Cod Almighty | Diary

My buttocks are smooth, my mind is clear

17 July 2025

Budge up! The club has noticed that 15% of seats available to buy on match days are stand-alone seats, so they’re asking some season ticket holders if they wouldn’t mind moving up a seat or two so fans like your West Yorkshire Diary — who doesn’t have a season ticket — can hope to get two seats together in the traditional home stands.

This is excellent news and an excellent effort. The fact that we have so many season ticket holders these days is obviously a boon for the club. I’ve often mentioned, through these diaries and the social media site formerly known as Twitter, my struggles as an exile to buy three or even two tickets together in any home stand so I, along with Mrs West Yorkshire Diary, can continue to ease our slightly unsuspecting seven-year-old son into a lifetime of Mariners memories before those pesky friends of his force their Leeds United vibes onto him. He’s already sounding like he’s from Leeds when he confidently shouts ‘Ello!’ across the playground at home time to a friend’s dad that I barely know, so more Grimsby games are definitely required.

You only have to skim the surface of the Fishy these days to find comments about the Blundell Park atmosphere and how, despite these brighter times, we’re still struggling to make the noise you’d expect to hear from six thousand Town fans — driven, in part, by the surge in season ticket holders unintentionally splitting other fan groups apart.

Much is also said of our 9,000 capacity, and how a so-called sell-out can sometimes struggle to muster an attendance much above 7,600 due to season ticket holders not turning up and not releasing their seat. The topic is nuanced and complex, but this recent seat review will only help improve numbers and match day experiences and, therefore, is a worthwhile venture. I doubt any of the office staff relished the seat-counting task, and no one yet knows how much of a difference (in terms of cash and atmosphere) this will make, but that’s to look at it through Fenty-tinted glasses. The real reason the club has bothered to do this is because, firstly, it’s listened to the fans, and secondly, it’s recognised it’s simply the right thing to do.

Maybe I’ll continue to struggle getting three seats together in the Pontoon, but at least now I know the club has the energy to tackle these things and not just pretend everything’s okay.

While I’m praising the club, maybe they’d also consider using one home game this season where they don’t play any music. Not after goals, not before games. Pre-game music blaring out of the speakers only makes it harder for the fans to create their own atmosphere, so they don’t bother. When I first started attending Town games, I went because of the atmosphere. We used to make the effort to get into Blundell Park early so we could be part of the noise that would slowly build until it peaked as the teams walked out. Pre-match music doesn’t warm the fans up, it drowns them out. Give us a chance to make our own noise — especially if more of us can sit together next season.

UTM!