Cod Almighty | Diary

And all the boys in London town went out to tossing ball

15 August 2018

Hello. I suppose I ought to say something about Town's defeat by Rochdale last night. But first, did you know the UK's hedgehog population has fallen by a half since 2000? No, neither did I until this morning. Your original/regular Diary really likes hedgehogs. To be honest, this is far more upsetting than the football today. Still, it's quiz night down our local and Kirkstall Brewery's Dissolution IPA is on tap, so it's not all bad.

You may or may not have seen the BBC research reported yesterday on the increasing irrelevance to football of actual fans. When I say fans I mean people who go to actual games of football to watch a football team that is genuinely their own – rather than consumers, who choose a club like the most attractive kind of fabric conditioner, contrive an attachment to its brand, and consume it distantly through electronic media. The research ranks England's 92 senior clubs according to the proportion of their income in 2016-17 that was derived from fans (as opposed to consumers and other sources).

The headline finding is that fans don't matter in the Premier League – and least of all at Bournemouth, where ticket money accounted for just 3.8 per cent of income. Turn the table upside down and there are the clubs where fans matter most. Top of the shop, Sheffield United, Millwall, Portsmouth and Charlton – clubs whose support that season was far larger than the average for their league status, where fans will clearly put in more than the TV companies. Next in the list: Grimsby Town, where 38.2 per cent of all income was derived on the turnstile. To my mind two valid readings are available for this slightly surprising outcome.

One is to fatally weaken the argument that the Mariners are being kept alive only by the largesse of John Fenty and that those of us calling for more intelligent non-chairmanship – and, you know, basic respect for supporters – should be careful what we wish for because if we drive away our saviour then the club will immediately evaporate, Blundell Park become a drive-thru Mad Harry's and our children be sold into slavery. Another is that the club is rubbish at generating income through catering and merchandising because cufflinks stopped being a thing some time ago and nobody has told McMenemy's that the rest of the world stopped eating prawn cocktails in 1986.

So, alright, Town's defeat by Rochdale last night in the League Cup (if you use the sponsor's name you're obviously a Tory). I don't know – you could dwell on the fact that we lost, ignore the superior league status of the opposition, say "where are the goals coming from" again, make a great show of anticipating heavy defeat in the forthcoming derby against Lincoln, and find new ways to abuse Paul Dixon. Or you could celebrate the full debuts of nippy academy graduates Max Wright and Ahkeem Rose, and punch the air in joy at the arrival on the bench of Brandon Buckley.

I know which of those courses I'm going to choose. I'm fairly sure I'm a fan, because when possible I go along to Blundell Park to watch an actual game of football. So as well as shouting "come on JJ!" and things like that, I know the increasingly scarce wherewithal that transfers from my bank account to the club's is going to help in some small way. But I'm also an exile, and I like hedgehogs and Dissolution IPA; so you may need to view my natural optimism through that very unfortunate filter. I'm really sorry about that. Have a great day.