Cod Almighty | Diary

We may have problems, but at least we don't have Norwich's third kit

29 July 2016

Retro Diary writes: “We’re back!” beamed the woman in the first newsagents along Grimsby Road coming away from Blundell Park, as the sirens wailed past and the Dog Unit sped down Suggitt’s Lane to a mass rock-throwing incident on the railway lines. “Yes” I answered. “You never got this with Weston-super-Mare”. Similarly, the hour or two before the Sheffield United match had been characterised by more Neanderthal posturing than any passer-by could possibly want to see in a lifetime, with a lot of the shops on St Peter’s Avenue temporarily whacking the shutters down. And this was only a friendly.

Towards the end of the game, the scoreboard flashed up: "Today’s attendance - 3,760 (away – 1,808)". The Sheffield fans cheered and immediately struck up a chorus of “we’ve got more fans than you”. I assume it can only have been politeness that stopped the Town fans from adding a verse to that 'dead rat in the dustbin' song to inquire whether that was also where the innumerate visitors had disposed of their maths homework. Indeed, nothing I saw on that day gave me much faith in a South Yorkshire education.

Town had their fair share of knuckle-draggers too. The concept that simply not being drawn into violence results in instantaneous and comprehensive moral victory, as well as a lack of injury to oneself or others, or harm to one’s own club, seemed entirely to pass them by.

There can be no doubt that we need to stamp this pathetic macho crap out. But let’s just say something right at the start. It is a problem that nobody has ever completely solved. We are guilty of wanting football to occupy exactly that point at which it is as passionate as possible, without being quite passionate enough for folks to act out their more problematic instincts. Not a difficult balance for me or, I’m guessing, you. But evidently more so for some. The reason?

Male intra-specific aggression is as old as the world. It is the reason for rutting deer, peacocks’ tails and singing nightingales. In humans, it explains male anatomy itself - the muscular, top-heavy shape that makes men generally look different from women. It is not something which can be simply eradicated from the human psyche, and it is naive to suggest that it can. But it needs to be kept in check. So how?

Traditional attempts at a solution have involved channelling, or formalising the aggression. Sport is great for this. Some public schools would stick the most testosterone-challenged boys in the boxing ring. Then there’s always the army where, incidentally, bravery in battle against other young men is rewarded with hero status. Let us not forget that football itself is nothing more than a formalised aggressive tribal encounter between groups of (almost always) young males. It arose no doubt, as many things do, to steer a destructive instinct into safer waters.

Obviously, chucking lumps of concrete on railway lines and terrorising shoppers has to end. Simply arresting the perpetrators after they’ve done it would seem to be attacking the problem from the wrong end. We hope that the urge to do these idiotic things can ultimately be overridden, if not by common sense, by cultural imperatives such as stigma, fashion, or just habit. Indeed, we know from experience that they can.

It seems a tad unfair to ask GTFC to deal with it as though they invented violence all on their own. Asking a small football club in Lincolnshire to fix a situation that pertains across the entire animal kingdom, is as old as sexual dimorphism (which is hundreds of millions of years), and which is a strong driver of evolution itself, is probably asking too much.

But we’re not animals, you may protest. In which case, hooliganism is a failure of the social contract, which only society itself can be expected to correct. Grimsby Town can, and should, condemn strongly and publicly when misdemeanours occur in its name, and it can issue banning orders. But even then, I fail to see how banning orders stop people from fighting each other on St Peter’s Avenue, in another part of town completely. You might as well let ’em in the ground where you can see ‘em.

Anyway. On Wednesday, we had no such fan trouble. It was a perfect summer evening, and Gainsborough Trinity’s now customary charity summer kit was hideous, but hideous for a good cause. In the first half Town seemed to be making progress towards footballing adequacy, but in the second they wilted badly. So what can we say we’ve learned from this interminable pre-season? I’m not even sure. Triallist Scott Vernon, who played the first half at Northolme, is expected to sign today and could possibly be the lump up front we’re looking for. With only one friendly left, it may just be time to stop mucking about and play our best eleven, and see how it fares.

Tomorrow it’s Oldham. For me, Oldham is a poignant game, because I always think that in stature, that is to say their size - their place in the 'where they should be' table – Oldham are extremely close to ourselves. Their support is relatively large and fervent. Their ground is exhilaratingly cold, characterful and decrepit, let down by their newly-built North Stand which is disgracefully two-thirds taken up by glass boxes for corporate prawn-munchers. So if Oldham look a better team than us tomorrow, it sends out a clear message that our upward trajectory is not yet complete.

In other news, there was a sign of the times last week when the Huddersfield v Liverpool friendly was temporarily stopped by a drone. And talking of sign of the times, it’s nice to know that Norfolk has finally dragged itself into the 1990s – this is Norwich City’s third kit for the coming campaign:

“Inspired by history” is how this monstrosity is described. Before you say “what history?” or “it reminds me of old bus seats”, my theory is that the groundsman invented it while cleaning the mower with his T-shirt. Look at those three doughnuts trying to look tough in it. Good lord.

Thanks to everybody who tried to answer my question about brothers who may have faced each other in a GTFC match, that situation having been very narrowly and unluckily missed a week or two ago. It seems the Bolders also missed each other by a badly-timed substitution at Derby in 2002, but Moores Kevin (appropriately playing for Oldham) and Andy may have faced each other in April 1987. I confess I don’t know how to check this, but it displays superb knowledge nevertheless.

This is it then - see you tomorrow for one last inconsequential experiment. A performance to make us feel slightly less nervous would be nice.

UTM