Friday, 21 December 2007
Sites for sore eyes
It's a decade and a half since Town first made plans for a new stadium. The council has now given up and said several times "yes, alright, build the thing – just stop bothering us!" But at no point have the supporters been given a chance to tell our club what we think the Fentydome should be like.
The location and overall design of the stadium seem finalised. We can't afford anything nicer than a cheap shed, exactly the same as Shrewsbury's and Doncaster's and every bugger else's, and we can't build it anywhere other than Great Coates because there's no other set of local residents we want to annoy more.
But there are other considerations in the overall matchday experience (leaving aside the actual quality of the football). It must still be possible to enjoy a match at an ugly, sterile ground in a barren post-industrial wilderness; otherwise Scunthorpe's attendances would be even lower.
So let's see the fans get some say on what goes inside the ground. And Mr Fenty could probably use our help, preoccupied as he has been with many other concerns. Only this week Ofcom threw out his complaints against Radio Humberside's coverage of their dispute with the club over broadcasting rights. Some might add that if any organisation deserves a reprimand from a communications watchdog, it must be the one that boasted its new stadium would offer "synergies with Europarc" and then proudly urged fans to go to its brand new website and "check it our".
In January last year the club launched a spectacular multimedia website at www.gtfcnewstadium.co.uk, where the theme from Star Wars launched visitors into a breathtaking 3D virtual reality tour of the ground. I'm absolutely sure they must have paid the copyright holder all the rights and performance fees for the music; it's just a shame that they seem to have forgotten to renew the web address when it expired on 29 November, because visitors to the site now are met with a flat and empty expanse of grey – much like the scene that will greet visitors to the site for the new stadium, in fact.
This just leaves the other new stadium website at extra-gtfc.co.uk/newstadium – where we discover a ringing endorsement for the project from the team manager. "I have seen the blueprint and I think it is superb and ideally located just off the A180. It is so accessible and a lot of thought seems to have gone into it," says Russell Slade.
If the Fentydome is to be anything other than appalling, Town must invite suggestions from the people who have to use it. And then the club must prove to be a lot better at building and maintaining stadiums than they are at building and maintaining websites.
The location and overall design of the stadium seem finalised. We can't afford anything nicer than a cheap shed, exactly the same as Shrewsbury's and Doncaster's and every bugger else's, and we can't build it anywhere other than Great Coates because there's no other set of local residents we want to annoy more.
But there are other considerations in the overall matchday experience (leaving aside the actual quality of the football). It must still be possible to enjoy a match at an ugly, sterile ground in a barren post-industrial wilderness; otherwise Scunthorpe's attendances would be even lower.
So let's see the fans get some say on what goes inside the ground. And Mr Fenty could probably use our help, preoccupied as he has been with many other concerns. Only this week Ofcom threw out his complaints against Radio Humberside's coverage of their dispute with the club over broadcasting rights. Some might add that if any organisation deserves a reprimand from a communications watchdog, it must be the one that boasted its new stadium would offer "synergies with Europarc" and then proudly urged fans to go to its brand new website and "check it our".
In January last year the club launched a spectacular multimedia website at www.gtfcnewstadium.co.uk, where the theme from Star Wars launched visitors into a breathtaking 3D virtual reality tour of the ground. I'm absolutely sure they must have paid the copyright holder all the rights and performance fees for the music; it's just a shame that they seem to have forgotten to renew the web address when it expired on 29 November, because visitors to the site now are met with a flat and empty expanse of grey – much like the scene that will greet visitors to the site for the new stadium, in fact.
This just leaves the other new stadium website at extra-gtfc.co.uk/newstadium – where we discover a ringing endorsement for the project from the team manager. "I have seen the blueprint and I think it is superb and ideally located just off the A180. It is so accessible and a lot of thought seems to have gone into it," says Russell Slade.
If the Fentydome is to be anything other than appalling, Town must invite suggestions from the people who have to use it. And then the club must prove to be a lot better at building and maintaining stadiums than they are at building and maintaining websites.
Labels: communications, doncaster, fentydome, internet, new stadiums, radio, scunthorpe, shrewsbury, slade, websites
Friday, 26 October 2007
Whose shoes are the greenest?
