Cod Almighty | Diary

Does anyone else miss Neil Innes?

13 April 2022

There is no news about Grimsby Town's first team so Middle-Aged Diary is going to take a look at the women's team and the youth team.

The page on the official site devoted to Grimsby Town Women leaves us on the cliffhanger that on the evening of 30 March they were due to play a local derby against Grimsby Borough. There's no subsequent match report but some digging tells us that Borough won 2-0.

While we are on Borough, congratulations to their men's team who have won the North Counties League East Premier Division. Their last opponents Emley marked the achievement by leaving a case of lager in their dressing room. For consumption after the match, presumably (unless Paul Linwood is involved.) The question was floated at us earlier in the week: why are Borough called the "Wilderness Boys"? Our guess was it's because they had no permanent home for so long. Can anyone confirm?

Back to the Mariners, and the women's defeat seems to have pretty much finished their hopes of promotion from Division One North of the East Midlands Regional League. They are 10 points behind leaders Arnold Eagles with 4 games left to play. Similarly, we learn from the Bradford City official site if not our own that their youth team beat ours on Saturday to open up an unassailable eight-point advantage at the top of the EFL Youth Alliance North East division.

For our official site it seems that when it comes to the women's and the youth teams then bad news is no news. It's a wonder John Fenty never thought of extending that principle to the first team: he could have saved a fortune in hosting fees over the two decades of his "custodianship".

But it really isn't bad news. The women's team are yet to complete their second competitive season but have already won one promotion and seem certain to finish 2nd or 3rd this time. Our under-18 team should finish 2nd, playing against teams from clubs one, two or even three flights higher than the men's team. Four of their players have won professional contracts.

The Guardian has published an article by Town chair Jason Stockwood describing how football can remind us of our collective power and sense of community. The first team is inevitably the main focus of the emotions he vividly evokes, but our other teams are also a part of that story, so much closer to the lives of hundreds of people when you remember the effort it takes to get the players on the pitch, properly prepared and kitted, for the love of the thing, or for the remote prospect of future reward. There are surely some wonderful stories about our women's and our youth teams - their players and the people who support them - which deserve to be heard.