Cod Almighty | Diary

Stand up for the Mariners

25 February 2025

Hang on, who’s this? It’s your West Yorkshire Diary, popping up on a Tuesday like Kingsley Black arriving at the back post from a John McDermott cross at Wembley. The world looks a bit different writing this early in the week.

Let’s talk attendances. The Mariners averaged 6,354 fans through the Blundell Park gates last season. I haven’t got the data to hand, but I imagine that’s our highest average attendance in the fourth tier of English football for some time. (Edit: since 1978/79, when we recorded an average of 6,528.)

In a league table of attendances, that put us eleventh, which surprised me. I expected us to be a little higher. After all, that same figure would have had us sixth in 21-22, fourth in 19-20, third in 13-14 and second in 08-09, 06-07 and 05-06.

Fourth division attendances have been on the rise. Last season’s average, at 6,349, is just five short of our average, so maybe eleventh makes sense after all. Some of the biggest jumps in numbers have come from Wrexham, Notts County and Stockport County.

If we look back at the 07-08 season, Wrexham averaged 4,234, Notts County 4,732, and Stockport 5,643. Compare those numbers to last season’s, which came in at 11,210, 10,905 and 9,331 respectively. Same division, different journey.

We’ve seen across the Humber what a new stadium and success can do. As recently as 96-97, Hull City recorded an average league attendance of just 3,413. Twelve years and three promotions later, they bumped that up to a remarkable 24,816.

Non-League and going nowhere in 12-13, Lincoln were attracting an average crowd of 2,181. Six years later they nudged their average attendance over the 9,000 mark.

What does all this mean? Well, the populations of Wrexham, Nottingham, Stockport, Hull and Lincoln certainly haven’t grown in line with the way their attendances have surged. Let there be no doubt; success has played its role in this. Promotions have done more than bring existing fans back; they’ve found many new ones, and kept them.

This is why initiatives like free tickets for local junior grassroots footballers is so important. That’s why the club should be bloomin’ well chuffed at generating over £4m worth of social value just last year alone, which yesterday's diary touched upon.

When you start tying these bits together, you begin to see the bigger picture: that when we achieve something worth celebrating, fans will want to stick around because they feel part of the success.

Of course, there’s a wider discussion to be had around the obscene amounts of cash in TV broadcasting, and what kind of impact that is having on the price of match day tickets. But there can be no doubt that attendances at this level of football in England (and below) are on the rise. Maybe this is due to traditional top tier fans being priced out by the prawn sandwich brigade, leaving them to search for other, local alternatives. Who knows.

All I do know is that no one under the age of 30 will have any memory of Town winning a Football League promotion. It’s been a long time since we’ve had any sort of success at this level — and even when we came close, 19 years ago, only an average of 5,151 fans bothered to see Reddy & Co battle for automatic promotion.

These are different times, and while many of us face the same social and financial struggles, the club is on an upward trajectory. Only this time, it’s bringing us along with it.

UTM!