Cod Almighty | Diary
I can't say coriander
18 June 2019
When Town's supporters' trust was launched a few years ago, we looked forward to the organisation providing a bridge between the supporters and the football club. Now, seemingly, another organisation is needed to provide a bridge between the supporters and the supporters' trust.
We don’t yet know what form Fans of the Future will take, but we see that some good people are involved. It will doubtless prove to be an admirable initiative and I'm sure my colleagues here at CA Towers will back it. At the same time it's hard to avoid wondering whether its mission to "build and sustain the future fan base for our football club" isn’t one that should already be the weekly business of the club and the trust. The fact that a group of fans have deemed it necessary to set up the initiative outside the auspices of the organisation that exists to represent them seems quite a damning indictment on the trust’s overall credibility. Would FOTF really be necessary at all if other set-ups were doing their jobs properly?
Unlike pretty much all of Town’s other new signings these days, James Hanson is a player I actually know something about. A few years ago a Bradford-supporting mate told me how he was plucked from the obscurity of part-time employment with Guiseley FC and a local supermarket to become a goalscoring superstar hero for his hometown club. Then it turned a bit sour as some sections of the support at Valley Parade started to turn on him. It’s all very sad, and I will resist the temptation to observe that it should prepare him well for life at Blundell Park, because we’re not like that any more.
Speaking of supermarkets, and abuse, Shaun Harvey and his friends have rolled the dice to ascertain the details for Town's annual visit to Derby. Rather than a moustachioed unicyclist dressed as a giant mango in a Kuala Lumpur cereal café, the details of this year’s League Cup first round will be confirmed by John Barnes and Ray Parlour in a Morrisons somewhere down south on fixture release day – or "this Thursday morning", as reasonable, well-adjusted people everywhere prefer to call it. "Huddersfield Town will be included," toots a press release copied and pasted onto Town's newly superb new official website, prompting puzzled readers to scroll back up the page to see if they missed something.
A month after Reece Hall-Johnson left GTFC, everyone at Cod Almighty still has no idea whether he was released or chose to decline a new contract offer – but at least we know where he's headed next, as RHJ has become the 904th player to join Northampton Town this summer. Similarly, five or six years after the club borrowed £10.25million from their local council, Northamptonshire Police still have no idea where the money ended up – but at least all the uncertainty hasn't stopped the club signing 904 players this summer.
GTFC officials looking to improve the experience of women fans at Blundell Park have taken the radical step of asking women fans what they think, as opposed to the time-honoured tradition of leaving everything to a group of men in their fifties and sixties wearing mid-range suits behind subtly tinted double glazing. A discussion group will convene at BP this Saturday at 12:15pm, and the club is inviting women fans to get in touch and come along. Measures like these may be an entirely sensible means of making match days a more equal and inclusive environment, but if you're writing a diary they make it bloody hard work to come up with a funny pay-off line at the end of a paragraph.
And finally today, the Grimsby Telegraph has metamorphosised into Hello! magazine with extensive coverage of James McKeown’s recent nuptials. I’m not much of a one for weddings or any of the associated rituals, but if you’re going to have a hen do then it will surely be the best of all possible hen dos if all the hens are wearing GTFC shirts. Warm congratulations to James and Chloe, as I have no right at all to call them.
Still want more? After two decades of unprecedented decline, Town kick off a new season hoping to turn the corner… it’s the 1925-26 campaign and Pat Bell’s brilliant new article will immerse you in the sights and sounds of the very first game. Enjoy.