Cod Almighty | Diary

Don't mention the F word

21 June 2022

Mardy Diary writes: As one of Cod Almighty's leading Fentyologists I thought now might be a good time to return to the topic of our erstwhile non-Chairman.

Yes, yes I hear you: cut the negativity Cod Almighty, stop dwelling on the past, look forward not back. I know the modus operandi of the current government is to move on, quickly, usually to the next bad decision: forgive and forget they say. But like the Franchise bastards, it is always best to keep one eye on the past lest mistakes are repeated and lessons forgotten. There are some actions that we never forgive and never forget.

But I concur: things really are looking so much better. Season ticket sales are hitting unheard of highs, Hurst continues to find and hire players of calibre and character and the club is in the hands of people with vision and compassion. Our super-SLO has won awards, been made president and is next in line to the throne (I think?) and the club has won new friends with the never-say-die attitude of the players who blasted us through 360 minutes of football on end-of-season legs. All is good.

So why bring up the F-word you negative nelly? Well, let's look at the reason I started the (unfinished) Fenty Years articles in the first place. At the time Fenty was already a spent force. Ironically his 'May day' call brought him duress and not rescue. Fans quickly bought into the 1878 vision and takeover, and in spite of relegation the mood was generally positive. We actually took a little bit of flak for running the articles from those who thought we were trying to dampen spirits.

While the majority of voices were positive and behind the new owners, the old narrative of Fenty as saviour of the club was still being aired. The comment that "without Fenty we wouldn't have a club" was still being thrown around despite the fact that the man had led the club to near ruin and relegated us from the League twice. It felt like the litany of errors Fenty had made had been forgotten or brushed over in favour of the fact-less "he's a fan, like us" story oft trotted out by his supporters. So I set out to set the record straight - with evidence-based facts and zero conjecture. I wanted everything to be referenced so that none of it could be dismissed - it all had to come from recorded evidence. This was to be a chronological record of every mistake Fenty made - and there were quite a few.

What surprised me while researching was how much I'd actually forgotten - plus one or two things I'd completely missed at the time. But what was even more apparent was the way that Fenty had owned the narrative for so many years and manipulated the message in his favour. Be that via the club's own website or through local media, aided on occasion by naive journalists or those desperate to file stories. Those who were vocal against Fenty were denigrated and accused of working against the club. Whatever your opinions of Radio Humberside (and particularly David Burns) they consistently challenged Fenty over many years and had to deal with complaints to Ofcom, bans from coverage and various other transgressions. This really was a dark time for the club. A non-benign dictatorship.

I stopped writing the Fenty Years mainly because I started a new job and didn't have the time or mental capacity to carry it on, but also because those voices quietened. And rest assured, my TheFishy friends, it was not due to legal action by Fenty - he never had a leg to stand on in that regard. Instead, the narrative around Fenty finally started to change and we collectively snapped out of the Stockholm Syndrome that had engulfed us. The need for the story to continue waned as the information war had been won. Now we were ready to move on.

I still have all the research for the later years and time permitting could probably have tied the article up with an ending piece, but the Fenty-era is one that needs to drift out of consciousness now I think. That said, I will keep my research and should the club hit a rocky patch and the sycophants rise again I will dust off the Fenty Files and follow up with another factual hit.

If we learn, we can move on. If we don't learn, the past is there to remind us. And enjoying the now is about understanding where we've been and what we've been through. You can never really enjoy the highs if you've not been dragged through the lowest lows.

And we don't have Fenty anymore.