Cod Almighty | Diary

We need a church dedicated to Grimsby, not a people container

26 August 2016

Retro Diary writes: In my experience, football is the only business where organisations habitually move premises into ones worse than the ones they were in already. Wherever you stand in the Grimsby Town shiny plastic/heritage barnacle stadium debate, it looks as though Peaks Parkway is the direction in which we’re being unwillingly herded.

In choosing the Parkway site, the Council has timidly avoided a really momentous and history-changing piece of bravery. Surprising though it may seem to some, the name of 'Grimsby' actually doesn’t conjour up images of an idyllic garden city to outsiders, and experience only confirms that prejudice. Indeed, the town may well now be unrescuably spoiled and run-down. They filmed Skint here – that’s all you need to know.

For good or ill, a town centre football ground would have provided a big kick up the arse for the place. It would have required vision and determination to pull off - there would have been frustrations galore, numerous legal issues and god knows what to overcome, but it might have reinvented the town in a new, radical and possibly magical way. The economic tentacles would have spread outwards, giving a substantial lift to the direst and most neglected parts of town. It may have taken time to plan and get together, but we were prepared to wait.

But this is the solution, as we now know, that the Council has rejected. Actually, we know why: apart from the complexity of the task, it’s because there was no obvious way of paying for it all. Out on Peaks Parkway, in return for giving some builder of cuboid, carbon-leaking, too-close-together houses a chance to make a killing by laying waste to some of our town’s last remaining meadows and ancient hedgerows, said builder will chuck in a stadium for free. You can almost see the simplistic appeal, as a 'route one' answer to the problem of the Main Stand’s increasingly tenuous fire certificate. Can you imagine the 'favours' going on behind the scenes in that little arrangement? But hey, we’d get a football ground, of sorts.

A football ground is more than a place where customers consume a product. It is a spiritual place, a kind of church, but dedicated to a place

But could any of us actually put up with a ground right out there without developing clinical depression? Let’s start at the beginning by stating that a football ground is more than a place where customers consume a product. It is a spiritual place. A spot where you go to stick up for, and pay tribute to, your place of birth. That is its purpose. A football ground is a kind of church, but dedicated to a place. If Peaks Parkway isn’t the sort of place you’d put a church, it’s probably not where you’d put a football ground either.

If you assume, for a minute, that fans are crows that fly straight, the Parkway is undoubtedly central. The conurbation of Grimsby, Cleethorpes and associated villages is shaped like a horseshoe, and Gooseman’s Field, to give the site its actual, proper name, is smack in the middle of the central space. The accumulated number of miles travelled by a decent crowd to get to the ground would be relatively low.

But despite being central, it isn’t really near anything, and is curiously difficult to get to. It can only be accessed by car, which, environmentally, is hopelessly regressive, and the single in/out road as it stands now is plainly not up to the task. If you want to get to the site on foot the quickest way now, you have to park in the cemetery as though you’re going to a funeral, make your way around a playing field, then plod what feels like about half a mile up a tiny, muddy, dog-shitty passage sandwiched between the main road and the allotments, where you scratch your head on thorn bushes. Personally, I think I’d prefer to park for the match at the end of Vaughan Avenue (which is posh, so they wouldn’t like it), and walk through Weelsby Woods to get to the footy. Scenic, leafy and calming it would certainly be, but I wouldn’t pass my customary pub, chippy, cash till and sweetie shop, and therefore wouldn’t put any money into the local economy. About half way through the walk, I suspect I might also get that “what the hell am I doing” feeling.

So do we think the Peaks Parkway site could possibly, ever, work, under any circumstances? We should perhaps remember that the more spectacular is a stadium (or any building), the less it matters where it is. Northampton’s miserable Sixfields Stadium has made a shit spot even shitter; but Wembley has made a shit spot much better. So somewhere between the two, as buildings become more and more desirable to visit, you must cross a line. We need to build a ground which is impressive enough to land topside of that line. We need to look at it on the first day and say “I didn’t agree with it being here, but I’m happy to come here because that really is quite good”. The building will need to define our attitude to the place, rather than the other way round. A shit ground in a shit spot will not work - I’m looking at you, Scunthorpe, Northampton, Colchester, Chesterfield, Shrewsbury and Chester. There are others. We have plenty of examples of what not to do.

