Friday, 28 March 2008
First one in to Blundell Park, turn on the lights
There are things that all of us Grimbarians and Meggies have in common. We all pronounce our vowels with a grinding rasp that could put a mammoth in a coma. None of us knew had heard of a balti until 2003. And we all love to go and watch our local football team once every ten years or so.
It may be, of course, that you're one of that smattering of social deviants who attend the Mariners' matches more often. You might even belong to that handful of dangerous obsessives who hold something called a 'season ticket'. But with Town having sold 25,000 tickets for Sunday's big match at Wembley, against an average attendance at Blundell Park this season of 4,200, it may be useful for us to compare and contrast the two stadiums.
First, both stadiums have a decent public transport infrastructure. Blundell Park is easily accessible by bus and rail (in marked contrast, it seems, to John Fenty's proposed new ground on the outskirts of Grimsby) and Wembley goes so far as to call itself "a public transport stadium". It may be impossible to get there from Grimsby by train in time for the stupid 1:15 kick-off on Sunday, but that's the fault of Sky, not the railways.
The managers of Wembley maintain a long list of items that spectators are not allowed to bring into the ground. This includes anything that features "corporate or inappropriate branding". Presumably no such rule exists at Blundell Park; otherwise there'd be no admittance to the Pontoon for all those scrawny 12-year-olds wearing Liverpool and Manchester United shirts.
Also on the list of prohibited items at the national stadium are cans, bottles and flasks, whether they are glass or plastic. Ostensibly this is for safety reasons. Realistically, it's so the kiosks inside the ground can charge you £5.50 for a cup of warm Evian.
But they need the money more than you do. Wembley's building costs hugely overshot the estimate, creating a debt of Humber Bridge proportions. Mr Fenty admitted recently that his proposed new ground has a £6m shortfall in its funding – but he also says that the cost of staying at Blundell Park would be the club ceasing to exist.
It makes you wonder why Lincoln, Rochdale, Hereford and indeed all 13 fourth division clubs with lower attendances than us this season aren't planning to build new grounds, because they must all be in even greater danger of ceasing to exist, but there you go.
Or, if you're one of the hordes who'll be at Wembley with black and white flags and face paint but won't walk down the road to see the Town at Blundell Park, there you don't go. See you in 2018, folks!
It may be, of course, that you're one of that smattering of social deviants who attend the Mariners' matches more often. You might even belong to that handful of dangerous obsessives who hold something called a 'season ticket'. But with Town having sold 25,000 tickets for Sunday's big match at Wembley, against an average attendance at Blundell Park this season of 4,200, it may be useful for us to compare and contrast the two stadiums.
First, both stadiums have a decent public transport infrastructure. Blundell Park is easily accessible by bus and rail (in marked contrast, it seems, to John Fenty's proposed new ground on the outskirts of Grimsby) and Wembley goes so far as to call itself "a public transport stadium". It may be impossible to get there from Grimsby by train in time for the stupid 1:15 kick-off on Sunday, but that's the fault of Sky, not the railways.
The managers of Wembley maintain a long list of items that spectators are not allowed to bring into the ground. This includes anything that features "corporate or inappropriate branding". Presumably no such rule exists at Blundell Park; otherwise there'd be no admittance to the Pontoon for all those scrawny 12-year-olds wearing Liverpool and Manchester United shirts.
Also on the list of prohibited items at the national stadium are cans, bottles and flasks, whether they are glass or plastic. Ostensibly this is for safety reasons. Realistically, it's so the kiosks inside the ground can charge you £5.50 for a cup of warm Evian.
But they need the money more than you do. Wembley's building costs hugely overshot the estimate, creating a debt of Humber Bridge proportions. Mr Fenty admitted recently that his proposed new ground has a £6m shortfall in its funding – but he also says that the cost of staying at Blundell Park would be the club ceasing to exist.
It makes you wonder why Lincoln, Rochdale, Hereford and indeed all 13 fourth division clubs with lower attendances than us this season aren't planning to build new grounds, because they must all be in even greater danger of ceasing to exist, but there you go.
