Cod Almighty | Diary

Let's get shirty

10 June 2020

Miss Guest Diary writes: I prefer to confine my musings in this diary to the experience of watching and supporting Town. Unfortunately, there is no imminent prospect of any actual football being played in the lower divisions and, even when it does resume, games will most likely be behind closed doors. This leaves me with little Town-related to write about. I could indulge in some nostalgia about past games and players but, frankly, that's just too depressing.

Well, the 2019-20 season is now over for the two bottom divisions. We have more or less known it for several weeks, but yesterday it was made official by a vote of the clubs involved. Some clubs were not happy with how the final positions were decided. Tranmere had proposed a different points calculation which would have seen them escape relegation and Barry Fry is moaning that Peterborough have been cheated of a play-off place. No sympathy from Town fans for either of those scenarios.

A little bit of schadenfreude also kicked in when I saw that Sunderland had missed out on the play offs. Having watched both seasons of the, rather enjoyable, documentary series Sunderland 'Til I Die, I know how much they hate slumming it down here with the little people.

It made little difference to Town: I think we dropped one place. The annoying thing for us is that Stevenage still aren't officially relegated. Their fate depends on whether the League decide to deduct more points from Macclesfield. The League should forget about their disciplinary hearings and put it to the fans – I know which way every right-thinking Town fan would vote.

But clubs in the bottom division have more pressing worries. Our own ex-player Gregor Roberston has written a very interesting article about the adverse effect the Covid-19 crisis is having on lower league and non-League clubs. Town's new chairman Philip Day features heavily, explaining in some detail Town's current financial predicament and how that would be made worse if playing were to be resumed with a reduced ground capacity and the financial burden of constant virus testing. A fair point is also made about the age of many supporters – will the over-65s feel able to attend games until a vaccine is available? I'm not sure I will.

Now that the season is officially over, the chairman has announced that there will be a portal on the website through which fans can either request a refund on their season ticket or donate the money to the club. I am in the fortunate position to be able to afford to make this donation but, given that many fans will have lost income due to the current crisis, appreciate that not everyone will be able to do this.

Yesterday Casual Diary drew our attention to a proposed scheme which seemed to be advocating buying up clubs with Government money and selling them back to the fans. I may have got that wrong as I find that, since lockdown, my brain doesn't latch on too well to anything complicated. While it all sounded wonderful, the prospect of this Government having the will, resources or competence to implement such a scheme seems remote.

And hell will probably freeze over before that other touted source of salvation – the Premier League – will deign to cast their eyes or their pennies downwards.

So, like those protesters on Sunday in Bristol who got fed up of waiting for action from a bunch of councillors and took it into their own hands to remove an offensive statue, Town are going to have to do it for themselves. As always, the fans are already stepping up, with the latest combined figure from the fundraiser, share purchases and eBay sales of merchandise approaching £40,000.

I have a couple of signed Town shirts which I could sell to add to the fund, if only I knew how to sell stuff on eBay. One of them is from Gary Croft's second spell at the club – an away shirt because the home shirt that season was terrible. I am sure some shirt geek out there will be able to pinpoint it from that.

I promised no reminiscing, but what else is there to do now? I leave you with the image of Town fans at Portman Road making police siren noises every time Gary Croft ran past, having just signed for Ispwich while wearing an electronic tag following conviction for a motoring offence. Happy days! UTM