Cod Almighty | Diary

Incapacitated

2 December 2021

Glass Half Full Diary writes: Yesterday Daubney Diary rightly bemoaned our feeble Boxing Day ticket allocation from Halifax.

Only 1,200 tickets is infuriating, inexplicable and unjust. By my reckoning Halifax are the third closest of our National League opponents, behind Chesterfield and Notts County. For this league season, they are the only grounds less than 100 miles from Grimsby. Altrincham is a further 35-40 miles beyond Halifax and we took 1,251 fans there on a cold, rainy October night. To receive less tickets for Boxing Day for a ground with a bigger capacity is daft. Altrincham lent us about 16 per cent of their capacity, and Halifax are giving us 8.5 per cent. Brilliant.

Merry Christmas to all involved, notably the local council and local police! It'd be nice to think that a minimum away allocation could be determined at the start of each season for away fans, instead of a bunch of non-football fans meeting sporadically and deciding how few it should be.

It gives the impression of over-reaction to other events. A thread on The Fishy (hear me out) sees a Halifax fan stating that recent violence among home fans against Wrexham may have been a factor. So limit the home fans? Ban them from games. We weren't there! Leave us alone.

I'm even going to argue that the more tickets allocated the better up to 3,400, as we have 3,400ish season ticket holders, so there should be no problem. Surely the police and stewards can cope. Why deal with demand by denying it exists? I keep expecting someone from the Police/Council to say that our allocation is 1,200 tickets more than last year, which is factually true, after Covid-19, but not helpful.

Remember this? Seems pertinent.

Positives. Positives. We sit fourth approaching the weekend, with a new winger, and Neil Woods youth team won 2-0 yesterday against Blyth Spartans. Twitter told us Essel and Tomlinson scored, each after having a goal disallowed first.

To cast off my Glass Half Full persona temporarily, it was pleasing that the game was played at Blundell Park, but I really hope that the imminent revamp of the official site (promised by CEO Debbie Cook in the letter accompanying the Club Shop Festive Catalogue) allows more information about the youth team. I couldn't even find the XI on Twitter, just that Essel and Tomlinson scored and Adlard had a shot. It becomes an exercise in guesswork: Goundry might have played, Boyd has been a sub recently, is Braithwaite back from injury? Another quick glance shows some progress, pictures, but no profile blurb. A full day later, there is still an article telling us the the youth team is to play "this afternoon" but nothing about it now that it has happened: no team news, no latest score, no result, no match report, however brief.

Onto the weekend, almost. Dagenham and Redbridge? On 7 November 2020 we went there in the FA Cup under I** H****way. Oh. I recall that Radio Humberside were confused pre-game as to whether Wolves loanee Terry Taylor was permitted to play. He then unexpectedly appeared on the bench, displaced in the starting XI by fellow loanee James Morton. I wouldn't recognise either Taylor or Morton, and thanks (sort of) to the pandemic I've not seen either play live. Certainly not for GTFC. Two late goals that day and a humiliating defeat: that's all I care to remember and more than enough.

They have certainly improved since and are now six points below us. Have we improved? Surely, but let's hope we demonstrate it.

Oh, look, post-snow sunshine.

UTM. ATAW.