Cod Almighty | Diary

When the cup came to Blundell Park

16 September 2025

The day did credit to both clubs. Monday 6 May 1935 was a public holiday, and Grimsby played Sheffield Wednesday in a friendly match at Blundell Park.

They also met two days earlier, on the last day of the League season. Wednesday won 1-0, and their fans freely acknowledged that they were lucky. "I'm sorry for thi, lad," one told the reporter from Grimsby News, "but you've no need to be ashamed of your team."

Grimsby finished that season fifth in the top flight, their highest ever final League position. During the autumn, they had been spoken of as possible champions. With the interplay of Jack Bestall, Pat Glover and Charlie Craven, expertly and energetically supported by Alec Hall and Ted Buck, no team was playing finer football. George Tweedy and Harry Betmead were tipped for England honours.

Ultimately, Town lacked the strength in depth to sustain their challenge over the 42 games of a league campaign. The FA Cup - the only national, domestic cup in those days - was another matter. On 27 April Wednesday beat West Brom 4-2 at Wembley, and nine days later brought the FA Cup trophy with them to Grimsby. Perhaps it inspired the thought that one day it might be housed in the Blundell Park trophy cabinet; next year they came close.

Before the game, which Grimsby won 3-1, their club secretary, Bill Hooton, carried the FA Cup around the ground. For sixpence, spectators were allowed to touch it. The money raised, and the money taken at the gate that day, went to the families of trawlermen lost at sea.

It had been a horrible winter. Four trawlers had been wrecked off the Iceland coast when on Friday 8 February a fifth, the Langanes, signalled that it was in distress. 22 ships steamed to their aid, but arrived only in time to see it topple beneath the waves, taking with it the 14 crew members clinging to the mast and rigging. A Hull man also died in a forlorn attempt at their rescue.

Back in the port, information was slow and uncertain; there were papers and the radio, but most communication was by word of mouth. The next day, while Grimsby beat a petulant Chelsea, a mile away the port missioner was working into the night, visiting the families of the crew to convey the awful news and to offer what comfort he could. Among the men who lost their lives was James Whitehouse, the son of a former Town goalkeeper. He loved the sea so much that during World War One he lied about his age to join the Royal Navy. The sinking of the Langanes left nine women widows and 22 children without fathers.

The response from every Grimsby institution was instinctive. The town council, backed by the Telegraph, initiated a campaign to establish a pension fund for fishermen's dependents, and to raise money immediately for the families affected. The board of Grimsby Town wrote to the other members of the Football League asking them to organise collections.

They could be sure of their sympathy just as, in September, the Blundell Park crowd had responded generously to an appeal on behalf of the victims of the Gresford Colliery disaster. Football crowds everywhere knew what it was to make their living from hazardous work.

Working communities cannot stop to mourn, but must weave their grieving into their everyday lives. The whist drives, the concerts, the boxing nights went on; indeed there were more of them than usual, to raise money and perhaps to bring people together. Given free use of the Cafe Dansant at the end of Cleethorpes promenade, the players of Grimsby Town organised a dance in aid of the cause. And the FA gave the Mariners and Sheffield Wednesday permission to play a charity match when the League season was over.

You still get friendlies today involving the top clubs, but most are for profit. Charity matches are more likely a thing for celebrities and ex-pros. That is not the players' own choice, of course.

Few of us work in such dangerous jobs nowadays, but if the need arose, Newbegin Diary has no doubt that footballers and football supporters would respond with the same open-heartedness as we did 90 years ago. Grimsby Town, then as now, was owned and run by people local to the club. Cod Almighty has often been critical of them, but even so they would surely act as they did in 1935.

Multi-millionaires, for whom the club they own is just another asset, its city no more to them than the place where the stadium happens to be located? Of them I am not so sure.