Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 11 October 2025

Division 4

Grimsby Town 1 Green (17)

Colchester United 2 Mbick (38, 60)

Attendance: 6,931 (270 away fans)

What does Keiran Green do? He keeps on keeping on and so he'll keep on getting the playground plonk.

By far Town's most adequate and consistent player, he stood firm when threatened by shadows on their right and swept up leaves as they dropped behind our trees. He did not wilt.

Professor Glum put on Danny Rose's spectacles when analysing the data, seeing most of the same game as the rest of us. It's all about definitions and perspective:

"I thought we were the better team in the first half certainly after the first five…We were victims of our own downfall.

We didn't try and pass the ball to each other in the second half and just walloped it anywhere and hoped. If I wanted a physical team three-quarters of them wouldn't be here. That's not us.”

Ah, but Dave it was us. Again. So it's a physical thing then?

"Bullied? No, not true, disagree, totally disagree. We didn't keep the bloody ball, nothing to do with bullying, not to do with the opposition at all."

The laddie doth protest just a little too much.

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The perennial Pontoon party pooper revealed the secret of his latest success, he simply followed the recently patented Blundell Park blueprint for home discomfort:

"We did really well, because we saw a little weakness in their defensive organisation and we targeted that and benefited from that….We didn't want them to play through us vertically or through us horizontally and we were able to slow their attacks down a lot and that enabled us to get good numbers behind the ball."

Oh but Danny boy, such cheek, such chutzpah in stretching a point!

"We really stood up today because the referee allowed an awful lot. Sometimes, it looked more like rugby than football. I do think referees have to get on top of this, because we're both really good football teams and if the referee allows a lot, the players will then stretch the rules."

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We've seen this game before. Again.

Harrogate, Accrington, Bristol Rovers, Cambridge and Barnet. And now Colchester. All the league games Town haven't won. All teams that are neither at the top nor the bottom, all bog standard fourth division bruiserballers who used physique to suppress Town's natural effervescence and artistic beauty.

In simple terms, simple teams that won't let us play how we wish to play. There are those among us who look at the data and come to a conclusion that this sample size – half of the games played - is sufficiently large to come to a conclusion that this Town are currently incapable of coping with competent Kabaddiballers.

Why? Bullying isn't just physical. Weakness isn't just a physical thing.

There's a lack of mental toughness in far too many, an inability to think themselves out of a pickle. When the going got tough too many shrugged, or were shrugged off.

The magic potion is wearing off, he's remembering he's Tyrrell Warren, flaky full-back. Poor old Bunny was pulverised and tossed aside by Mbig whilst Harvey withered, Khouri disappeared after his booking and the front three dissolved under the harsh gaze of some geezers from Essex. Soonsup-Bell was a fey Luca Barrington and, after colliding with his marker, slip-sliding Svanthorsson reverted to the Dadi boy of last year.

These were merely the most egregious non-performers. It was a collective shambles in the second half as Town disintegrated. The same issues that undermined last season still exist.

There you are, a summary that isn't funny; well no-one but the Cowley wobblers were laughing their way home.

On this day they were better in every way.

They did to us what we did to Salford, and what Cambridge almost did to us. A standard fourth division away performance – deny the home team time, hassle 'em, hustle 'em, sit back, keep it tight, nick a goal, dilly and dally until dawn. And they did it very, very well.

Danny's boys definitely deserved to win, but not necessarily in the way they won. Mbick was unplayable, at least, and definitely by Warren, who was trampled underfoot, but every one of them was superior to their Town counterpart in a thoroughly functional and impressively negatively competent seaside special. They played Town, and the ref, perfectly.

Bigger, stronger, faster, cuter: they have all the attributes for a promotion push, especially if they can keep Mbick, the perfect Cowleyball centre-forward.

Utterly bored. We may as well have moved to Orkney.

Mr J Bell

He undermined himself with an early tsunami of overbookings leading to a loss of nerve - and the players knew it. The second Colchester goal, the weird Warren incident, the Sweeney handball corner that was a goal kick are but the three most public of perfidies from this wayward whistler.

He set the conditions with a flip flop of decision making, leading to a lottery that allowed chaos and confusion to reign: 5.765

All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put our numpties together again.

In a word: withered