Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 16 June 2011
16 June 2011
Your Part-Time Diary was one of those in the stands when Town lost 2-0 at Dagenham & Redbridge in our last season in the Football League. The game was, as you can well imagine, pretty grim. The ground was a bit like ours really: it just appeared out of a residential area, a bit newer though, and more 'fit for purpose', but they had fewer fans than we get now. I arrived late due to a one-and-a-half-hour replacement bus ride as the tube was cancelled. So while the two teams competed in the bottom-division pastime of 'who can kick the round thing the furthest' (none of that next year hopefully; "it's round for a reason" - Rob Scott), my eyes wandered around the ground.
Adidas, Paul Smith and Bank all had hoardings on the front roofs of the stands. There was, of course, the usual array of local businesses and the obligatory annual sponsor of the league that year. I found it odd to see recognisable companies advertising at a lower-league ground other than Blundell Park, but then again Dagenham is in London.
Grimsby Town are busy advertising advertising hoardings at Blundell Park next season through the great big one-website-fits-all-clubs standardised advertising board that is the SNOS. But other than the local businesses, who have had the same slot for years and probably do it more through support for the club than for the marketing opportunities available by advertising to a few thousand pissed-off locals, who else would bother advertising at Blundell Park? There isn't going to be any of the national television coverage that the advert for adverts claims; there aren't going to be any big crowds; and from a business perspective Grimsby is just not a commercially viable place to advertise. What do you advertise in a small town with not much in it - and, more importantly, not much near it? Dagenham can advertise bigger things because it is on the doorstep of a big city, but Grimsby can't.
Over the last decade and a half sponsorship in football has exploded and, as the game has become more commercial, geography has started to play a bigger role. You can see the change throughout the leagues as teams from the bigger towns and cities are rising to the top - like Hull, Stoke and Cardiff - and the smaller teams who used to be able to compete are dropping: see Stockport, Crewe and Grimsby. There are, of course, exceptions such as Blackpool but those exceptions are becoming rarer. The days of Swindons, Lutons and Barnsleys playing in the top league are gone. Sponsorship and television control football and Grimsby will struggle further in the marketplace the longer they stay below league level.
Geography also has an impact on the players we can attract when competing with other clubs. Cleethorpes is the last stop on the train and, while that may suit some, I believe there will be and have been more who choose a club on a similar level with proximity to a big city. The club's status as a big fish in the Conference will also dwindle with every other team relegated, and even the promise of full-time football may eventually and distressingly be a hook we're no longer able to use.
Grimsby will have to offer more to players. And with Shorty's and Shouty's assertions that they will not pay over the odds - and the dawning reality that really we can't afford to pay over the odds any more - what is required is a successful team on the pitch, a club good enough to counter the location, so that players will favour Grimsby over others. So it has to start with some success on the pitch, and we all know that they've not been the best at that lately. Do you think they'll get better soon? Honestly?