Cod Almighty | Diary

Have you heard, people with ginger hair won't be allowed in Peaks Parkway

29 August 2018

Like many other fans of many other clubs, your original/regular Diary once had a period away from the football. This was way back in the mid- to late 1980s, and after all this time I can't fully recall the reasons. But we can probably assume that they included (a) Town being crap; and (b) me being too young to appreciate the importance of continuing to support your team when they're crap. There was also the fact that I was backcombing my hair and dyeing it black and I probably thought I'd get my head kicked in.

When I talk about this, and people ask how I found my way back, my answer is through the great FA Cup run of 1988-89. Through that influential first-round win over Wolves, who were then top of the third division as Town were still finding their feet in the fourth. It's memorable for many because John Cockerill scored from a corner. It's memorable for me as the first time I watched a match from the Pontoon with some mates, instead of from the Barrett or the open corner with my dad.

What I often forget is that, around the same time, the Mariners attracted one or two big crowds for reserve games against top-flight opposition. And in fact, it was through a couple of these matches that I eased my way back into Blundell Park, and realised that I could resume my destiny as a Town supporter without also suffering extreme violence for looking a bit like I'd failed an audition to join The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The details of those games are elusive, but I remember what a novel feeling it seemed to be watching the likes of Mike Hooper rock up with Liverpool stiffs under lavish floodlighting in front of two and a half thousand people who didn't really give a stuff about the result. There was a bit of a giddy atmosphere – combining the big occasion of a cup tie with the party spirit of a testimonial. Town lost about 6-0 and we loved every minute.

I thought about this yesterday when the club published this season's fixtures for the Central League.

Beginning five weeks after the Football League kicks off, the league drags itself through a game every fortnight or so before grinding to a halt in April, after a less than impressive total of 14 fixtures. All the matches kick off at one and two o'clock on weekday afternoons. Town's website points out that even this is "provisional" and "All fixtures are subject to change". We can assume that the 'bigger' sides will relocate their home matches to a neighbouring non-League club, so as not to sully their turf with reserve football. There's an implication that we ought to be slightly excited by the entry into the competition of Wigan Athletic.

Reserve football today, then, has a sadly diminished sort of feel, like a railway station where only two of the original eight platforms remain in use. And this isn't just me being dewy-eyed about a couple of Pontins League games from when I was a willowy teenager. It matters.

At our club right now there's more interest than ever before in youth development. Fans are following the progress of the players coming through, and for the first time in a while we have a credible first-team manager who looks likely to give them a chance.

In our sport right now young players are not getting that chance. The distortion of transfer rules means Premier League clubs are now stockpiling masses of talent with no intention of ever using it in anger. They're now offering zero wage contribution loans on the condition that the player always plays, regardless of form or tactics. They're continuing to piss everyone off by inserting their B teams into what was previously a valid first-team competition.

And despite all this, we choose the best players from our youth teams and we decide that the best way to give them the competitive edge necessary to develop them into fully fledged first-teamers is by setting them to drift around a field on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon in an industrial estate on the edge of a former pit village, watched by approximately four people, and three of them are doing the social media and video.

If reserve football had been treated in the late 1980s the way it's treated today, I might never have rediscovered GTFC. Granted, you'd have been spared my chelping on about nothing every Wednesday, and I might have found something more constructive to do with my life, but y'know, it's potentially quite a shame overall.

More than that, though, reserve football is clearly ripe for a reboot. Get a proper league system and schedule in place which builds match fitness and mimics the intensity of the first-team programme. Play these games at a time when supporters can actually go along. And promote them – to a fanbase that's keener than ever to follow the fortunes of the young players whose development our club increasingly depends upon.