The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

At least you tried

19 September 2018

Hello, and welcome to Wednesday with your original/regular Diary. If it takes you ten minutes to read this diary, then by the time you reach the end a person on the equator will have moved 360km because of the rotation of the Earth, and 19 entire futsal tournaments will have begun and ended. If you're a slow reader, there might even be something to report about a new stadium for the Mariners.

I can understand why many people think there'll never ever be a new stadium, ever, what with precisely zero sods of earth having been turned since the club started to talk about it during the early days of the Britpop era. I can also sort of understand why many people think there should be a new stadium, despite the club having failed to show that the vastly increased 'revenue streams' they say it will bring about are based in actual research rather than just daydreams, shrugs, and scribbles on a beer mat. What I can't understand, though, is when people say there should be a new stadium and they don't care where as long as it just gets built.

Have these people ever been to Glanford Park? Or the Deva? Shit the fucking bed. I always say support should be unconditional. The trifling matters of which division my team happens to be in, or whether they're any good, have no bearing on whether I continue attending games. I saw us outclassed at home by Bath City. I went to Burton Albion in 2010. I stayed through the non-League years. I saw us lose at Hyde. My ticket money has paid the wages of charlatans and I have gone back to hand over more. But if Town end up leaving Blundell Park for a corrugated shallow grave, pressed between mud and mud-coloured skies, on a windswept retail estate 14 nautical miles from the nearest even quarter-decent pub or chippy, that'll be me and football just about finished.

I suspect I am not alone in this. A poll by the Grimsby Telegraph shows a large majority favouring a new GTFC stadium on the site of the demolished East Marsh tower blocks. Almost 400 people voting on a recent Cod Almighty Twitter poll came out with a staggering 85 per cent landslide for this area, rather than the Peaks Parkway location recently promoted by the club.

The Peaks Parkway Fireworks Fentydome is now seen widely as a dead duck and regeneration funding is thought to be available for a Freeman Street/East Marsh location. If this is the case, the issue of location becomes a no-brainer. To its credit, the Mariners Trust has taken up this issue in its latest email newsletter to members. It now looks like more information will emerge soon.

(Despite being a member of the trust, I haven't actually received the email newsletter, but let's make allowances because the trust is actually run by volunteers who give their time for free. I don't know whether you know that – no-one ever really mentions it, do they.)

Back on football pitches that currently exist, Town's reserves played away at Wigan yesterday. This came as something of a shock to both supporters and some staff of the Mariners, as the fixture was listed as taking place this afternoon, and our club's otherwise diligent communications staff were caught somewhat on the hop. By half past nine last night, though, our club was not only aware that the match had taken place but had also put something about it on the website. By this morning they'd even corrected it, and Max Wright and Ahkeem Rose – scorers in yesterday's 2-2 draw – were no longer described as "York City loanees".

And let's make allowances, because the football club is actually run by volunteers who give their time for fre… oh. Anyway, it's a creditable result, isn't it, what with little Grimsby only fielding a reserve team and proper football club Wigan putting out their full-blown development squad.

And that's it. As David Steel once said, go back to your baguettes and prepare for relegation. Sorry – relocation.