Peaks Parkway sits on a boulder clay ridge which runs inland from the High Cliff at Cleethorpes. It’s on what we in Lincolnshire hilariously call a 'hill'. If the new stadium had a huge (Findus-sized at least) north-facing stand, with a smallish stand opposite, it would actually afford a panoramic view over the Town (at least when not partially obscured by summer foliage), with the Dock Tower in the distance. Whether you could see the sea from there is an interesting point - I suspect you couldn’t, quite. If I block out the thought of the dire retail park–type surroundings, I could almost live with that as a place to pay homage to our imperfect but beloved home. A squat, equal-sided bowl in that same field, on the other hand, is something I dread more than anything you can possibly imagine. A simple people container will not do. The purpose of this building is not merely to provide us with a seat from which we can see two goalmouths without obstruction. It’s much more than that - it must bathe us in a shaft of existential joy.

The middle-of-nowhere aspect of Peaks Parkway remains problematic. I dare say they'll build us a new pub where you can drink generic fizz which watching Sky Sports, but where do you get proper fish and chips?

The middle-of-nowhere aspect of the Parkway site still remains problematic for me. The nearest old pubs would, I think, be the Hainton, or the Rose and Crown at Scartho, and it’s a fair walk from either of those two. I dare say they’ll build us a new thing, where you can drink generic fizz while watching Sky Sports on several big screens simultaneously, if that’s your thing. But where you get proper fish and chips round there... well you don’t, do you? And the best fish and chips in the world is one of the things that makes Blundell Park such a desirable away day for visitors.

It’s no good you see. I’m trying, I really am, but no amount of positivity and benefit of the doubt can make Peaks Parkway seem like the most inspiring place to put a football ground – for our kind of church. Unless, that is, the new thing is really flippin’ special. It could be special, because we could insist on it. But the question is, will we?

An alternative, which we have rejected, is that we could flood our ailing town centre economy with several thousand people once a fortnight, let them get there on existing bus routes or by train, and spend money with gay abandon in and around the currently slightly desolate-looking shopping centre. The fans could look at the sea from point blank range, and find multifarious forms of entertainment within walking distance both before and after the game.

That we love Blundell Park is something on which we all agree. But no-one seems sure any more as to whether staying there is a viable option or not. Every statement on the subject is immediately countered by accusations of a pre-formed agenda by the other side. Will leaving BP solve the problem of the annual financial deficit? I suspect nobody really knows - it’s a guess.

Personally, I don’t know why enabling developments elsewhere can’t pay for improvements to Blundell Park… does anybody? Or pay for a dedicated development at Garth Lane? Again - anybody?

But our affection for our run-down old stadium speaks volumes about what we need the new stadium, if indeed we must have one, to be like. We need to keep the things we like about BP - the uniqueness, the asymmetry, the height, the abundant concessions both to our traditions and those of football in general - while fixing the things that are a problem – the small ground capacity, the impeded views, and the limited footprint making either expansion or finding alternative sources of income difficult. It can probably be done with a bit of determination and lateral thinking, although our truly magical position right next to the sea would have to be lost. One thing I can say is that a soul-destroying little plastic bowl miles inland and nowhere near a pub will certainly make less money, because it won’t get mine.

On to tomorrow and the old bag of wind. It’s quite a big day for me, because although I’ve seen Stevenage many times, I’ve never seen them play Town. By one minute past three I will have seen Town play 91 of the 92 league clubs, with Man Utd the missing one (the last meeting between the two was 15 years before I was born). A novel fixture in division four is a rare event indeed, and we welcome Boro fans to our land of salt-sculpted wood, big skies and jumbo haddock for the first time. They will perhaps have made this famous old journey just in time.

For us, Rhys Browne and Dan Jones are out with hamstring and knee problems respectively, and Sean McAllister still has a groin issue.

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