Cod Almighty | Diary

More hard times

6 April 2020

It's strange how Middle-Aged Diary is still sitting here with the window open looking out at a sunny, suburban road, but it feels like I'm sitting in a bunker, wondering about the world we will one day step back out into. It is a fair guess the supermarkets and the chains will still be there. But I'm bracing myself that the shutters will stay down forever on some favourite pub, coffee bar or small shop.

Football too. The multinational chains of the sporting world - the Tottenhams and the Liverpools - will survive the moral outrage that they have furloughed their non-playing staff to protect their XXXL bottom line.

Meanwhile, my daily exercise or necessary shopping trip regularly takes me past the deserted home of Trafford FC. The goalposts have been taken down, but you can see where they are stored, and the grass is still being cut. A poster outside advertises two matches which never happened, may never happen. Shawe View looks as though it could host a game at two hours notice, but every time I walk past the turnstiles, I wonder when I will next push through them. If anyone  will ever push through them again.

If Grimsby Town have furloughed all their staff, including players, we know it is an economic necessity. Director Philip Day's interview last week, stating the club's money will run out at the end of May, makes very sombre reading for all of us. The talk of fast-forwarded solidarity payments - acts of glorified charity - only accentuates the precariousness of life below the apex of the football pyramid.

For those who depend on the Mariners for their livelihood but for whom, also, a job at Blundell Park is more than just a job, they must be feeling the most acute social and economic as well as physical isolation as they sit at home and wonder what their future holds. All I can say is that you are not alone.

We cannot hug you but we feel for you nonetheless. And while Town fans sometimes reach too readily for self-congratulatory phrases, we do have a track record. When the club and its staff are in need, I trust we will not let them down.