Or, if you're one of the hordes who'll be at Wembley with black and white flags and face paint but won't walk down the road to see the Town at Blundell Park, there you don't go. See you in 2018, folks!
Labels: blundell park, debt, fentydome, new stadiums, parochialism, premiership, support, trains, transport, wembley
Friday, 28 September 2007
Coming home to roost
During Alan Buckley's spell with West Bromwich Albion in the 1990s I lived a couple of miles from the Hawthorns. My best mate Stu was a Baggies fan so I used to go along with him and see how Tony Rees, Paul Agnew and all the other Town exports were getting along. It was always interesting to compare notes with the Albion supporters, so when we got talking to one of them over post-match pints one Saturday, Stu decided to give him the context. "Pete's a Grimsby fan!" he grinned, indicating me.
The stranger turned to me with a face that would have split granite. He said – well, I'm not allowed to tell you exactly what he said, because my mum still reads this column, but (despite Town being placed comfortably above West Brom in the league at this time) the first two words were "you" and "sad", and the third rhymes with "trucker".
I was reminded of this lately by all the hoo-hah about the Mariners' proposed new stadium and the requirement to provide a new habitat for nearby bird life.
True, some local people seem to want the stadium to fail, just as they want the club to fail and everything else to fail (the reasons for this are too complex to explore here – which is a shame, because we could probably have had a lot of fun at their expense). But John Fenty, too, called the ruling "bizarre", and many people appear to be working on the assumption that birds are much less important than football.
This is more than a little short-sighted given that we've been watching football for about 150 years, while birds have been around for about 150 million.
But again, it's generally considered acceptable to like football, whereas ornithology is a hobby that tends to be thought of as, well, 'sad'. Why? No-one can really explain. I'm no birdspotter but as the years pass I grow worryingly fond of trains. And you may very well look down on trainspotters. But your scorn is nothing compared to the withering disdain that railway enthusiasts reserve for bus spotters.
The point is that nothing is more unfathomable to us than other people's taste – be it for birds, trains, Star Trek, Hereford United Football Club, or even Grimsby Town. And if we poke fun at the twitchers then we're no better than that sneering oaf I met in the pub in 1994. So let's all of us just do the right thing, and save our contempt and mockery for Chelsea.
And you know what? The people who only like things that it's OK to like, and aren't interested in anything 'sad', always turn out to be the most tedious truckers of all.
The stranger turned to me with a face that would have split granite. He said – well, I'm not allowed to tell you exactly what he said, because my mum still reads this column, but (despite Town being placed comfortably above West Brom in the league at this time) the first two words were "you" and "sad", and the third rhymes with "trucker".
I was reminded of this lately by all the hoo-hah about the Mariners' proposed new stadium and the requirement to provide a new habitat for nearby bird life.
True, some local people seem to want the stadium to fail, just as they want the club to fail and everything else to fail (the reasons for this are too complex to explore here – which is a shame, because we could probably have had a lot of fun at their expense). But John Fenty, too, called the ruling "bizarre", and many people appear to be working on the assumption that birds are much less important than football.
This is more than a little short-sighted given that we've been watching football for about 150 years, while birds have been around for about 150 million.
But again, it's generally considered acceptable to like football, whereas ornithology is a hobby that tends to be thought of as, well, 'sad'. Why? No-one can really explain. I'm no birdspotter but as the years pass I grow worryingly fond of trains. And you may very well look down on trainspotters. But your scorn is nothing compared to the withering disdain that railway enthusiasts reserve for bus spotters.
The point is that nothing is more unfathomable to us than other people's taste – be it for birds, trains, Star Trek, Hereford United Football Club, or even Grimsby Town. And if we poke fun at the twitchers then we're no better than that sneering oaf I met in the pub in 1994. So let's all of us just do the right thing, and save our contempt and mockery for Chelsea.
And you know what? The people who only like things that it's OK to like, and aren't interested in anything 'sad', always turn out to be the most tedious truckers of all.
