Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 19 May 2005
19 May 2005
Two hundred and eighty-five quid is the price being asked by Grimsby Town Football Club for a new standard season ticket: 19 pounds or 7 per cent more than for last season to watch a team without Thomas Pinault. After seeming at first to have published last year's prices again, and then taking the link down off its front page but leaving the page up, the club's official website has finally revealed the damage for 2005-06, and the jewellery-rattlers of the Main Stand and Upper Smiths/Stones/Findus face a similar hike, from 304 to 323 notes, while a plethora of new discounted tickets are introduced for kids of various age groups; foolishly, the club appears to have spurned the opportunity to impose a penalty charge for children with Manchester United shirts or ginger hair. All in all, in comparison with the rest of the fourth division, supporting the Mariners still seems a reasonably priced course of action, though these calculations omit to factor in the considerable cost to Town fans' psychological well-being.
Michael Shelton has rattled off a brisk email to the Diary taking issue with this assessment. "You've got to be joking," moans he of Durham. "We could watch some proper football for that much, travel expense included." These prices are for a whole season, though, Michael.
The other thing we do at this time of year, when we're not desperately keeping track of rearranged friendlies, is desperately keep track of what's happening to players who were once attached to the Town but are no longer. The other day we did Tricky Micky Boulding (now being courted by the financial wizards of Bradford); today it's the turn of the Mariners' last decent left-back Gary Croft. Once tipped to do lots of really good stuff, Crofty, well, didn't, though he will always be remembered as the first footballer to play professionally while wearing an electronic tag. The ears of foolish dreamers will prick up, anyway, at the news that the player is being released by Lennie-Lawrence's-Cardiff-City after an injury-blighted couple of years in south Wales, though if he can get through the summer breaking less than two limbs then they might give him one of those pay-as-you-play deals for next season. The reports say he's 31 now, which is obviously wrong, as Gary Croft will always be 21 to the Diary.
Another ex-Mariner in the news is Stuart Campbell - in the Guardian, to be precise, as this clipping (right) demonstrates. Perhaps financial reality is finally starting to bite at Bristol Rovers; either way, invisibility is bound to be handy in this line of work.
Terry Fleming is not an ex-Mariner, though he may soon become one; regardless of his employment status, his cult hero status is secure, and the Diary is pleased to guide you to the website of The Black Zidane Appreciation Society, which picks up where Terry Fleming's Terrytorial Army left off and carries it somewhere else.
Last of all this week, before I hand over the reins of Cod Almighty's round-the-clock on-the-spot news machine to Guest Diary, an email from Andy Holt, who, ever the statistician, points out that "seven contracted players is 75 per cent more than we had at this time last year". This is true - well, I assume it's true; I can't be arsed to check that he's got his sums right, and it's true in spirit - and the Diary is only surprised that Town's official website hasn't made the point that a 7 per cent increase in season ticket prices is considerably smaller than a 75 per cent increase in squad size.