Cod Almighty | Diary

Friendly Persuasion

9 June 2025

Miss Guest Diary writes: Following the club's announcement last week of a veritable slew of pre-season games I was surprised to read quite a few posts on social media from fans who have no truck with them, considering them to be of value only to the participants not the spectators. I beg to differ.

I love a pre-season game – when else would you get an opportunity to see Town play at places like Stamford, Grantham, Winterton or Brigg – especially since the club seems to have stopped taking the Lincolnshire Cup seriously? And they're a free hit. Despite the meltdowns when, as last season, we lose to teams like South Shields, the results don't count and are no indicator of how the season will pan out. I distinctly recall when Town lost 4-1 to North Ferriby back in 2016, less than two months after our return to the league, the CA match reporter declaring that we'd definitely be going straight back down if they carried on like that, only for us to finish a respectable 14th.

I appreciate that not everyone has the time or the resources to follow Town in pre-season but I am fortunate enough to be retired with a decent pension and I plan to go to every game I can. Back when I first started watching Town in 1990 I lived in Watford and worked full-time so it was not really possible to attend such games. The one exception was in 1993 when the team ventured south to play Northampton Town at Wellingborough's ground. Long before the days of satnavs or Google, we had to ring up the club to find out where the ground was to be told "it's behind the pub" – and it was. Since I moved to Lincolnshire over 20 years ago I have delighted in going to as many pre-season games as I can – if nothing else they are a chance to catch up with any footballing friends you bump into and to check out the triallists and the new signings.

I was so pleased to see that Town will be playing Gainsborough Trinity - something they haven't done since before Covid – and not just because it’s only 20 miles from me and the catering is really good, but because it holds some fond memories. It's the first place we clapped eyes on Omar Bogle in a Town shirt, the place where we saw Ciaran Toner in the twilight of his career, where we chatted to Jack Mackreth's parents in the stand before we kept bumping into them at games for the rest of that season. The Northolme is a proper old ground which Trinity have been occupying for over 140 years and feels like the embodiment of lower league football; the very antidote to all the Euro-nonsense and Premier-team posing we have to put up with in all forms of media for so much of the time.

Why not join us there?