Cod Almighty | Diary

Thrown

17 October 2019

It is a snatch of commentary etched into the memory of every English football fan of a certain age: "Some people are on the pitch. That is quite disgraceful. If they don't get off immediately, FIFA will have no alternative but to order the World Cup final to be replayed behind closed doors."

Time was, pitch invasions were usually a thing of celebration, and when they weren't, everyone could tell the difference. And it's not that malign pitch invasions only started happening in in the 1970s. Jackie Bestall's Town debut, at Clapton Orient in 1926, was marked by one. Nevertheless, the time came when it became easier for the authorities just to say all pitch invasions are evil. Because although to the live witness it is clear when an invasion is a spontaneous outburst of joy, a boring act of self-promotion, or an act of hooliganism, it is hard to put the difference into words. So better to play safe, and play pompous.

Now, too, objects thrown onto the pitch. Grimsby Town can't be blamed for the tone of their request that we refrain from chucking stuff on Saturday: it goes with modern-day football administration. Truth be told they probably had to use a form of words to satisfy the FA and the Football League.

Don't get Domestic Diary wrong. It would be impossible to write a regulation to codify common sense. You start with a simple clause on things that can hurt, then remember bananas and add a clause on materials with racist connotations. Then you think: what if 1,000 people all throw a thing which is harmless in itself, but having 1,000 of them on the pitch would make play impossible: who then do you throw the book at? Coaching manuals can be thrown, but only in the technical area.

A blanket ban is much easier to write (not that anyone other than the St John's Ambulance crew has ever thrown a blanket). But you still hope it will be applied with sensitivity to what is called a spectator sport because spectators are such a large part of it. There is a lot of nasty shit (perhaps literally, in some cases) that has been thrown onto football fields over the years. But there is also an idiosyncratic subculture which has Bristol Rovers fans taking Weetabix to Shrewsbury and even Chelsea fans tossing sticks of celery. Let's hope the baby does not get thrown out with the bathwater. (Throwing babies is definitely out; bathwater is a grey area.)  

Calum Dyson, you may remember, was Grimsby's young player of the season for 2016-17. That despite the fact he was only on loan to us from Everton. He'd announced himself with a goal that Tony Butcher wrote was straight out of 1984: the kind of thing Paul Wilkinson in his prime might have conjured up. Sadly, his four goals in 16 matches for Town represents slightly more than half of his first-team career after an injury-hit loan spell at Stevenage while on the books at Plymouth. Still just 23, he's now been forced to retire with an ankle injury. Idle to pretend he'll be reading Cod Almighty but our best wishes for the future nevertheless.