Town's opponents this weekend, Bradford City, may be down towards the bottom of the fourth division, but an environmental study published last week ranks Bradford top of the league of Britain's greenest cities.
Blundell Park should witness a clash of the ecological titans tomorrow, then, given the new pecking order of football on the Humber – because when Town fans look at the league positions of Hull and Scunthorpe, Grimsby turns a particularly vivid shade of green as well.
True, the Mariners have a long way to go in the battle against global warming. Substantial areas of the polar icecaps melt every time Town concede another daft goal and waves of heat emanate from Alan Buckley's head. And the worldwide average temperature increases by as much as 1ºC for every month that Town spend outside the promotion positions because of all the hot air generated by the internet messageboards.
The club's new stadium, if it comes to fruition, is unlikely to enhance our green credentials. Out-of-town developments are notorious for encouraging car use, and out-of-town football grounds are doubly notorious for having massive car parks with only one exit road, so that after you've sat and watched rubbish football for an hour and a half you have to sit in your car with your engine running for another hour and a half while you queue up to get out of the bloody place and forget about the whole miserable experience.
Furthermore, let us not overlook the club's habit of rescheduling daytime matches for the peculiar timeslot of Friday night. Not only is Friday night football a blasphemy against all that is good and holy on God's sweet earth: it also incurs unnecessary floodlight use. By the time the club suits have been through the fixture list with a red pen, the club must have a carbon footprint big enough to melt Alaska.
Grimsby's contribution towards saving the planet should not go unrecognised, however. One of the key messages of the green movement is to buy local and cut down on the air miles travelled by the goods we consume before they reach us. And Alan Buckley, to his ecological credit, has always operated a 'buy British' transfer policy, in stark contrast to the carbon emissions racked up while Lennie Lawrence and Russell Slade shipped in 19 trialists every week from France, Norway and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Most of all, a truly sustainable society, rather than depending upon throwaway goods, builds things to last, so that sturdy, reusable shopping bags, for instance, are preferable to plastic carriers. And while the Mariners have recently tended towards the use of disposable managers, it's a fine example of recycling to use the same one three times over.
Blundell Park should witness a clash of the ecological titans tomorrow, then, given the new pecking order of football on the Humber – because when Town fans look at the league positions of Hull and Scunthorpe, Grimsby turns a particularly vivid shade of green as well.
True, the Mariners have a long way to go in the battle against global warming. Substantial areas of the polar icecaps melt every time Town concede another daft goal and waves of heat emanate from Alan Buckley's head. And the worldwide average temperature increases by as much as 1ºC for every month that Town spend outside the promotion positions because of all the hot air generated by the internet messageboards.
The club's new stadium, if it comes to fruition, is unlikely to enhance our green credentials. Out-of-town developments are notorious for encouraging car use, and out-of-town football grounds are doubly notorious for having massive car parks with only one exit road, so that after you've sat and watched rubbish football for an hour and a half you have to sit in your car with your engine running for another hour and a half while you queue up to get out of the bloody place and forget about the whole miserable experience.
Furthermore, let us not overlook the club's habit of rescheduling daytime matches for the peculiar timeslot of Friday night. Not only is Friday night football a blasphemy against all that is good and holy on God's sweet earth: it also incurs unnecessary floodlight use. By the time the club suits have been through the fixture list with a red pen, the club must have a carbon footprint big enough to melt Alaska.
Grimsby's contribution towards saving the planet should not go unrecognised, however. One of the key messages of the green movement is to buy local and cut down on the air miles travelled by the goods we consume before they reach us. And Alan Buckley, to his ecological credit, has always operated a 'buy British' transfer policy, in stark contrast to the carbon emissions racked up while Lennie Lawrence and Russell Slade shipped in 19 trialists every week from France, Norway and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Most of all, a truly sustainable society, rather than depending upon throwaway goods, builds things to last, so that sturdy, reusable shopping bags, for instance, are preferable to plastic carriers. And while the Mariners have recently tended towards the use of disposable managers, it's a fine example of recycling to use the same one three times over.
Labels: bradford, buckley, environment, global warming, hull, lawrence, recycling, scunthorpe, slade, transfers, transport, travel
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