Cod Almighty | Diary

You're way out of line

22 October 2020

Trenside Diary writes: I was saddened to hear of the passing of Simon Dobbin, the Cambridge United and Liverpool fan who was attacked following a game at Southend in 2015 and left with significant brain damage. Our thoughts are with his wife and his family at this difficult time.

It's a sobering thought that it could have been any of us. Nobody should go to watch football and be injured or not return. There is still a tiny minority on the fringe of clubs, including ours, who like nothing more than causing a bit of trouble or are spoiling for a fight. A few of them probably even go to the occasional match. We've all seen the swaggering bravado of a few in the ground and I do wonder if that’s the reason that football fans haven't been let back in.

Theatres and cinemas are allowed audiences in most areas and that football clubs can use their hospitality facilities to stream a match further highlights the madness. Sitting outside at a football ground must surely be safer; perhaps fans aren't trusted to follow the multitude of regulations. With a government which doesn't try too hard to follow its own rules, added to their apparent indifference to what at heart is the sport of ordinary people, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

The one thing the government is world-class at is giving deals to their mates, relatives and "supporters". Distil that down to a local level and our resident Tory boy may just be in the same mould. There were a couple of stories following the Leyton Orient match and then our home game on Tuesday.

Apparently, Town have done so well to defeat Covid that we are creating new backroom roles. We purportedly now have an assistant press secretary. Maybe the role holder isn't in training to be the press secretary though because it was a sibling of our major shareholder allegedly listed in the role for the Orient game. Couldn't be a scam to get him into games could it? As I said, it may all be fantasy but it's certainly plausible.

Some fans also got into the match on Tuesday on "ball retrieval" duty and posts on social media suggested some who were watching in the trust bar ended up in the stands. As always with social media, perhaps that's not the whole story. If it is, it seems like if your face fits there's a way in but anyone who has ever criticised the club is probably not welcome. That's me out then. If there are limited roles that give access during a match, it would be great if the club drew lots for them.

Stay safe! UTM!