Cod Almighty | Article

by Alistair Wilkinson

5 August 2008

If you love a thing you stick with it. Performances and results and squad size/quality are not, to me, important in deciding whether or not to renew my season ticket. You do not kick the missus out of bed because you don't like her new hairdo, nor does the fruit of your loins get shunned just because he says that football is 'boring'; or at least not permanently. Anyway, what am I going to do: put them both in a cage and force them to watch the Wembley DVD over and over?

So when I decided I wasn't going to get a season ticket this year, the only factor in the decision was the price.

As I contemplated a season without Town I realised that one of the things I care about most is the thing I often reject in football: personality. I worry about my kids watching football on the telly. That may sound overly dramatic, but consider the coverage of the otherwise excellent Euro 2008; artistic close-ups, slow slow-motion replays, lingering shots of (female) members of the crowd and Cristiano Ronaldo's face a façade for the whole tournament. I lost count of the number of times pictures of the game were interrupted by a slow-motion close-up of a goalkeeper trudging stoically back to his line. Not that I was counting. And neither was George.

"Which one's Grimsby Town?" he said.
"Erm, neither," I replied.
"Why are we watching?"

A good question; why was I watching it? I don't go out of my way for the Premiership or oh-so-dull England. I have tried out the Sunday morning repeat of Match of the Day on George, but my own swearing at Alan Shearer and the rest of the couch puppets along with George's own insistence on Thomas the Tank Engine soon put a stop to that. Perhaps it's because England weren't there. My connection with the England page three girls, I mean players, has been washed away by Terry's tears, by Rooney's rants and by Beckham's bol...

I was adamant that I was going to watch this year's tournament. I often am when it comes to tournaments, and once the group stage is over that unshakable resolve soon starts to rattle. England have usually limped to the next stage through a haze of tabloid fervour and indifferent performances; I'm already bored with front to back page hype and remembering why I don't bother with the Premiership; and the MoTD puppet theatre is in overdrive as they try to tell us that we really, really do have a chance if we could just sober up. So why do I care about personality? Because it is important. Faces; it's all about faces. But how do I explain to a nearly-four-year-old that one of the best things about supporting Town is that you don't need a newspaper or Sky Sports to see what the players look like? That offering an embarrassed nod in WHSmith is worth a hundred Daily Star headlines. I know that I can't.

"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"Can I watch a DVD?"
"Later."
"Why?"
"Because I'm watching the football."
"Why?"

I turn to little brother. He doesn't talk yet but he can sit with the best of them. Plonk him down next to me and let the green screen with the colourful dots do its magic. Spellbound. When George was little there was no convenient tournament, just one with England involved. The green screen and colourful dots were provided by the Six Nations. Did I introduce the wrong stimulus? A Clockwork Orange it ain't; I'm not worried: Blundell Park is better than the telly. The players are there in front of us, proof of just how good, bad and indifferent we are. They're ours, they're yours, they're mine and next season they'll be George's.

I wasn't going to buy a season ticket this year, but things change: George doesn't always watch Charlie and Lola any more, Joe won't let anything happen without him being involved and I got that season ticket - in fact I got two. George is a nearly-four-year-old, so it's time for his first ticket and our club has offered a pretty good deal there. I want personalities. The thought that I wouldn't see North, Taylor, Bore, Bennett, Bird or Normington do something, anything was sad. I was sad. Sad for me and sad for my two. North in particular could be one of those players, you know the ones I mean, one of our own who stays forever. George, Joe and Danny could grow up together.