Cod Almighty | Diary

Unscrupulous millionaires want you to vote Conservative

1 April 2015

He's one of our own
He's one of our own
Oh Guy Martin
He's one of our own

Your original/regular Diary has never passed a driving test, has no interest in motor sport, and has always turned Top Gear off – but even I'll start watching it if that awful sub-Partridge monkey who used to present it is replaced by that smashing lad from down the road. Hashtag #allgrimsbyarentwe, anyone?

What? Oh, alright, if you insist. Football now, and Town have sold all 2,500 of the tickets they will ever be allocated for next Monday's visit to Alfreton. It's not bad going, is it? Sure, everyone comes out for Wembley, and things like Liverpool in the cup. But when was the last time we took that many away for a league game? Lincoln won't even give us that many seats, will they? There must be an occasion more recent, but I'm struggling to see past that turnout six years ago at Notts County. And even then there weren't 2,000.

Ever enriching dreams with pragmatism, Steve Wraith hopes the Grimsby public's new-found enthusiasm for watching football matches will extend to the home game with Gateshead two days before we go to Alfreton. "We've sold over 1,000 already," Town's head penny-counter tells the Grimsby Telegraph, "and with 2,100 season ticket holders, I'll stick my neck out and say over the next three to four days, we should easily have over 5,000 in total – it's going to be a cracking atmosphere!"

Let's hope he's right, eh, readers? In the pub before the Eastleigh game, I mentioned the enormous crowds that would turn out for Town's home games at the end of a successful season. Twelve or fifteen thousand when GTFC trounced Sheffield United to seal the third division title in 1980. Twenty-two thousand back in '72 when McMenemy took in us up from the fourth. And when Allenby Chilton's Mariners pummelled Division Three (north) in 1955-56, the crowd that saw them wrap up the title at home to Southport was off the scale.

It'd be nice if some of the once-a-year or once-a-decade supporters would consider sticking around, though. Town fans can be like Liberal Democrat voters: great in number when the team is on the up, but reduced to a small hardcore when the tide turns back. That gate of 22,489 for 'Big' Lawrie Mac's finest hour came just three years after the club's lowest ever league attendance of 1,833 (in May 1969 against Brentford, I think). Divide a number by another number and something something function of time, and that's one hell of a fickle factor.

"WHERE YOU THERE?" asked the infamous misspelt mural in the Blundell Park ticket office, depicting the hordes at Meadow Lane in 2009. Yes, we where. We where there. We where here and we where there, but we where not quite – as our song sometimes likes to claim – everywhere.