Cod Almighty | Diary
The Long and Winding Road
6 June 2025
Welcome to your A46 Dairy's unapologetically nostalgic, nerdy and really rather long (seriously, you'll probably need a sandwich) look back at the '5s'.
It occurred to me this week that 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of my first season ticket bought way back in 1995. I was 21, had been working at Salvesen's Food Services on Ladysmith Road for a year, renting a room in a house on Haven Ave and haunting town centre pubs Lloyds, the Barge and Swigs, adding an occasional trip up the steps to Gullys and generally living the life of a weekend warrior who used Town and TV shows to punctuate my life outside of the delights of frozen food shift work. I couldn't drive yet and so my friend's old Ford Fiesta was my transport beyond Blundell Park.
Town had finished tenth in the First Division (now Championship) at the end of the 94/95 season, heady heights that we rarely dream of now. The Pontoon was sort of knocked down and very much rebuilt and the corners disappeared for what now feels like forever. It was to be Groves's and Croft's last season in their first spells with us, Mendonca's penultimate season and the season in which he scored that hat trick against Ipswich on his messianic return from injury. McDermott's in his prime! And this was the season that Lester went on a miraculously character-and-football-building loan to Doncaster and came back a superstar.
It was the year Star Trek Voyager began its long trip home from the Delta Quadrant, Pinky and the Brain introduced their plans to take over the world, and Father Ted told us about the money that was just resting in his account. Babylon 5 was getting very exciting, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still just a ropey film from 1992 rather than a global TV show thrilling millions.
Back to Town and an Italian chap, you may remember him, you may have heard of him, he may even have played before you were born, but you'll know him: exotic, full of flair, modelling contract, the most able footballer to wear the black and white in the last 50 years, loved it in The Pier, scored that goal against Buckley's West Brom, chicken sandwich/leg/drumstick/wing to the face, didn't stop us from beating West Ham in the FA Cup and then packing over 9,000 into BP for Ruud Gullit's Chelsea! And it was the season we signed Tony Gallimore, Richard Smith and Jamie Forrester, the latter one of the scorers in a 3-0 win at home against Wolves on a bloomin' cold March night. Fewer than 6,000 in for that one. We were always a fickle bunch.
Fast forward ten years and it's 2005. I live in my own home in Anderson Street, off Lord Street, just across from the Freshney Place car park. I'm still at Salvesen's and I've learned to drive a fork truck, run a bagging machine and move up the greasy pole of the quality control department, but I've gone part time (6-10 in the evening) to go back to school and study for a degree at Nuns' Corner. I've been writing for Cod Almighty for a couple of years now, learning to type, learning to express and articulate, learning to miss the team that we'd left behind in the 90s, not yet knowing that I'll never learn to leave nostalgia in its box. I'm married, got a boy - not yet known as eldest - whose about to turn one. The pub's in the rearview mirror replaced with play dates and parties and nappies and the rest of the raising baby (Toby) malarkey. I still can't drive and I don't know it yet but other than Cardiff and Wembley there won't be any away games in the Football League for the skint new dad until the boy is in his mid-teens.
Town had finished a miserable 18th in League Two at the end of the 04/05 season, bottom of the biggest Lincolnshire pile ever in the same national division. That's right, we were staring up at Boston, Lincoln and Scunthorpe, the latter earning automatic promotion! So, in this new season things can only get better.
And they will. In the short term. In this small window that we'll not appreciate for many years. This is to be our last EFL play-off season. And Croft comes back! And Reddy is still here! And Rob Jones and Gary Jones are beautiful top and bottom vertebrae in a solid spine! And Kalala! And Ronnie Bull has gone! (But Tom Newey is here...) And we still have McDermott! And we'll beat Spurs! And Shearer gets Whittled!
Larry David's enthusiasm refuses to be curbed which helps with the hole left since Buffy the Vampire Slayer finished its last season. Firefly has already been started and cancelled two years before, but this year sees the release of the movie Serenity and we're all waiting for the fourth season of The Wire. Reboots are all the rage as Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica swept everyone away with sci-fi-water-cooler moments, while The West Wing and The Sopranos are at the peak of their powers. Box-set telly is the thing of this new century and we're lapping it up, eyes on the screen, feet rocking the boy to sleep.
For Town this will be the should-have-been season, the sliding doors as we will drop out of the automatics and then turn up in body only at Cardiff the following spring. We don't know it yet but if the relegations of the last few seasons hadn't shown us the inevitable then the next few will hammer the nails into our league coffin. But 05/06 we'll enjoy and we'll be optimistic for the future...
Skip another decade and it's 2015. I'm quite posh now, living in a three-bed semi in a nice street just off Scartho Road, corner plot, big hedge (I'll grow to hate that hedge!) and there are now three boys, all at school. Eldest is about to turn 11 and has had a season ticket for four years, middle already has a ball permanently at his feet and is on his second season ticket. My dad, their grandad, comes with us now sometimes for bigger games, games near his and their birthdays. Christmas, of course. He brings them pies he's warmed up at home and wrapped in foil. Youngest, not bothered about football, is already studying his martial arts. Salvesen's is just a memory and I've been teaching for seven years, the last four in secondary schools in Lincoln. I'm not yet aware that my daily commute will become my CA Diary moniker. Oh yes, I can drive now, but still skint despite being an older dad, so still no away games.
