Hopes Of Peace In Boardroom Power Struggle!

By: Grimsby Telegraph
Date: 28/11/2001

The Grimsby Telegraph reported today that the first moves to bring peace to the warring factions which hold the balance of power at Grimsby Town were made yesterday. They came after the current board had been foiled in its bid to release unissued shares by members of the former board at an egm.

The £350,000 that this would generate was seen as vital to the short term future of the club.

The Telegraph report went on to say: But though a hand vote carried the resolution, a poll vote showed only around 60 per cent of the shareholding in favour - short of the 75 per cent needed by the Companies Act to get it through.

Though voting against, former chairman Bill Carr and former directors Clive Aspinall and Stephen Bygott did accept an invitation from cur rent chairman Peter Furneaux to meet for talks.

This meeting took place in the boardroom straight afterwards and lasted for over two hours - with the aim to settle differences and get the trio back on a united board.

These differences go back many years and culminated in recent times in the former board either resigning or being voted out of office in the 'night of the long knives' agm of 1999.

But since then two of the displaced directors, John Fenty and Michael Rouse, have rejoined the board while the men who became chairman and vice chairman after the coup, Doug Everitt and Bryan Huxford, have resigned.

The current board is now prepared to offer the hand of friendship to Messrs Carr, Aspinall and Bygott and invite them back into the fold.

The exchanges at the meeting were understood to be frank and it was agreed that the club solicitor Bill King would come back with proposals which might allow both sides to work together and for the share issue to proceed.

For many, many years, whichever group has been in power has had its hands tied by those in opposition and this has prevented money, in the form of share sales, from being pumped into the club.

And so it was yesterday (Monday) when, although shares to the total of 122,424 were cast in favour of the proposal, there were 82,568 against.

Mr Furneaux said before the vote that he wanted to see people who wished to make a contribution to the future of the football club be allowed to do so without personal issues getting in the way.

"This is not a meeting at which personal dislikes or animosity should get in the way of the matter at hand," he said.

Though there was no debate during the egm, Mr Carr was at pains to point out after wards that it was not just the former directors who were against the share issue, and by implication the current board.

Other shareholders had contacted the former board expressing concern, he said.

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