Cod Almighty | Diary

Call me sad, but I pretty much have at least one thought about GTFC every day

5 June 2017

Irregular Diary writes: For the first weekend since the season finished I've not had anything to do with football that mattered. The Champions League final was on but it didn't matter to me and I don't like it one bit. I've had to visit the beach up the road with the kids in order to pass the time: what is that all about?

So I'm scrambling round to try and find some sort of decent sport to keep me occupied. Cricket is alright. I've been to Trent Bridge a few times to see England beat South Africa and Australia. I even sat on my seat with a pint and didn't feel the need to lob it at somebody or kick off; fancy that! It still isn't quite the same though.

Call me sad, but I pretty much have at least one thought about GTFC every day, be it positive or negative. I also spend far too much time on social media keeping an eye on what other clubs are up to.

One piece that caught my eye was Plymouth Argyle's plans for the five million quid development of their grandstand. Done in various phases, the second will include safe standing. They, like us, need the rules to change before this can happen, and I will long continue to harbour hopes of the mighty Mariners being the first new ground in England to offer that. I go to lots of different meetings on different things up and down the country. And I've yet to meet anybody opposed to a change of the regulations to allow safe standing, including representatives from both Liverpool and the Sheffield-based clubs who would have just cause to be against any such action.

I hope to travel up to Celtic during pre-season to sample it for myself. Since installing it last summer, they've bizarrely had no injuries and no arrests, and that has led to the big guns giving serious thought to putting their considerable weight behind any safe standing area. The big one is Manchester United, who have lost ground capacity because of the development of a larger disabled-friendly area. Their voice is far bigger than any club further down the leagues. But I do not wish for them to have a capacity too much bigger than before; I still want us to have the record attendance.

I would also like to make it clear to those with decision-changing capabilities that as a female – and indeed a female who has season tickets with two youngish children – both them and I are more than capable of standing for long periods of time at a game. Funnily enough, we did it time and again on various old-school terraces and even now in seating sections, which is far more hazardous. So I await the next problem they can come up with in anticipation.

Back to Grimsby, and season tickets go on sale today. I don't get the fuss about when they've gone on sale, to be honest. Yes, other clubs have theirs on sale already; indeed, some have since mid-March. But their season starts at the same time as ours. I travel to all away games with the kids and friends, which each month sets me back at least £300. So I couldn't afford to still be paying for matches in the 2016-17 season, as well as fork out for 2017-18 season tickets.

We've welcomed some new arrivals since I last wrote, although it turns out that they weren't new at all but rather two- or three-week-old signings. I don't get the delay with announcing them, or the logic in revealing them when they have. None of the new signings, or the fact that Danny Collins has re-signed has sparked me to be desperate to walk down to Blundell Park today to get my season tickets. But then again, I'd buy them anyway and the club probably knows that.

Maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe that's GTFC or maybe that's football: fans taken for granted in the lower leagues and quite often rarely a consideration in the Premiership because the money from season ticket sales just isn’t essential to the top clubs.

Anyway I digress because I'm bored. Roll on four weeks, when we play the first of two pre-season friendlies at the Bradley Community Stadium. It can't come soon enough.

UTM