Cod Almighty | Diary

Legend said that Odin had built a hall there, though why any god would choose to make a hall on that wind-swept stretch of marsh was beyond my imagining

27 February 2015

Retro Diary writes: Last Sunday at Peaks Parkway, the public consultation bandwagon for Town's new ground had the first of its three outings. It was brass monkeys out there and a long tramp from anywhere you could abandon a car. But once there, the centre line of the mooted pitch had been conveniently marked out for perusal and was being calmly grazed by horses. Only two of the four indicative corner flags, however, remained in place to aid the imagining of Town's new pleasure palace.

As predicted, people started shouting at each other at eleven sharp, and Mister F, in red for conspicuousness and a much-needed thermal ski hat, stood his ground with defiant belligerence. One or two players and the management team turned up; watching Ollie Palmer being harangued about the green belt was deliciously strange.

A neatly laminated series of aerial photographs showed distances of other league grounds from their respective cemeteries, with the closest being – you couldn't make it up – Bury. I always wondered about their 'Cemetery End' – I had another theory entirely.

No two attendees on the day seemed to share an opinion exactly, although they seemed to break down into the 'yeses', who had no feel whatsoever for the countryside, the 'nos', who had no feel whatsoever for football, and the 'it will never happens', who have followed Town for far too long.

I got a few questions in before my face finally froze, and had it explained to me at great length why we can't redevelop Blundell Park; all to a backdrop of people objecting at great volume to moving anywhere else. By the end, the intractability of it all made me want to go and sit in a corner and chew on some wood, and I quickly started to feel sorry for everybody, regardless of persuasion.

From an absolutely personal standpoint I regret the loss of the old Gooseman's Field, where I gambolled through the flowers, and the snow, as a kid. But the profoundly short-sighted steamrollering of a road down the bed of the railway track, thus rendering the whole length as far as Louth more or less useless, was the real act of vandalism, and for that, the battle is already lost. Of the ground itself, I found myself wanting to scream: "OH JUST GET ON WITH IT THEN, as long as the new stadium is something really fuckin' special."

On that score I'm not asking much. As a minimum I would require a design of unique, award-winning and beautiful postmodern brilliance, with some retro references, putting us back to the top of the league in terms of characterful British football grounds – which is, by the way, a position we occupy now.

I would require a sophisticated glass roof to cunningly convert the winter afternoon sun into heat for the crowd, under-soil heating powered by solar panels, an impressive and intimidating home end, some height somewhere, and not too large a distance between pitch and stands.

And to top it off, I would require at least 14,000 seats, so we could tackle the next century with some anticipation of leaving the fourth division. Upwards, that is (shut up). I need to be able to sit in my new seat and think: "Blundell Park was great, but this is better."

The good news is that the club seems to be more or less of the same mind, with the spec – unless it changes in the meantime – designed to propel us well up in the 'natural order'. Certainly above imagination-challenged Chesterfield, and Scunny's second new dump, which they say will hold 12,000. Mention was made of a likeness to Rotherham's New York Stadium, which is slightly depressing, although that venue has the intelligent feature that the foundations are already in place to add further tiers at a future date. We should build them straight from the off, I say. If we can't be bigger than Rotherham, I'm not playing.

Among supporters of the new ground there is much talk of Town being "left behind". There are some pretty minor teams out there building some impressive grounds just now. Brentford, 20,000; Brighton, 30,750; and, would you believe, Southend, 22,000. So if we build ours too small we could be left behind all over again by the time the first computerised, disabled-friendly eco-turnstile goes "bip".

For anybody still unconvinced by the whole thing, the roadshow ups sticks to Blundell Park this Sunday, where it ought to be considerably warmer and have better access to an ambulance, which isn't as daft as you think. I'm sure Mister F is hoping the 'antis' got it all out of their system on day one.

Ahem – back to the old bag of wind, and frankly, what a relief.

Tomorrow it's Braintree Town, aka 'the Iron'. I have no idea whether they know how tragic we find their nickname, bless their orange socks. This will be only the fifth meeting ever between the sides, all in recent years. We have recovered a little dignity after the dire shambles of the first meeting back in August 2012, but some further historical adjustment in our favour tomorrow wouldn't go amiss. Lenell once again receives the support of the manager in today's Telegraph after making scoring look a little harder than it should be on Tuesday – probably the right thing to do, confidence being the variable at stake.

Braintree are true minnows who do very well to hold their own in the Conference Premier. Their manager is Alan Devonshire, who, for anyone old enough to remember, trod Blundell Park alongside Trevor Brooking, Billy Bonds and Frank Lampard snr in the great West Ham second division-winning team in April 1981, in front of 17,924 fans. See, I told you 14,000 wasn't enough.

Braintree have been playing 4-5-1 away, so we seem likely to spend most of the game in their half, and once again, patience might be required. For us, Ollie may or may not be risked, having been found wanting during 'stride outs' (no, I don't know either).

For them, Matt Paine is suspended after being sent off against Bristol Rovers but Remy Clerima is back from injury. Watch out for a very good team spirit among the Braintree side, and the diminutive but very fast and skilful Simeon Akinola up front. Although he limped off last time out we're expecting him to play.