Cod Almighty | Article

by Nick Andrews

11 May 2016

It's a Sunday and the sun is shining in Munich. When the sun shines on a Sunday afternoon in Munich, the usually busy Shamrock Irish pub falls quiet as their punters move into the nearby beer gardens to enjoy their weekend beers. If ManU or Liverpool are blasted across the screens, the Shamrock will see a swell of English speakers hiding from the sun, to the bewilderment of the slim, tanned locals cycling their way to the neighbouring park.

But this is close season: 24 May, to be precise. There isn't any football today… Is there?

That was the response I received when I asked if they could put the football on? I think the barman was Scottish but he could have been Irish, English, Japanese or from Mars. If you weren't from Grimsby or Northampton, you didn't know there was football on that afternoon in 1998. And so it was that I sat there, just me and my girlfriend, to watch as Donovan scored that goal.

That's life as a Grimsby fan if you're not in Grimsby.

You are forced to search for the results as nobody you know will have a clue, especially in a pre-internet world, and you watch from afar with horror as game after game is lost and the team you grew up watching play Chelsea, Newcastle, Man City, Everton, Liverpool and Arsenal drift beyond the reaches of most Sunday newspapers sports pages. What have you done to them? They were good when I left.

"I once threw a ball to Kevin Keegan at Blundell Park," I tell my son. And I did as well – as a ball boy when that great Newcastle side came to town. We drew that day and we played well. I queued at the end for autographs from both sets of players. "Was it a cup game?" he asks, because how else would we be playing Newcastle?

I was recently in a bookshop with both my kids and we found a football stats book. Turning to the page where the league tables were shown, I pointed to the 1930 and 40s, when Grimsby stood among the top 22 teams in the country. I showed them the 90s, when we nearly went up to Division One. We studied it in the corner, them with wonder, me with pride. But in the corner, quietly. Alone, because that's what you do when you're a Grimsby fan, not in Grimsby.

When we took the Old Trafford stadium tour, the rest of the bewildered party had to wait for us as we took photos next to the banner that proclaims the famous old ground's record attendance.

Back in 1998, we'd been to Wembley to see Town; the first time they'd ever been there. We flew Debonair (a demise to match the Mariners') and nervously watched the extra-time action knowing that if a golden goal didn't come soon we might miss our flight back to Munich, have to find somewhere to stay, near Luton, and hope Debonair had another flight we could afford to take back to Munich before we lost our jobs because what German boss was going to believe a tale of a hometown team playing at Wembley and golden goal, penalties and everything that goes with it? We wanted to win more than we wanted our flights and our jobs. The inconvenience was irrelevant.

I don't attend football matches with the expectation of being entertained. I go to support the players that represent the club I love

So, fast forward nearly 20 years to the "best supporters" in the Conference. There are a couple of things about being a Grimsby fan, not in Grimsby. One is that I can't get to many games, as I'm not even in England (or Wales, Wrexham fans). If I were, I would go, as I'm a supporter.

You see, I don't attend football matches with the expectation of being entertained. If I want to be entertained, I watch telly (channel hopping because it's not actually very entertaining) or I go to the cinema. I go to a football match to support the players that represent the club I love; to help them achieve the success for that club that will give us the feeling of achievement, success and pride that I watched on the fans faces of Leicester City as they won the league.

Another clip was of a Dundee United fan, child either side of him, holding his scarf aloft. His face was sad, his expression motionless, but his action was one of defiance and of support: I support you even though we've just been relegated at the home of our fiercest rivals. He didn't shout and hurl abuse at his team, the other team, the police, the stewards, the TV cameras. He just stood there to say I'll be standing there when you kick off next season too.

Being a Grimsby fan not in Grimsby makes you think about why others feel the need to abuse, insult and bully anyone who pulls on the jersey and doesn't achieve the standards they feel are appropriate. Maybe the players don't like winning, they want to play in non-League, they like being abused. They are losing to annoy you. The manager, when picking his team, thinks how he can antagonise as many people as possible at the cost of winning the game.

I recently watched the Wrexham game from the Findus stand – at least when I wasn't watching the back of a bald head as its owner abused anyone who misplaced a pass, got caught on the ball or just did something that wasn't in the script of his game. Anyone who was there knows Town put in a performance that day. At the end, victory secured, he turned to those around him. "I enjoyed that!" he said.

Enjoyed it! Well, GTFC shouldn't be your therapy session, I thought, and no wonder parents won't bring kids to games with morons like him in the stand. I wish I could remember the seat number...

But it's easy to moan and complain at football, especially at Grimsby. Even the FA and Wembley have got it in for the best supporters in the Conference. They knew we might get to both finals so they scheduled them a week apart. They wanted to play them on the same day but that might have been too obvious. They still managed to find a way to ruin it for everyone by pushing the kick-off back past three o'clock.

If you are in Grimsby, remember, you're the lucky ones. You get to live it for real

When will we get to blog about how crap Town are, complain about the price of a pint or the traffic on the A1? By the time we get back to Grimsby it will be bedtime! It's a conspiracy to keep us all quiet.

Personally, I don't think the world is against Grimsby Town and their supporters. I think the supporters have fled in their droves of their own free will. Not being entertained is not an excuse; not being successful either. We were in Division Four when we used to pack out the Barrett stand, the corners and every other available space or seat. What those supporters who type away on their blogs and chat rooms don't realise is that they're the lucky ones.

They're the ones who get to see Town every couple of weeks for the price of the entrance, the bus fare and a half-time cup of tea. You don't even need to pay parking if you drive there. But they don't want to, or if they do, they're left disappointed.

There are many of us scattered around the world who would love to feel downbeat and distraught at the latest defeat to a team that comes from somewhere you didn't even know was a place (no offence, Boreham Wood) or bask in the glory of a goalscoring machine and at least one trip to the home of football and be able to talk about it.

Here in Ireland you'd see a tricolour draped on a three-legged dog if it could find the back of the net, but no-one outside of his Carlow home has heard of Podge Amond. This is the country that tracked down a relative so Clinton Morrison could pull on the jersey, for crying out loud.

Success or failure, when you're a Grimsby fan not in Grimsby, it's all the same. It doesn't matter when you're not in Grimsby because it's yours alone. No-one knows you lost to Cheltenham on BT Sport last night, any more than you went to Wembley at the weekend. But you want that success for the club and you support them all the time and show it when you can.

So, if you're in Grimsby or near Grimsby or go to just a few games a year, remember, you're the lucky ones. You are the ones who get to live it for real and not just read about it on the internet, even if it doesn't play out the way you want.

We need Grimsby Town and they need us, so let's all support them, no matter what, and see where that takes us. Maybe one day, we'll all meet in the same corner.

Does absence make the heart grow fonder? What do you think?