Cod Almighty | Diary

Lucy Worsley, Michael Jolley, Andrew Fox... we are all legend

8 January 2019

We are a football club. We are all in it together. We are at our best when each of us contributes according to our abilities and means. Saturday evening was a living and breathing, running and sweating, chanting and singing, plotting and planning demonstration of this simple fact.

Due praise to the club board for reducing ticket prices for our next game, at home to Macclesfield. The next two matches could decide whether we spend the rest of the season looking up or down the table. But after the exertions of the last few weeks, it would be understandable if the players were to suffer a physical and emotional reaction. We want a full and enthusiastic attendance to help them over that hump.

This is no time for sniffy comments about part-time supporters. By all means boycott Lucy Worsley's next documentary if you don't see her at Blundell Park, or it turns out she hasn't yet learnt all the chants. Otherwise, can it. There'll be a time and place for boasting about the cold Friday night you spent at Torquay watching us lose 4-1. This is not it. We also contribute according to our inclinations. Making them feel unwelcome is no way to turn fair- into foul-weather fans.

At the centre of the club are the players and the coaches. There should be one presentation before Saturday's game. Unless the judging panel want to give us another injustice to distract from VAR, then surely December's manager of the month will be Michael Jolley.

Middle-Aged Diary is almost inclined to suggest another. Facing a three-match ban, and an ocean apart from his American wife, there is every chance that Andrew Fox has played his last game for the Mariners. The statistics won't show it, but listening to Danny Collins on Saturday, and reading what James McKeown has to say about him, it is evident he has been an important part of turning a collection of players into a team. The disappointment we felt on Saturday Fox will have felt a thousand times more bitterly, without the relief of our pride. Perhaps not a presentation, but if you see him, give Andrew a hug.

Five and a half thousand fans, travelling the length of the country to support players heroic in defeat. Where does that fit into the bigger picture? That is up to all of us. The rumours that Bryan Huxford may be involved in a club buy-out are a useful reminder that John Fenty is not a unique example of poor ownership. That Blackpool fans maintained their boycott, and so missed a plum tie against Arsenal, rather than give the Oyston family any more money is a reminder that there are even worse people than Fenty to take charge.

But the club is not its owner. It is all of us, a club at the centre of its community, as Jolley told the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. If Saturday inspired you, perhaps it also inspired you to get involved. According to your abilities, your means, and your inclinations, there'll be people – the Mariners Trust; the Youth Development Association; even the odd fanzine if you want to come at it edgeways – glad of your time as well as your money.