Friday, 14 March 2008
If you build it, they won't come
Yesterday I was reading about the emptiest stadiums ever seen at first-team matches. When Thames FC played Luton in December 1930 at the West Ham greyhound track, apparently, 469 spectators turned up, and the capacity was a staggering 120,000. It was a very absorbing article, and it conveniently reminded me that I had to write a column about Town playing away at Darlington.
Darlo, in case you're unaware, were shoved by a short-term owner into a new stadium that he named after himself and which can hold 25,000 people. "Next stop, the Premiership!" he wrote in his autobiography, shortly before returning to prison. The stadium is now on its fourth name since it opened in 2003, and the Quakers' average attendance has surged from 3,312 to 3,814.
Not that the Mariners fare much better on the turnstile. I wouldn't say Grimsby imbues in its citizens a perverse streak of aversion to pleasure which leaves us unable ever to know true happiness and fulfilment unless we have cause to lament bitterly the singular chain of circumstances that brought about our very existence on Earth, or anything like that, but it is interesting that Town are now in their highest league position for two seasons and have just recorded one of their lowest attendances for a league game since the days of Scott McGarvey and Trevor Slack.
The desertion of our ground is not necessarily due to Town's infuriatingly excellent form since Christmas, though. In particular, a Tuesday night match at Blundell Park straight after a home game at the weekend can seem to Grimbarians as welcome as North Ferriby United on Sky Super Sunday.
One weekend about 15 years ago Town lost 1-0 at home to Charlton. The attendance dipped below 4,000 for the first time in ages, and I thought: "Flipping heck, this is getting desperate now." The following Tuesday night the crowd plunged to 3,200 and we walloped Port Vale 4-1.
Change the names, give or take a hundred or so on the gate, and we've just seen a rerun.
Those who didn't make it to the Barnet match missed a great performance from Paul Bolland and a couple of marvellous goals from Nick Hegarty and Andy Taylor. Of greater historical significance, they also missed Barnet's first ever goal against us. The next opportunity to witness this remarkable phenomenon will coincide with the return of Halley's Comet in 2061.
Thames FC's trouble was that there were more than enough clubs for east Londoners to support already. And you suspect that Darlington are similarly overshadowed by their neighbours. We still don't know Town's excuse. But the thousands of empty seats on show tomorrow will at least give the players some practice for the Fentydome.
Darlo, in case you're unaware, were shoved by a short-term owner into a new stadium that he named after himself and which can hold 25,000 people. "Next stop, the Premiership!" he wrote in his autobiography, shortly before returning to prison. The stadium is now on its fourth name since it opened in 2003, and the Quakers' average attendance has surged from 3,312 to 3,814.
Not that the Mariners fare much better on the turnstile. I wouldn't say Grimsby imbues in its citizens a perverse streak of aversion to pleasure which leaves us unable ever to know true happiness and fulfilment unless we have cause to lament bitterly the singular chain of circumstances that brought about our very existence on Earth, or anything like that, but it is interesting that Town are now in their highest league position for two seasons and have just recorded one of their lowest attendances for a league game since the days of Scott McGarvey and Trevor Slack.
The desertion of our ground is not necessarily due to Town's infuriatingly excellent form since Christmas, though. In particular, a Tuesday night match at Blundell Park straight after a home game at the weekend can seem to Grimbarians as welcome as North Ferriby United on Sky Super Sunday.
One weekend about 15 years ago Town lost 1-0 at home to Charlton. The attendance dipped below 4,000 for the first time in ages, and I thought: "Flipping heck, this is getting desperate now." The following Tuesday night the crowd plunged to 3,200 and we walloped Port Vale 4-1.
Change the names, give or take a hundred or so on the gate, and we've just seen a rerun.
Those who didn't make it to the Barnet match missed a great performance from Paul Bolland and a couple of marvellous goals from Nick Hegarty and Andy Taylor. Of greater historical significance, they also missed Barnet's first ever goal against us. The next opportunity to witness this remarkable phenomenon will coincide with the return of Halley's Comet in 2061.
