Cod Almighty | Diary
Our win droughts in full
12 October 2018
Saturdays don't get any weirder than when football is on but Town don't have a match. As we all know by now, tomorrow's fixture at Mansfield has been postponed because, hilariously, two teams in the fourth tier of English football can actually supply enough international footballers for their first teams to feel their absence.
It's a shame that the game was called off because, after all, we were on a roll. It's particularly sad that back-to-back league victories in the fourth division constitutes a 'run', but this is where we're at, and this is where we have been for some time now.
With every passing season that sees us compete at this level, so our reputation as lower-league fodder solidifies in the eyes of every young football fan growing up in this country. Grimsby, to them, is probably how your West Yorkshire Diary – born in 1983 – saw Shrewsbury, Lincoln and even Scunthorpe in my youth.
What's even more disappointing, though, is that we haven't actually been any good at this level. This is our ninth season in the fourth division (punctuated by six seasons in non-League) and, in the last four to five seasons here, we've had three winless runs of 20 games or more.
Last season is naturally fresh in most of our minds, so let's start there. Owing to our crucial 1-0 win over Chesterfield, our winless run struck the 20-game mark perfectly. We went from Saturday 9 December to Saturday 7 April – 119 days – without victory in the league. We drew six matches and lost 14. We scored just eight goals. It was pitiful and it was awful.
Statistically, the club's worst winless run came in 2009-10 when our inadequacy stretched to 25 league games, from Saturday 19 September to Saturday 6 March. That was 168 days. We rightly – and deservedly – got relegated that season, although it may surprise you that we picked up 15 points from 15 draws in that barren sequence, losing on just 10 occasions. While we were pretty inept up front, we still managed to score twice as many goals as the infertile run from last season – and we were actually tighter in defence too, despite the run lasting five extra games.
The third example of our fourth division incompetence traverses two seasons. Saturday 22 March 2008: Town responded to an equaliser from Mansfield's Nathan Arnold to win 2-1 at Field Mill. We then lost all seven of our remaining league fixtures and won none of our first 15 of 2008-09. The run came to an end when we won 2-0 at Bury on Saturday 15 November. That was 22 winless games spanning 238 days – although, clearly, it incorporated the close season. Six draws, 16 defeats and 45 goals conceded.
As a club, we've had some magnificent days and some magnificent seasons. But given the damning evidence presented above it's becoming increasingly hard to argue that our 'true' level is anywhere but the arse end of the fourth division. In fact, we should be grateful that we've only been relegated to non-League once because, as those appalling runs clearly show, it could (and perhaps should) have happened before and since.
That's not to say that we should accept any of this. There is (hopefully) no-one at this football club who wants to see it foundering at the foot of the professional leagues, given our proud history in the game. We have that in common if nothing else. How we drag ourselves out of this mess is a topic that will likely divide opinion – and then comes the rhetorical question: will there ever be a day when we're truly satisfied?
I thought I'd be satisfied to get out of non-League. But, try as I might, I'm really struggling to enjoy life back in the Football League because we're making such a hash of it. And you can bet your life that there will still be discerning voices and shouts of "Bloody rubbish, Town!" emanating from the back of the Main Stand if we ever find ourselves back in the second tier but losing 2-0 at home to Aston Villa. "We should be beating these lot! Sort it, Jolleys!"
We're a fourth division football club. And if you're not satisfied with that, at least be happy that we have a football club and a place to go and see them play. UTM!