diary both blanked him, and probably they were right to. It is tempting to paraphrase the man himself when he writes about Mark Stilton's epic record of the Fenty Years: we haven't read his posts (not true), we don't want to (very true) and we don't need to. That last is absolutely true: he offers a microcosm of his years in charge: miserly with the truth, generous in its helpings of self-aggrandisement and self-pity.

To take just one point, which is one point more than he takes up from the questions put to him: he 'explains' that the pension contributions paid to him by the club were for repayment of a loan. He doesn't explain (as Tony Butcher does) that the loan arose after Five Star Fish withdrew from the sponsorship deal which had been Fenty's vehicle for taking control of Town.  

The only good thing about it is that he is now reduced to a messageboard for his midnight rambling: they are no longer statements of club policy. Perhaps Fenty had just had a drop too much, but perhaps he has a lurking hope that he can rehabilitate his reputation sufficiently to one day be welcomed back into a position of authority. It is because of that latter possibility Middle-Aged Diary feels the need briefly to lift the rock on the ugliness lurking below.

I abide by Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic: someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is why one of the quickest ways to make me angry is to call Cod Almighty cynical: it has always been kept going by a vision of the role a football club should play in the lives of people and their community: the cynicism lay in the manoeuvrings we have tried to lay bare over the last 20 years.

We have lucked out on new owners who give every appearance of understanding the value of Grimsby Town. It won't always be this good: one day one of our teams will lose and the winter weather may keep some fans away. But don't ever forget how much darker was the place we are emerging from. Don't ever let anyone try to turn back the clock.