Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 30 January 2007

30 January 2007

So we got planning permission for the Fentydome. Job done. Oh, what's that? Football? Playing well and winning matches? Look, we tried that and it didn't work - and all that stuff is a bit old hat nowadays anyway. The new fans who Town need to attract, there's a reason why they're not already going to matches. It's because they only understand football through ISS Pro Evolution and the televised Premiership, and watching a lower-division game live at the actual ground needs a lot more of an attention span. So they're never actually going to go there for the football. Let's give them a deafening PA system instead, like they have in the Premiership, and play a bit of music over it when we score a goal, so nobody can hear the fans. Let's give them three or four times more seats than our current average gate, so we can accommodate the 'big cup games only' contingent once every couple of years. Let's give them ample car parking, because only losers are prepared to park their cars down the road and walk for five or ten minutes. Let's give them an official club bar, because only smelly old men like old-fashioned pubs. Let's give them retail. Let's give them Coke and fucking massive hot dogs. And let's give their urine the shiniest stainless steel in the whole of the fourth division.

This is the new consumer age - and given that last Thursday was the most important day in the 129-year history of Grimsby Town Football Club, the sixteen match days remaining between now and the end of this season, which will determine whether the Mariners retain their Football League status, are mere trifles by comparison. Accordingly, then, at this overwhelmingly trivial period for the club, Town's official website is awash with items of consumer and commercial interest only. Pay for the supplementary web service. Buy tickets for a prize draw. Drink lots of sweet fizzy drink. The only football-related minutiae to be found on the OS or anywhere else are the utterings of Tom Newey and Paul Bolland, who have wandered off to mumble about needing to show some fight and stand up and be counted, probably reading from the scripts left behind by Darren Barnard, Iffy Onuora, Phil Jevons, Jamie Lawrence, Simon Ford, Stuart Campbell, Iain Anderson, Tony Crane, Jason Crowe, Terry Fleming, Anthony Williams, Andy Parkinson, Curtis Woodhouse and Rob Jones.

Just this once, then, Town - this time, now that it matters more than ever before - match your words by your deeds, and the fans just might take you seriously.