Cod Almighty | Diary

Official principal jadedness supplier to the C/D sports-consuming non-switcher full-nester Gen-Y psychographic

13 June 2017

Early on in the football season we thrill to its first night matches, the unambiguous beauty of Blundell Park floodlighting the warm late-summer estuary air. Then the clocks go back, the evenings darken, and autumn and winter bring the early rounds of the cups, the 'hectic festive schedule' and, if we're lucky, a vivid local derby to see in the new year. Spring sees in the season's shake-up and those promotion and relegation issues start to resolve. Cherry blossom whirls and falls with the last few of our forty-six fixtures, and the cup finals, and finally we all laugh at Leeds failing to get in the play-offs.

Just as the season has its annual rhythm and its regular milestones, so too does the current hiatus. In June and July we wonder why Town put their season tickets on sale up to two months later than most other professional clubs (tax ruse? Marketing stratagem? Insurmountable lethargy?). Then we look on in concern at the rival club that's throwing money around like a hedge fund analyst on a stag weekend in Monaco.

Then someone says oooh, I'm a bit concerned that we've only signed three players and someone else says hey, don't worry, there are another eight weeks left until the big kick-off! Then we argue in similar terms about the significance of results against North Ferriby United and Sheffield Wednesday (great pre-season form invariably means a rubbish actual season, whereas terrible pre-season form invariably means a rubbish etc etc and so on). And then we look at the new sponsors for the competitions our team will be competing in next season, and we shrug blankly at the eternal, soul-impoverishing emptiness of western consumer-capitalist society.

Better crack on, then, eh? In much the same way as the ongoing broadcast of the Shipping Forecast will signal some form of continuity after a nuclear war, we may assume business as usual from GTFC's relentless positivity about season ticket sales. While a positive comparison with figures at the same point last year currently seems impossible even for the crack spin doctors of Blundell Park, we are told today that season ticket sales have "smashed" through the £100,000 mark. This is presumably in much the same way as your original/regular Diary "smashes" my way through a 9am marketing meeting directly after a lengthy evening drinking strong india pale ale and an insomniac night obsessing over the theory that the USA is ignoring climate change because when inundation and desertification render much of its southern portion uninhabitable it can just invade Canada.

So Mansfield are this season's Forest Green Rovers and Town are being 'linked with' a defender on the threshold of his mid-30s who played for Russell Slade during his brief and not entirely successful spell at the helm of Coventry City. What do you mean you haven't been arsed to renew your season ticket yet? Don't worry, there are another eight weeks left until the big kick-off.

Finally and inevitably, Town have been forced to upload some bumf about the new sponsor of what I think, underneath it all, if you pick all the rubbish out of the way, is the League Cup. It's pretty much essential reading if you're a fan of watching your club abandon any pretence of pride and dignity whatsoever. And going on the way so many of us wish Munto Finance had taken over GTFC instead of Notts County, and would enthusiastically dash to watch a Mariners team managed by Steve Evans, that's exactly what we are. See ya.