Cod Almighty | Diary

"I just feel very calm"

12 November 2024

On Sunday Grimsby Town Women beat Chesterfield 1-0, in front of a record attendance of 535 at Blundell Park. That's for a game in the East Midlands Women's Regional League Division One North - the sixth tier of the women's pyramid. Town director Kristine Green has done the research and notes that is a bigger gate than in the 12 tier three games that weekend where the crowd figure has been published.

Almost as good as the result and the attendance was the work put in to promote the event, including an interview with striker Beth Wharton in the build-up and then post-match comments from their coach, Ben Challen. It all makes it easier to engage, to care about their success. The women's team matter, sharing with the men an ambition to rise through the pyramid.

From women's football to women in football, and it is not so long ago that our one-time majority shareholder (it feels as though his name should now be used as sparingly as the name adopted by a bunch of Buckinghamshire pirates) spoke of providing facilities for female officials as though it were a requirement as wonderful as maintaining a stable for unicorns. In an interview with The Business Desk, our CEO Polly Bancroft makes it clear we have progressed: "When I met Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit, the owners of Grimsby Town, I was really impressed with them as individuals, and the way they work. There’s no ego."

The lack of ego is our biggest hope for the future, evident when the first team set a new course last February. It doesn't happen when people are panicked, looking over their shoulders and trying to second-guess the whims of their manager or their manager's manager. It comes, as Bancroft goes on to say, when people feel calm, able to think and able to turn their thoughts into action. Creating that atmosphere, Newbegin Diary suggests, often comes harder to men than it does to women.

I know it sounds like a management-speak truism, but it is nevertheless true. We are not fighting over shares of a cake, of which there is only a little to go round; we all benefit when everyone feels they can be involved and be their best selves.