Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 13 September 2025

Division 4

Grimsby Town 1 Amaluzor (90+7)

Cambridge United 1 Mayor (31)

Attendance: 7,147 (484 away fans)

You've got to be joking. You are, aren't you? This sponsored one-liner would win a Perrier Award on the Edinburgh Fringe.

Whilst others were beaten up and battered around Wee Janet is the best thing we found lying in this wreckage. He handled it with care (literally).

Unobtrusive adequacy. That's all there is to it.

If one of these days we're gonna cut someone into little pieces, this was just one of those days where Dave's gonna boil down the gruel into bite-size chunks of chat:

"We all have off days, just have to accept sometimes human beings have off days…Tough game to officiate as they came to spoil, pulling, grabbing, they were spoiling, it's tough for a referee."

Oh look, over there, there's an elephant in the interview room, the never-ending story of official failures:

"They are classed as professionals but they are part time…Ref today's a PE Teacher, he's probably had two horrific weeks with some snotty 11-year old who's not doing as he's told in Games…got work to mark…It's not his fault…If I went and did his job on Monday morning I'd give a right good go but I’d probably make a right pig's ear of it."

So, Dave, in a nutshell?

"We didn't deserve to win, but they didn't either…I thought the game was of poor quality, two teams matched by the officials, a League Two game all round."

How artfully deconstructed Mr Artell. We all know sometimes words have two meanings.

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Their cockney cliché was almost cock-a-hoop at their classic smash and grabbing flashmob ram-raid on a small town post office. Strength through strength! Strong, be strong, strong men be strong! There's a strong message here:

"Such a strong performance, such a strong team performance, criminal we haven't won the game…so much better than Grimsby."

Ah, but Neil, we play football, not WWE. We can all agree your bunch of bandits were superior wrestlers and rugger-muggers. That is not the same thing as being better at football. Strength, but where's the joy?

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It was like watching Town last season.

Sure, sure kid we can deal with the weaker teams who try and play football: your Shrewsburys, your Crawleys, your Man Utds, but it's the cliché we struggle with and that cliche is getting bigger every game. Town were brutally bullied and lacked any protection from the supposed adult supervisor, who let us have a lollipop at the end of the school day to make us feel better.

Tiny Town, turgid Town, rigidly applying and re-running the basic programme, PAMPAM 25, through the mainframe. If no one can pass and no-one moves then the screen freezes and the computer crashes. At least we didn't burn today, helped by taking Burns off.

They kept right on to the end of the road and manged to ensure no-one went home happy from this mushing bore.

They came, we saw, they almost conquered. That's all there is to it and to them.

Utterly uninspiring, utterly unexceptional, utterly utilitarian and dismally designed to grind in Hurstian style, Daryl Clarke's teams are always the same. Organised, physically hefty, miserably functional and with limited enthusiasm for football. Perfectly suited to bash and bore themselves into the play offs.

Oh hang on, that was Bristol Rovers. Harris's bunch of brigands and bad actors? Just add more brawn, more cynicism and less football.

Port Vale, Wimbledon, Bristol Rovers and now Cambridge: there's a common thread – they've all been relegated from the division above. Their recipe for a return is the same. As a supporter what do you get from watching this week in, week out? The thrill of the result, the inexorable grind towards promotion so you can have another year of this, except in the service of avoiding relegation?

What is the point? They're hamsters on a wheel, delivering data points. It's spreadsheet football, stay at home and await the result.

What a pointless life.

Well, I met an old school friend I hadn't seen in over 30 years. That was nice.

Mr G Rollason

Referees, they're only human, of flesh and blood, born to make mistakes, but that doesn't excuse every misstep they make.

Town were terrible but he and his Incontinence Pant Standing linesman were worse.

Adults, professionals, they learn from their mistakes, they don't keep on repeating them. This utter clot was irrationally indulgent of this gang of schoolyard bullies, wagging an occasional finger and punishing the victims when they sought to defend themselves. He set and maintained the tone for a wasted afternoon watching sloppily applied paint get wetter. He only gets a point for the final flourish, his coup de grace of crap decisions: 1.327

Has ever a stalemate been so stale?

In a word: karma