Labels: birds, buckley, fentydome, hereford, personal taste, trains, west brom
Friday, 7 September 2007
Modern life is rubbish
The trouble with modern life, and all its whizzy gadgets and conveniences, is that we have come to expect everything, and expect it instantly, when very often it's more rewarding to wait a bit longer for stuff.
Take the railways. I've been going to London a lot lately – it's actually a really good service, and pretty cheap if you book in advance and all that. This is clearly not the way to run a railway in Britain in 2007, so the franchise is being given to other train operating companies who promise to get us there about ten minutes quicker, just as long as we let them put up the fares at three times the rate of inflation.
And it's only recently that we've watched the football through the filter of these inflated expectations and deflated attention spans. For the first Town fans, back in the 1870s and 1880s, life was rubbish and there was stuff all they could do about it. Every week the trawler owners' lackeys would get you of bed at 3am, burn your house down and make your children into soup, so it scarcely mattered if you'd spent Saturday afternoon watching the Mariners lose 9-0 at home to Goxhill Clodhoppers.
Conversely, in these days of luxury we have a coronary if we have to lift the cushion up to get the remote control, so it's beyond all human toleration when there are things we can't change immediately just by pressing a button – like Town being stuck in the fourth division.
And some are already condemning the Mariners to another disappointing finish this season – on the evidence of just four league games.
Partly I blame this newspaper for saying Town are "joint bottom". We're not joint bottom – we're ahead of Wrexham and Accrington on goal difference, which is just as valid a measure as points. When Arsenal scored with the last kick of the 1988–89 season to seal the league title on goals scored, even Liverpool fans would have been too embarrassed to claim their team were actually "joint champions".
But at the same point in bygone years, we wouldn't have a league table to be joint bottom of, because nobody drew one up until mid-September. Nowadays websites publish tables before the season has even begun, and some fans spent July calling furiously for Alan Buckley to be sacked because Town were several places below Accrington on alphabetical order.
Four games into the 1997–98 season Town were in a relegation spot – and I trust we haven't forgotten what the current manager achieved just afterwards. If I had my way, Buckley would be manager for life – and I'd probably have him running the railways as well.
Take the railways. I've been going to London a lot lately – it's actually a really good service, and pretty cheap if you book in advance and all that. This is clearly not the way to run a railway in Britain in 2007, so the franchise is being given to other train operating companies who promise to get us there about ten minutes quicker, just as long as we let them put up the fares at three times the rate of inflation.
And it's only recently that we've watched the football through the filter of these inflated expectations and deflated attention spans. For the first Town fans, back in the 1870s and 1880s, life was rubbish and there was stuff all they could do about it. Every week the trawler owners' lackeys would get you of bed at 3am, burn your house down and make your children into soup, so it scarcely mattered if you'd spent Saturday afternoon watching the Mariners lose 9-0 at home to Goxhill Clodhoppers.
Conversely, in these days of luxury we have a coronary if we have to lift the cushion up to get the remote control, so it's beyond all human toleration when there are things we can't change immediately just by pressing a button – like Town being stuck in the fourth division.
And some are already condemning the Mariners to another disappointing finish this season – on the evidence of just four league games.
Partly I blame this newspaper for saying Town are "joint bottom". We're not joint bottom – we're ahead of Wrexham and Accrington on goal difference, which is just as valid a measure as points. When Arsenal scored with the last kick of the 1988–89 season to seal the league title on goals scored, even Liverpool fans would have been too embarrassed to claim their team were actually "joint champions".
But at the same point in bygone years, we wouldn't have a league table to be joint bottom of, because nobody drew one up until mid-September. Nowadays websites publish tables before the season has even begun, and some fans spent July calling furiously for Alan Buckley to be sacked because Town were several places below Accrington on alphabetical order.
Four games into the 1997–98 season Town were in a relegation spot – and I trust we haven't forgotten what the current manager achieved just afterwards. If I had my way, Buckley would be manager for life – and I'd probably have him running the railways as well.
Labels: accrington, buckley, history, league tables, patience, promotion, relegation, trains
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