Thames FC's trouble was that there were more than enough clubs for east Londoners to support already. And you suspect that Darlington are similarly overshadowed by their neighbours. We still don't know Town's excuse. But the thousands of empty seats on show tomorrow will at least give the players some practice for the Fentydome.
Labels: attendances, barnet, darlington, fentydome, miserable, new stadiums
Friday, 21 September 2007
Bucking the trend
Last year it was Graham Rodger not having "contacts". The year before, it was Russell Slade's direct style. Go back a bit further and it was Paul Groves playing and managing at the same time, and before you know it you're back to Alan Buckley in the 1990s, whose style wasn't direct enough. The moaners and groaners among Town's support are a fashion-conscious bunch: they have to have something new every season.
The lament in vogue this autumn is that Buckley's 4-5-1 formation is 'negative' and he should switch to 4-4-2. But some people will never be happy. Last weekend against Stockport, Town used the 4-4-2 system twice in one match, and they're still complaining.
Maybe everyone would be happy if we reverted to the 2-3-5 system. This suicidally attacking formation was the cause of all those 8-3 and 9-2 scores you see in the history books, as it was favoured for some time by managers in the early 20th century, and presumably also by Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, Ossie Ardiles at Tottenham and Town and Burnley in their 'Fright Night Special' in 2002.
But the thing is, really, that the infinite tactical subtleties of a match played for 90 minutes by 22 people over an area of more than 8,000 square yards just can't be adequately expressed or understood using a blunt system of three-digit shorthand – regardless of what we might think we might think we've learned about professional sport from staying up until 4am playing Football Manager on the computer.
Or as the manager himself has more succinctly put it: "If 4-5-1 is boring then what happened when we won 6-0 at Boston?"
And the one thing that never changes about fashion is change itself. If Buckley were to play 4-4-2 for the rest of his career, the moaners and groaners would find some other reason to boo the team or stay at home.
Indeed, you could bet some of the people now asking why they should part with their hard-earned cash to watch a five-man midfield are some of the same people who used to criticise the manager during his earlier spells at the club for never deviating from his beloved 4-4-2. Perhaps they'll even run out of football reasons one day, and they'll have to move on to actual fashion, and end up posting on the messageboards about new signings being put off by the embarrassing lack of Gucci and Prada gear in the manager's wardrobe.
But you'll never find our support here at Cod Almighty tossed weakly about by the winds of fashion. Well, I mean pessimism is just so last season.
The lament in vogue this autumn is that Buckley's 4-5-1 formation is 'negative' and he should switch to 4-4-2. But some people will never be happy. Last weekend against Stockport, Town used the 4-4-2 system twice in one match, and they're still complaining.
Maybe everyone would be happy if we reverted to the 2-3-5 system. This suicidally attacking formation was the cause of all those 8-3 and 9-2 scores you see in the history books, as it was favoured for some time by managers in the early 20th century, and presumably also by Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, Ossie Ardiles at Tottenham and Town and Burnley in their 'Fright Night Special' in 2002.
But the thing is, really, that the infinite tactical subtleties of a match played for 90 minutes by 22 people over an area of more than 8,000 square yards just can't be adequately expressed or understood using a blunt system of three-digit shorthand – regardless of what we might think we might think we've learned about professional sport from staying up until 4am playing Football Manager on the computer.
Or as the manager himself has more succinctly put it: "If 4-5-1 is boring then what happened when we won 6-0 at Boston?"
And the one thing that never changes about fashion is change itself. If Buckley were to play 4-4-2 for the rest of his career, the moaners and groaners would find some other reason to boo the team or stay at home.
Indeed, you could bet some of the people now asking why they should part with their hard-earned cash to watch a five-man midfield are some of the same people who used to criticise the manager during his earlier spells at the club for never deviating from his beloved 4-4-2. Perhaps they'll even run out of football reasons one day, and they'll have to move on to actual fashion, and end up posting on the messageboards about new signings being put off by the embarrassing lack of Gucci and Prada gear in the manager's wardrobe.
But you'll never find our support here at Cod Almighty tossed weakly about by the winds of fashion. Well, I mean pessimism is just so last season.
