Cod Almighty | Diary

Let's have lights, bubbles and razzamatazz. Let's not!

26 April 2022

Apologies before I start, but in my head today my diary is a series of rants, one after the other. They say that we should talk rather than bottle it up and today I just need to have a moan about a couple of things.

I happened to be in glorious Cleethorpes last Wednesday. It was beautiful walking along the prom in the sunshine. I went to a shop as I'd seen something in the window and the bloke mentioned how lovely the weather had been the previous weekend. (Stay with me, there is a football connection later). That led on to me not living locally but I mentioned I come back regularly to see family and for Town games as we have season tickets. Well that opened the floodgates didn't it!

A conversation that suddenly shot off at a very strange tangent when the chap started moaning about "why on earth haven't the new owners gone ahead with the new ground yet and they should be siting it in Great Coates as per the original suggestion". I suggested that a soulless stadium on a greenfield site wasn't the way to go but maybe the docks, or Freemo would keep the club at the heart of the community and benefit local businesses. He wasn't having it. I was a bit gobsmacked really and argued for a bit whilst wondering whether he actually wanted to make a sale or not. All I can say is there are some very outdated views still floating around, alive and well in a tiny bit of North East Lincolnshire.

Talking of soulless football grounds, you can't have missed the Bananrama League announcing that the play-off final will be at the London Stadium, on a bank holiday, miles from the clubs who are most likely to be there, on a weekend when there will almost certainly be lots of jubilee-type stuff going on in London for those who are interested. There is absolutely no logical reason to hold it there other than it is easy to get to from City Airport for all the sponsors and prawn sandwich brigade. I say this irrespective of who will be playing.

It's a crap stadium for football. I had a bit of a ferret around to see whether views had changed from the early days when it was universally hated by home and away supporters. There still appears to be a lot of unhappy fans with comments like "miles from anywhere", "nowhere to eat or drink before the game, food expensive and poor inside", "poor view of the pitch if you're at the sides". Some of that is from home fans, not just away fans with gripes.

A recent article gives a few improvements that have happened to create an 'atmosphere' for West Ham home games. The 'carpet' covering the athletics track is now West Ham colours rather than green; there is 'razzle-dazzle' before the matches (flames throwers, DJs, bubble machines and light shows). A little bit of me curled up and died when I read all of this.

You can just see it can't you. Some corporate sponsor's annoyed "Oh no, with all the delays to seasons and so a later play-off final, we can't have Wembley, what do we do?" "Do you want FUN and ENTERTAINMENT?" "Do you want those bumpkins from the sticks marvelling at our sophistication? You can have lights, and bubbles and noise". "Forget that you will be a long way from the pitch, they are not football league, they won't care." The powers that be in football taking us for mugs. Again. What a shitty little league this is.

Thank you for reading. I feel better for getting that out there but I don't think the complaints will make a blind bit of difference. UTM!