Cod Almighty | Diary
Death, taxes and LINSCUMBUMTITTY!
20 July 2022
It's been seven hours and fifteen days (plus four months and two years) since you read a diary from me. Yes, it's West Yorkshire Diary here, sweaty and sleep-deprived. When I agreed to write today's diary I wasn’t so sweaty and sleep-deprived. I didn’t know the country would bake under record temperatures, or that my four-year-old would suddenly decide that sleeping is for losers.
Similarly, seven hours, fifteen days, four months and two years ago, none of us truly understood or anticipated the impact that Covid would have on football, and our proud football club; that it would send the manager completely doolally and cause us to spiral into non-league. Again. Or that our majority shareholder would get into bed with a proper dodgy bloke and the whole affair get exposed to the point where he had to sell up and run. Imagine the state of that mattress.
If two years ago we were heading into a tunnel, then in June we emerged from it. Ah, the bright lights of fourth division football! Rochdale. Crawley. Stevenage! Breathe it in! Over 5,600 of us are doing just that, snapping up season tickets like they’re going out of fashion. Except they are very much in fashion, of course. If you haven’t renewed yours by now then you can probably kiss it goodbye. As of this morning it's available for anyone to buy.
The figures are remarkable. We've obliterated previous records and, given there are hundreds if not thousands more fans who can't commit to season tickets for one reason or another but who like to pop along for a match when they can, then we can expect even more sell-outs at Blundell Park this season.
It's got to the point where we may need to flip the figures. How many seats that don’t have restricted views will be available to buy for our first home game of the season? Our capacity is a touch over 9,000, but what's the home capacity going to be if we're able to use a section of the Osmond, as the club hopes we can?
Reason I ask is that we're talking more and more about potential sell-outs since this appears to be the key motivating factor behind any potential move from, or regeneration of, Blundell Park. It would be good to know the official figure for the home section so pilgrims like me can manage our expectations. Don't want to get too excited about Colchester at home when it's a mate’s birthday and I won’t be able to get three seats together in the Pontoon.
Town played out a tautological goalless draw at home to Lincoln City last night in front of 3,813 fans, our highest attendance for a pre-season game in 25 years, as the club proudly declared on Twitter after the game. It's a figure that rivals some home gates when we were playing in the second tier in the late 1990s.
It's another indication that fans of the club and people of the town are more engaged than ever. This level of interest and commitment has come much sooner than the new owners imagined, so it provides them with a further test to show they can handle the insatiable appetite and expectations of the fans while doing enough to keep them for good.
Providing four thousand free bottles of water to keep the crowd hydrated yesterday was certainly a gesture straight out of 1878's book. Two years ago the club would've probably doubled the price of water at the only kiosk selling them and turned people away at the turnstiles for bringing their own bottle. You could’ve brought your own last night, as long as it was in a single-use bottle. I'm sure safety will be cited but encouraging single-use plastic didn't sit right with me, given our new shirt sponsor and the club's all-round efforts to be more sustainable.
News on ticket sales for Town's opening game at Leyton Orient has been pretty light. Considering the club’s excellent Twitter activity it seems rather odd that its only reference to Orient tickets (as of lunchtime today) was a single Tweet posted last Saturday to say they would be going on sale in a couple of days. Where are the rallying cries? Have we sold out already? I thought they'd be gone by the end of Monday.
Finally today, well, yesterday, it was announced that GI Grimsby News is now an official club media partner. Local news for local people, and all that caper. What is an official club media partner anyway? Apparently, it's just one of the club's official media partners. Who are the others and what privileges do they get now, as an official club media partner, that they didn't get previously?
If you fancy watching some of the peripherals get a game tonight then head over the bridge to the charming village of North Ferriby. I seem to remember us losing a pre-season game there 4-1 a few years back and everyone lost their minds. The Fishy went into full meltdown mode. Pretty sure it didn't determine our league performance that season.