Cod Almighty | Diary

If you stream it they will come

12 January 2023

So, here I am. Back after a brief hiatus, your Guest Diarist returns. Twelve years older, twelve years nearer shuffling off this mortal coil. How many more world cups before I die? Not enough (too many if they are staged in the wrong countries). Down to a handful. John Fenty forced me away in 2011 and he was a long time a-going. But the nose which I cut off (to spite my face) has more or less healed.

So here I am in the comforting arms of the Ethical Brothers with a manager I trust, a squad whose faces I mostly recognise and a team who still grace good old Blundell Park. And the ground is guaranteed to be three parts full every game this season. Plus the greatest stalwart of all, Dave Moore, is still in the building. They should order a blue plaque for him and keep it in a secret drawer only to be opened in the event of apocalypse. Likewise John Tondeur, a man who manages to keep his Springsteen obsession quiet during commentary but obligingly slips in Half Man Half Biscuit references upon request. The team, settled in to comforting mid-table obscurity and with a good cup run well underway, don't always play well but then sometimes they do - so the incentive to always watch them remains strong. There are even gloriously messy calorific colourful trays of hot food (pics look great on your socials!) for sale if that is your dirty pleasure.

But here's the thing, despite everything bad going away and the creation of the perfect Town matchday experience, despite the massive surge of goodwill and spirit, I will never go to see Town again and I guess I'd better tell you why.

First and foremost, thanks to Mariners TV, I can buy a season ticket and see every league game home and away. I have supported Town, man and boy for nigh on sixty years. I have been a season ticket holder and never missed a home game. I have travelled to a lot of away games. But I never went a full season without missing a league game home and away. Not even close. But this season I will. Yea!

A lot of people prefer their football in person live, like to source their wardrobe from the club shop, decorate their houses with memorabilia and even transform the garden shed in to a shrine to their beloved GTFC complete with bar. I commend you all and more power to all your elbows but some of us are different. In my Fenty-enforced absence I came to realise that you can be just as much of a fan without the visible proof that you are one. But as good as listening to JT on the audio is, watching them on TV with his commentary is even better. So a Mariners TV subscription and following #gtfc on Twitter through the game is just about perfect for me.

Of course to do this I have to live abroad because of the completely outdated football TV screening regulations. No problem. It took me five minutes to buy an overseas pied a terre. I chose Paris by the way, so drop in to see me anytime at 10 Rue de la Mere if you can find it. I arrive there half an hour before kick-off and leave straight after the final whistle. The coverage is a nice wide-angle shot, the action replays come quick and it is actually better for not being able to review an incident from seven different replay angles. In the same way that football is better without VAR - I'm sure you understand.

Secondly, and this is just me, I can't ethically justify a 100 mile round trip to Blundell Park. Too much petrol, too many fumes, it's just bad for the planet. And I can't possibly afford trains any more. Instead of wasting resources travelling I can be growing stuff in my allotments all morning and settle in to watch Town in the afternoon. Crop rotation not squad rotation. And wondering what the Town line-up will be later on occupies the mind when the weeding gets a bit tortuous.

So the club gets about £150 a season from me and I get to see all the games. It costs me another eighty quid a year for a decent VPN (the free ones are all a bit shit in my experience – you get what you pay for). Weirdly, down here in the Fens we have the best broadband in the country after they came and installed full fibre right to my house for only an extra quid a month. So Mariners TV never misses a beat. I recommend it. A nice side effect is that I don't get drawn in to what all those Premier teams are up to, the Mariners are much more interesting.

I think the lower league clubs are tacitly aware that a section of their fanbase are circumventing the league rules by watching games at 3pm on a Saturday and I think that they are slowly coming round to the view that this is not a bad thing. Say we got promoted and faced Sheffield Wednesday. The home game would be a total sell-out and I reckon the club could shift bucket loads of Mariners TV match subscriptions to folk supporting both teams who couldn't get a ticket. The vast majority of Town fans who go to home games would still go regularly. It's in their DNA. But there's a significant minority of Town fans who can't go to any given game: from the flu bug to long term health and mental health conditions there are many reasons why people are not at any given match. Not least of which is affordability – a low-waged family can all enjoy the match on Mariners TV for a tenner which is a hell of a lot less than the modern “Matchday Experience” costs. If you can't afford to take your kids to Blundell Park you can still watch the game together. And maybe that way they will grow up and want a proper season ticket when they can afford it.

I've watched the new owners embark on a steady programme of infrastucture investment and improvement right across the club. This has been coupled with overt fan-friendly empathy, better use of the Trust and social media, and a rapid implementation of catering and entertainment attractions to draw fans in to the ground. Six thousand season tickets sold are concrete evidence that the plan is working. But next the board should lobby for a pilot scheme to allow 3pm Saturday subscription match streaming. It will build the community fanbase, afford extra inclusivity to fans who feel unable to attend, and almost certainly add to overall income. Those who come will still come. And I would save eighty quid a year on VPN licences. See yer.

P.S. Any club or league suits objecting to any of this subterfuge? Well my postal address is 10 Rue de la Mere Paris