Cod Almighty | Diary

Unlike the ugly sisters, we are having a ball

11 March 2025

It was a phrase used often enough in the 1930s that by the late 1970s, when Charles Ekberg had grown from a boy into a veteran broadcaster and writer, he recalled that Grimsby Town were known as "the Cinderellas of football". It wasn't unique; a lower-league club which enjoyed a decent cup run might be called the Cinderellas of that season's competition, but it was applied with particular resonance to the Mariners for, year after year, they survived and thrived in the top division. 90 years later, and three flights lower in the League, Grimsby are still among football's Cinderellas.

Here's how one writer explained the expression when, even in 1937, he was worried about the concentration of revenue among too few clubs: "Grimsby are the Cinderellas of football. They are situated far off the beaten track appealing mainly to their own small world in which live the fishermen whose main attraction when they are ashore is found at the football ground. It is felt that something must be done for those brave fellows and they are never out of the minds of the directors. It is grand how Grimsby carry on, cutting their coat to their slender means, and I hope that the day will never come when they and others may be driven into obscurity in the fierce competitive struggle." The fishing industry has gone, and the language is patronising, but Newbegin Diary detects in there a notion of the club as a social enterprise, something which Andrew Pettit and Jason Stockwood might nod along with.

Of course, if money from the ticket office was the only source of sporting revenue, Grimsby's gates would suggest that we are some distance short of being an unexpected success story. But we compete against clubs unconcerned for their long-term survival, gambling on rapid success. We are up against some ugly sisters.

When Salford played their first League game, the TV commentator spoke of them having to take the stairs to win promotion rather than use the lift, as though it was an indignity for a club stuffed full of money and basking in the reflected glamour of their Premiership owners. The Blundell Park pitch is a great leveller, so I may be regretting this by Saturday evening, but this year, as in so many before, it looks like they'll be loitering fruitlessly in the lobby.

The attendance at the franchise for last Saturday's game was less than 6,000. That's not a figure we'd sniff at, but was it really worth stealing the pride, the joy and the woe of another community to play fourth-flight football in front of empty expanses of plastic seating? While they languish in mid-table, Wimbledon are fourth and have a game in hand to help them secure an automatic promotion position.

With Town bound to go fifth if we win tonight, this season has the makings of a gala of the good. We have no quarrel with Notts County. If they bleated when we beat them in the non-League play-offs, I didn't hear them. This evening, even if it doesn't end in a 5-5 draw, we can enjoy the game. We aren't yet at the ball, but there are signs that we are turning the pumpkin into a coach. It might yet take us to Wembley.