Cod Almighty | Diary

Silly Season

15 January 2025

I really hate football Twitter.

Like, really hate it.

I’m not sure how it’s become acceptable for football clubs and fans to engage in some form of organised ‘banter’ discourse that just whips up hatred, but here we are.

Saturday’s postponement was inevitable as soon as we all woke up to the hardest frost of the winter. The optimistic club posts, with hindsight, should probably have been avoided, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

What followed, when the ref called time on the match, was as inevitable as the postponement itself.

Pile on after pile on. Vile abuse sent between fans and snide passive aggressive ‘statements’ from one club to another. One club essentially egging its fans on to send abusive messages to the other because Mother Nature got in the way of a football match.

Notts Co, let’s not forget, aren’t exactly clean when it comes to last minute postponements after a match with Colchester was cancelled due to scoreboard damage.

Social media accounts may appear faceless, but there’s always someone on the other side who has to read all the nonsense that’s thrown at them.

I’ve never run a sports social channel, but I have managed a number of large (50k+) social networks over the last 20 years and, no matter how hard you try, reading messages and especially messages of abuse, even when it’s not aimed at you, takes its toll.

I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people who have to monitor the banal nonsense on a regular basis.

Football has seemingly embraced this ridiculous banter culture over the last few years in the name of engagement and numbers, neither of which will sell you match tickets or get you three points on a Saturday.

In the past, Grimsby Town social media has helped raise cash for various football related good causes, but Saturday afternoon showed it at its worst. A problem football has brought on itself.