Southampton Football Club have shown a distinct lack of a sense of humour by refusing to allow Harry Haddock into St Mary's Stadium for the forthcoming FA cup tie against Grimsby Town.
There is no Plaice for Grimsby Town fan favourite Harry Haddock when the Mariners travel South to take on Saints in the 5th round of the FA Cup.
Harry though is not a person but the iconic inflatable fish mascot that the Grimsby supporters like to display at big games.
Older supporters will remember the fashion for taking inflatable objects to football matches back in the late 80's, Manchester City are credited with starting the craze in 1987 with an inflatable banana and it all blew up from there (All pun intended)
Soon fans around the country were taking their own versions to games and that included Grimsby Town who took inflatable fish and soon Harry Haddock was born.
Grimsby has always been known for it's fishing fleet, so it was natural that they would adopt a fish as their inflatable and they would proudly display it even when the team on the pitch was getting battered.
Goals scored from chips were celebrated with hundreds of Harry Haddocks being waved by the Grimsby fans whilst their opponents got a birds eye view of proceedings.
Sadly are fishy friends along the M27 didn't get with the programme and did not attend games with inflatable skates.
But 35 or so years later it seems that the fun has gone out of football, Southampton FC have turned down an official request for Grimsby fans to bring in Harry Haddock en masse, with almost 5,000 of their fans likely to attend it seems Saints did not want 5,000 Harry Haddocks in St Mary's.
Grimsby Town confirmed this to their own fans saying that Southampton had turned down their request and informed them that they (SFC) had turned down similar requests from other clubs and that any inflatables found would be confiscated.
Grimsby Town had this to say:
"The Club have today received confirmation from Southampton that Harry Haddocks will not be permitted at St Mary's for our Emirates FA Cup Fifth Round tie.
"We share our supporters' inevitable frustration at this decision but we know you will support us brilliantly in our first FA Cup Fifth Round tie since 1996."
This all sounds a little bizarre and some reading this might feel this is a hoaxm but apparently not and on social media Grimsby fans have been venting their frustrations with phrases such as "joyless" and "boring", while one warned it would only encourage supporters to "organise something that will cause you a bigger headache".
This is not the first time that Harry has been banned, he was barred from Barnet in 2017, but this is perhaps the highest profile.
Personally I can't see the harm in it, Premium League football lacks true fun at Premier league level, in the main the support is bland and follows the same pattern and the same old songs, so although I was not a great fan of the inflatable craze back in the day, times have changed so what is the harm.
Certainly I can't see much from a safety point of view, these are light inflatable pieces of plastic, they can't be thrown very far and even if they could they would barely be felt if one hit you.
Saints will claim that they could flood the pitch, but that never happened back in the 80's/90's so can't see why it will happen now.
All in all Southampton FC have shown a lack of humour.