Cod Almighty | Diary
Silent Spring
26 October 2017
Think back for a moment to last Saturday's game. The pitch is fit to play but the conditions would make a decent game of football a challenge even for the most skilled of players. Show it on television and after 10 minutes, the only people watching would be a hardcore of YouTube blooper collectors hoping for paydirt. It was a test of character, for the players and the fans. And yet, somehow, being there was a pleasure.
There was not much chanting but there was that evocative hum that could only be a lower-league crowd: outbreaks of tentative applause for a good pass; a kind of murmur of growing expectation as a team breaks forward; a half-heard joke, the laughter more distinct than the quip; frustrated cries as a chance is wasted; incredulous shouts at a refereeing decision awarded against you; roars – half excitement, half encouragement – before a corner; and finally applause, given and returned. We've watched our team do their level best, and the rewards have been scant, but we know they have tried, and we hope that our support has made that effort a little bit easier.
That is the birdsong of the British game.
The fan has to be at the centre of all thinking about the Football League and its clubs. That is the match-going fan, the fans prepared to travel across the country to support their team. Spending money, they boost not just the clubs they visit but their communities.
Yesterday, the "EFL" ruled on the stewarding of our game at Stevenage and saw no evil, heard no evil and certainly spoke no evil of the assault on our dignity. Not just the dignity of those female fans who were asked to show their bras. Not just the dignity of those male fans who were expected to use toilet facilities under the inspection of a female steward. Not just young children subjected to full body searches (what kind of formative experience is that?). Not just Grimsby fans. All fans.
Stewarding like that is a kind of pesticide. It endangers the very thing it is supposed to protect, driving away the very fans it claims to be keeping safe. Alienating them, so that a real note of deep anger is introduced. It is hard to shake the hand of a fan, acknowledge our mutual love of the game, if that fan thinks it fine you were treated as a criminal.
It is deeply dispiriting that every Stevenage fan on this thread (at the time of writing) has taken the attitude 'my club right or wrong', has seen the Football League ruling not as a washing of its hands but as proof that – despite the photographic evidence, despite the witness statements – none of it really happened. One day, that could be them, being treated not as people, not as fans, but as offenders.
The Mariners Trust statement is perfect and there is little more that Middle-Aged Diary can add. I know that if the trust and the people directly involved decide that a legal challenge is possible, then Town supporters will make sure that the money is there to fund it. We certainly cannot let the Football League, the owners and administrators of Stevenage FC get away with the idea that a quiet word with the odd steward (while still not admitting that anything was wrong), a few unreported changes to stewarding regulations is a sufficient response to dehumanising treatment.
The response from fans of other clubs shows that fan solidarity is not dead. We must somehow find a gesture that will allow supporters of all clubs to make clear that it is Stevenage FC and the EFL board that are out of step. What that gesture should be, I don't know. Perhaps, like Blackpool fans, we should ask fans of other clubs to make sure the only money they spend at Stevenage is on the ticket. We need a show, though – and, welcome as the Lincoln fans' gesture was, I'm not sure a display of bras may not trivialise the incident.
Somehow though, we must show that all fans deserve respect. And that all fans should support their teams on the pitch but, against ill-treatment, stand together.