Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Wednesday 13 April 2011
13 April 2011
Want to inflict a lifetime of misery on your children by brainwashing them into supporting the same appallingly run football club as you? Me too. Let's look at Town's superb new official website and see how much it costs. Oooh, look - the SNOS has a handy travel guide for the crucial end-of-season mid-table training session at Mansfield next Tuesday. And oooh, what's this? "U7s go FREE when accompanied by a paying adult." Why, that's marvellous! Get your shoes on, Baby Diary - we're going to Field Mill! What? "This offer applies ONLY to home supporters." Oh. Well, why mention it on the away team's official website, then? Oh, yes, of course - we support an appallingly run football club.
Some might deem your original/regular Diary's treatment of GTFC a little unfair at times. Alright, so Town's superb new official website is neither superb nor even particularly new any more. But come on - it's just a little mistake. Whoever it is has just copied and pasted that text from Mansfield's site, and they just couldn't be arsed to read through it while they were doing it. Is that really so bad? No-one died.
Well, if only slapdash text on websites were as bad as it got. If only these small examples of incompetence existed in isolation. But they don't. They're just the minor symptoms of a deep-rooted problem with much more serious consequences. They're like the bubbles in the bathwater in Escape to Victory, indicating that the bottom of the bath is about to collapse into the dark tunnel below.
OK, so in the one case, the Allied prisoners of war escape from their Nazi captors and in the other, Town throw away their Football League status of well over a century, despite having a shitload more money than the clubs who run rings round them every week on the pitch, and after relegation the chairman says he's building for the long term, publicly pledges support for the manager, and then sacks him 24 hours later - despite the club sitting within close reach of the promotion play-off places. And as of last night, the Mariners have entered the bottom half of the Conference table for the first time. So after six years or so of Deadly John (Topcon)'s chairmanship the club is still reaching new lows, both off and on the field.
(So if you've come to the Diary to find out who's playing in tonight's encounter with Rushden & Diamonds, have a look at the BBC or the e-Telewag. I haven't, because I scarcely care a damn any more.)
Of course, if they made a film about Town, there'd be more to it than the main story of the team's ongoing inability to win games of football or even just vaguely stop being rubbish for more than five minutes at a time. There'd be a gripping sub-plot where the club squanders a fortune on consultancy and design fees for a new stadium with a hopelessly outmoded planning model and large gaps in the development funding, which will of course never be built. There'd be the hilarious scene where a promising young player named Danny Butterfield leaves on a free transfer because nobody at the club understands the Bosman ruling. And who could forget the bit where the star striker needlessly misses a crucial fixture because the management don't know how the league's disciplinary system works?
In one interesting development, though, the Diary has discovered that Town's customer service email has started working again! Cod Almighty was told in 2005 that the customerservice@gtfc.co.uk address was "defunct" and we watched in perplexity as it continued to appear, year after year, in the club's customer charter. Just recently, however, we tried using it again, in some sort of final gesture of blind, stupid hope - a bit like, you know, buying a season ticket - and to our enormous surprise, we received a reply!
It's just as well this is the case, because right now there's one important use we can put that email address to. A couple of weeks ago, after the emergence of goal celebration music at Blundell Park, I emailed the club to ask whether it would continue next season, because I won't renew my season ticket if it is. Someone called Nick Dale, GTFC stadium manager, replied: "Goal celebration music has been played when we score for several seasons now, are there any issues with regards to this that we need to be made aware of?" This seemed a little odd, because, far from several seasons, I'd only been hearing goal celebration music for the last match. Anyhow, the club has set up a third poll about this issue. The first two were on the main official website, and fans voted against music both times. But this time, to rig the poll in favour, they've put it on the official website's messageboard, so that only the under-12s can vote.
What can you do, reader? You obviously don't want goal celebration music, because you're reading the Diary, and are therefore a supporter of discernment and independent mind. But you won't be registered on the official website's messageboard, because you're over 12 years old. So email customerservice@gtfc.co.uk and Nick@GTFC.Co.Uk (yes, that's really how it appears in his email signature) to tell them not to be so daft, turn that bloody music off, and allow the supporters to support the team in the way we choose, rather than get sick on spoon-fed godawful landfill indie rock at the precise moment when we should be experiencing joy. God knows that any moments of happiness for Town fans are rare enough these days - so let's not allow these idiots to ruin the few that we have.
If you can also find out why Nick thinks the music "has been played when we score for several seasons now, are there any issues with regards to this that we need to be made aware of?", that would be a bonus, of course. I've already asked him to stop using splice commas. Thanks.