Cod Almighty | Diary
A cold Tuesday night in Grimsby...
7 March 2025
Blundell Park is as pretty as a picture under the lights. The grand old dame, diminutive and demure in the old times when the lights were suspended high above, and bolder now, enjoying the closer glare of the lower lights, glowing with pride, the illumination a white stole over her shoulders. She's the A-Lister flashing her smile for the cameras on the red carpet before the big premiere.
Sadly, Tuesday night was a flop, like a Leicester Square party ruined by wintry weather. The red carpet was soaked through, the heels of the guests squelching across cheap fibres, the smell of material too long in storage, musty with a whisper of mould, the cold gales blowing the paparazzi and the expensively assembled outfits of the guests. In the morning, the tabloids' usually titillating photos will be more soggy than salacious.
And it is so often thus.
This has led your A46 Diary to contemplate the Tuesday Night Match. So often, it is dull. A thousand fewer fans turn up, those that do are tired from a long day at work and already dreading the early rise to do it again tomorrow. Some will be starting work on night shifts right after the game. This leads to many of us feeling every second of those long pauses for drinks and treatments and team talks and of those umpteen extra minutes that are added on. Tuesday night broke the 100-minute mark with four in the first half and seven in the second. It's a long night, especially in the cold. How many of us, fans and players, really want to be there?
Many argue that it's more evidence for maintaining the three o’clock blackout, and I'm certainly not denying that. With all non-3pm-kick-offs, exempt attendances may suffer as some choose the warmth of pubs and living rooms. But the Saturday afternoon game will always be better attended. It's light out when we get there, we still have our evening ahead of us, most of us are not at work in the morning and let's not forget the habits that drive our lives: it's Saturday, what else would we do? The Tuesday Night Match does not have that same knee-jerk attendance.
The Tuesday Night Match competes with other live football, and so the more glamourous names are on show. Again, this is the argument for keeping the 3pm-blackout. Why bother with Town if they're on the telly? Why bother with Town if the shinier teams are playing on the other channel? Those Premier League head-turners, however, don't have many kick-offs at that time, so I wonder just how much of an impact it would actually have.
Because the same argument doesn't apply on a Saturday. Saturday is our day. So, Tuesday can loiter and linger, blinking in the dazzle from our glorious betters, waiting for its moment. Quietly.
Please bear with me when I ask this, but do we take the Tuesday Night Match as seriously as we do a Saturday game? It doesn't feel like a normal game. Yes, these nights can lead to wonderful experiences in cups and play-offs, the kinds of nights that we often herald as our most special, the cherries on top of the seasons' sundaes. Would we even remember the names Jevons and Kalala if it wasn't for those wonderful Tuesday nights at Anfield and Blundell Park?
But, two years ago, when we beat Southampton, many of us felt cheated that we didn't get to experience that on a Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoons are for 'proper' games of football, the meat and potatoes of the league and the FA Cup. Like the muddy field next to the clean tarmac that serves as extra parking space at a festival, Tuesday nights are for fixture overflows, replays, the League Cup and the cup that shall not be named. There's something extracurricular about these games, after-school homework clubs that only the nerdy or the needy attend. Whatever the reason, it leads to a flat crowd, a flat start from the players and flat efforts to inject some umph. We're usually reliant on a referee upsetting us to raise our voices. On Tuesday even that wasn't enough.
On to tomorrow and the 'proper' Saturday fixture: Artell tells us that Tharme's injury is unclear and so is a clear doubt, Svanthorsen is his fave, Rose is his Mr Reliable and he's very much looking forward to the challenge of Walsall. The top-table dancers have a slipped a little lately, with just two wins and eight points in their last six games and no wins in the last three. They'll be coming at us tomorrow. Look out for those delicious breakaways from the brilliant black and whites!