Good morning and welcome to Blundell Park. Unless of course you are one of the idiots from either Grimsby or Chesterfield who have helped cause the rest of us to get up earlier than normal today, in which case please do us all a favour and either behave or find something else to do with your Saturdays.

When you’re back home later today, or down the pub, or discussing how your weekend was at work on Monday, you will probably be asked about today’s match and I guess whatever the outcome was, your answer will almost inevitably start with the word ‘we’. However do we, the supporters, really have the right to use the word ‘we’ when referring to Grimsby Town Football Club?

The papers, the radio talk show hosts and their callers and the clubs themselves keep telling us football has become a business within the entertainment industry. If this is true, then surely the fans are merely customers or consumers of the product, in the same way that people are customers of a supermarket. But I bet that most of us would never refer to Asda, Tesco and the rest as ‘we’.

The only people who can technically use the word ‘we’ when referring to a football club are the ones who own it. Football clubs are generally owned privately (by wealthy individuals), or by shareholders (where each share carries one vote), or in some cases in the UK, and in many others across the world, by the members of an organisation (where each member has one vote).

I know what my preference is and I’d like to think that most fans would agree that one-member-one-vote ownership of a football club sounds like the best option and indeed it can be seen working successfully at many clubs, from FC Barcelona to AFC Wimbledon. It is a model of ownership, which means that the people who run the club are appointed by and are responsible to the members.

As I’m sure you are aware, Grimsby Town is owned by the shareholders, of which there is one majority holder (who we should all thank for ensuring that we still have a club to support). Now I’m not suggesting for one second that we should try and change this situation at the moment. However it would be nice to think that, at some time in the future, the supporters of Grimsby Town will have more of an input into how the club is run and be in a position to leap into action should an unscrupulous person ever try to seize control of the club with a view to making money (like the former owners at York, Chesterfield, Brighton, Mansfield and Wimbledon, to name but a few).

The chairman has previously indicated that he would welcome other investors who are prepared to share what at times must seem like a very heavy load. So the question is; how can we the supporters ever hope to own our club?

The answer is of course to support and aid the growth of the one-member-one-vote supporter’s organisation that is GTST. The Supporters Trust currently owns over 3% of the shares in Grimsby Town, but a bigger membership would lead to a larger shareholding, leaving the Trust in a stronger position to provide a real voice for its members (the fans), whilst working alongside the current board and other shareholders, in the best interests of Grimsby Town. In addition, should Grimsby Town ever come under threat from dodgy dealers, the Trust would be there to protect the club from any groups or individual who sought to make a personal profit rather than doing what was best for Grimsby Town.

If you would like to join the Trust,  have a say in how it is run, help shape the future of Grimsby Town Football Club and more importantly be able to say ‘we won’ with real meaning, visit www.gtst.net and sign up.

Ian Fitzgerald - GTST Member