Labels: buckley, fashion, formation, groves, miserable, rodger, slade, systems, tactics
Friday, 24 August 2007
From despair to where
Surely even the most determined, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, Grimsby-'til-I-cry miserable sod would have to admit that Alan Buckley did a good job turning Town around last season. Perhaps they'd have to be whispering it quietly in an empty room while a bath was running and an illegal rave was in full swing downstairs, so that nobody else could hear them and they could save face, but Buckley's impact is undeniable.
Even his achievement, though, is eclipsed by that of Paul Ince in keeping tomorrow's opponents Macclesfield in the Football League.
I've never thought of Ince as any kind of all-round good sort. I can imagine Buckley being an interesting bloke to have a pint and a packet of peanuts with (dry roasted, I think: dry for his press conference humour and roasted for Gary Harkins' post-match debriefing when he got subbed off against Bristol Rovers last season).
But I can't see the same thing with Ince. I am obliged by the rules and constitution of the National Association of Big Girl's Blouses, of which I am the founder member, to take against anyone with a nickname like 'the Guv'nor' – but when that nickname has actually been made up by the person it refers to, it does tend to suggest the kind of dull-witted knucklehead who sets fire to cats and thinks women shouldn't drink pints.
Anyone hated by West Ham can't be all bad, though, and the Silkmen will be forever indebted to Ince for their escape last season. By early December they were 11 points from safety, having failed to win any of their first 19 league games. Two of their players had suffered broken legs in a 1-1 draw at Stockport. Two days after that, another one broke a leg in training. At this point, if Moss Rose had been razed to the ground by a plutonium egg dropped by a giant red pterodactyl that had lain dormant in the Cheshire undersoil since the late Cretaceous period, Macclesfield fans would simply have sighed gently and said, "Uh-huh."
A month later, in a Buckleyesque reversal of fortune, they'd won seven out of eight and were well on the way to trampling over Boston in their miraculous scramble to safety.
Just to undo all this good work, though, Ince opted to capitalise on his achievement by walking out to join the most despised club in the country in MK Dons. Back in the doldrums, Macclesfield are still struggling to attract 2,000 fans to Moss Rose – where Ince's franchise operation equalised last Saturday four minutes into injury time. If I were a Macc supporter right now I'd be feeling like a determined, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, miserable sod too.
Even his achievement, though, is eclipsed by that of Paul Ince in keeping tomorrow's opponents Macclesfield in the Football League.
I've never thought of Ince as any kind of all-round good sort. I can imagine Buckley being an interesting bloke to have a pint and a packet of peanuts with (dry roasted, I think: dry for his press conference humour and roasted for Gary Harkins' post-match debriefing when he got subbed off against Bristol Rovers last season).
But I can't see the same thing with Ince. I am obliged by the rules and constitution of the National Association of Big Girl's Blouses, of which I am the founder member, to take against anyone with a nickname like 'the Guv'nor' – but when that nickname has actually been made up by the person it refers to, it does tend to suggest the kind of dull-witted knucklehead who sets fire to cats and thinks women shouldn't drink pints.
Anyone hated by West Ham can't be all bad, though, and the Silkmen will be forever indebted to Ince for their escape last season. By early December they were 11 points from safety, having failed to win any of their first 19 league games. Two of their players had suffered broken legs in a 1-1 draw at Stockport. Two days after that, another one broke a leg in training. At this point, if Moss Rose had been razed to the ground by a plutonium egg dropped by a giant red pterodactyl that had lain dormant in the Cheshire undersoil since the late Cretaceous period, Macclesfield fans would simply have sighed gently and said, "Uh-huh."
A month later, in a Buckleyesque reversal of fortune, they'd won seven out of eight and were well on the way to trampling over Boston in their miraculous scramble to safety.
Just to undo all this good work, though, Ince opted to capitalise on his achievement by walking out to join the most despised club in the country in MK Dons. Back in the doldrums, Macclesfield are still struggling to attract 2,000 fans to Moss Rose – where Ince's franchise operation equalised last Saturday four minutes into injury time. If I were a Macc supporter right now I'd be feeling like a determined, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool, miserable sod too.
Labels: buckley, franchise, ince, macclesfield, miserable, relegation, survival
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]