The new season this year feels different. Since 2010 we've struggled to shake the indignation of playing at this level until now. Not surprisingly, because, after all, too much has been lost, too much has been changed: league status, McDermott, manager after manager in the Fenty years of hack and slash, player after player, hundreds play for us in the few years before and after the relegation, so many that most aren't remembered, so few of quality that they're not worth remembering anyway. So, it's a bleak time, but the nadir, that 5-0 defeat against Braintree, is years ago now. We're here, below the Football League in the summer of 2015, we know it, we understand it, we can accept it, we can deal with it.
And we're all enthused rather than dejected after the thinnest of play-off defeats against Bristol Rovers at the end of the 14/15 season. We've got a settled manager, a settled keeper, a settled midfield – Disley! And we've just signed a couple of new strikers, nothing very impressive, a guy who can't get into the Morecombe team and another chap from Solihull Moors – who are they? The funds from Operation Promotion have been used for a guy from a league below? Apparently, he's been banging them in in the league below our already very low league. Really? Not very inspiring, but we're here, we're understanding, we're accepting, we're dealing. Beating Lincoln every Christmas helps with that. And so, for the first time in a long time, we're realistically expecting.
Peep Show and Mad Men finish this year and The Detectorists has just started. Buffy is long gone but I've been enjoying the comic books. Doctor Who has been top drawer with Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi will get better every time youngest and I watch it. Black Mirror is a thing now and we're bang in the middle of Game of Thrones, so it hasn't gone very silly yet. Rick and Morty is underway and Better Call Saul is about to better Breaking Bad. Star Trek's various efforts to reboot have been mixed at best but there's The Expanse just starting. Oh, and there's something called the Marvel MCU now...Netflix is already three years old but it's not going to be massive until lockdown in five years' time. Wait, what's lockdown? Never mind, just wait and see...
We've got Amond! Padraig Amond! I just don't think you understand! He's Paul Hurst's man! He's better than Zidane! We’ve got Padraig Amond!
Will we sing the Blur song in this season? In my memory we will.
Omar Bogle! Omar Bogle! Omaaaaaaaaaaaaar! Omaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!
We'll finish fourth, not scraping into the play-offs, sitting proud most of the season and worthy of our place. Who the hell are Forest Green, anyway? Just ask Nathan Arnold.
Thirty years. It's 2025. I've been working as a teacher in Grimsby for six years, live in a two-bed flat on the A46, eldest is on his 14th season ticket and lives in Manchester now, a Film Studies undergraduate. He shares his ticket with his grandad. Middle still has a ball glued to his feet, a dozen season tickets under his belt and is finishing his sport Btec at Nuns' Corner. Youngest is finishing school (he and both of his brothers are Wintringham boys), still doesn't like football but loves Buffy, Firefly and Babylon 5, and has a black belt in the martial arts he's showing no sign of stopping.
What's on the TV this year? All sorts of goodies. While Doctor Who has gone weird in a bad way, we're enjoying the second season of the Last of Us and Black Mirror is using its boosted budget from Netflix much more effectively than Disney's Doctor Who donations. Andor may be the only thing saving what little reputation Star Wars has left. The biggest change over the last 30 years of TV might be the mainstreaming of genre fiction: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, The Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, Stranger Things, Lost, Invincible, The Good Place (don't know if that counts as genre, but I loved it!) and lots more. Lots more. But the biggest news for a TV '5'? There's a new season of Buffy coming!
And Town look to be in a good place to add to the exciting '5s'. We regularly have more than 6,000 in BP despite the lack of games against Wolves. Maybe, like genre TV, Town are just cool again. A settled manager, a settled squad, a spine with reliable top, middle and bottom vertebrae. We need a keeper. We need more up front. We want more pace, more power, more aggression. We want Vernam to be fit and stay fit. We want Hume to stay. We want and we want like we've always wanted. But this year, this '5', we're realistically expecting.
Those of you who can do a bit of maths will realise that I'm now 51. Those of you who can do a bit of English will realise that I'm still stuck in that nostalgia box. All of you will know that there's one constant. Those of you who can love it then, love it now and love it later are with me on this ridiculously perfect or perfectly ridiculous journey. We love it always, throughout our lives and even before we are born; what did Pat Glover do in the '5s'? He was scoring 42 goals in the 1935/6 season and making 20,000 swoon in Blundell Park! Town will be the thing we leave behind for others when we die. And if you believe in something after, then we'll dream of another Glover, another Groves, another Amond. In the 2135/6 season, me and the rest of the forever-lovesick fools will be there watching Clive Handyside score 43.