Cod Almighty | Match Report

by Tony Butcher

18 March 2026

Blimey, someone turn the scoreboard down, we're blinded by the light.

A pleasantly warm evening by the sleepy shores of the Humber with the covered corner bursting at the seams, rammed full with a variety pack of fisherman's friends. All 57 of them (FIFTY SEVEN). Even Salford brought more. Even. Money can't buy you love, you know.

Town lined up in a 4-2-3-1 formation as follows: Smith, Rodgers, Kacurri, McJannet, Staunton, Turi, Walker, Burns, Green, Kabia and Cook. The substitutes were Pym, Sweeney, Warren, Oduor, McEachran, Amaluzor and Soonsup-Bell. Who's that chubby chap walloping whacks at Smith? Didn't he used to play for Town? Must be Croudson's replacement as keeper coach. Oh, no, there's The Kitten, so who is that superhero?

Pym!

How quickly we forget, a week's a long time in football and the pound in your pocket won't even get you a Mars Bar these days. At least the white heat of technology is driving us to the sunny uplands. Bring on the AI pigeons.

Fleetwood. A weedy washed-out kit and even weedier away following. No Mallarkey, no Hume, no Davies, so not even some old boys to choi-oik. This division has some very dodgy clubs in it.

Please press the green button….now.

1st half – A bit of slap and tickle
Town kicked off towards the Pontoon with vim and verve and a cross and a bobble and handball! And a cross and a bobble and cross skied over their bar. For a corner and a scramble and a slapdash slippy-slice over their own bar.

OK, calm down, we're into the second minute. It can't go on like this.

It did. Sorry, I forgot to use the accepted vernacular – as Sir John Moore would say, it does do.

Staunton, Staunton, Staunton, Staunton, Staunton, chips and Staunton. Rodgers and Green being far too keen. Their keeper flapping, the centre-backs slapping, Rodgers infiltrating and keeping Lynch on his toes.

A striped cross fizzed and a blue hand flipped away for a corner not a penalty. One-way traffic, trippers tripping up on their own inanities. They are, quite simply, appalling. So bad they keep missing their open own goals.

Lancastrians lacerated, the home crowd fascinated by the multitude of ways Town are finding to aovid scoring. A Cook header. Plop. A bobbling pass back, a slack hack and the Cookie Monster charged down Lynch. Mr Grimsdale! Legs akimbo as the custardian flipped, flopped and flapped by his left post. The ball squirted out and Green slapped straight back into his waiting arms.

Ricochets and rebounds, the ball constantly careering around their penalty area, clattering against startled blue socks and blue thighs and blue heads and blue hands and we're going blue in the face at the cavalcade of calamitous missing.

And then. And then what? I dunno, you tell me. After half an hour there is nothing, nope, sorry, I have rewound the tape and it seems someone had erased fifteen minutes of our lives. Aliens!

Town really should cater for their clientele, we have an very legacy fan base. Isn't it about time they fitted recliners in the Pontoon so we can have a snooze during these periods of dull human chess? Shackleton's is still going, maybe they've got some in stock. First send for their brochure, then go to the showroom. They'll have well over a hundred chairs to choose from.

One minute was added.

Town should be several up despite not having any shots, the flustered Fleetermen were doing our missing for us. So far, so bad from them. The question is "have we seen a worse team this season?"

2nd half – A murmuration of startled Mariners
Neither team made any changes at half time.

A kick and rush, a foul and flick and some anonymous meat packer muffled straight to Smith. Clark shuffled across the face of the Town penalty area and whimpered into his nosegay as the ref didn't fall for his fall.

And then they were gone like the tide, receding into the darkness beyond. I hear them knocking but they can't come in.

I see Town knocking, but the ball don't stay in.

Stop, what's the sound? Is that a meditating Mongolian monk chanting in his yurt down by the burger bar? Is it a Friesian frolicking in the fields beyond the fanzone? No, it's the sound of the crowd, mewing and mooing in pain as Town waned, the game decaying, Town reaching a stable state, inert and impossibly vague.

Yeah, that weird offside. Weird wasn't it. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.

Bring on the dancing horses! Fire up the chaos engine! Bring it on! Bring him on! On he brung. With 20 minutes left Amaluzor replaced Burns, the Irish phantom fish out of water. Captain Chaos twists, he turns, he burns their blubberboys at the back.

A chuck-in, a Justin jive, tips and taps and Cook juggled balls by the bye-line. A sneaky snap stab, the ball flibbled up off Lynch, onto the post and into the manky morass of Riverdancing socks.

For goodness sake, get on with it! Stick it in the mixer!

Staunton the mixologist shimmered a cross across that grazed Cook, hit Amaluzor's surprised head, hit the post and eggs were scrambled, but Fleetwood weren't toast. A corner here, a corner there, Staunton swayed to the rhythm of a bossa nova and skittled lowly through the flailing and the failing. Kabia swiped and the ball bumpled off a suspicious sky blue arm suspiciously close to the line.

Time ticking down, Codsters falling down, McJannet wallied straight down the middle and the blue sea parted. Wee Jimmy McWalker tip-toed through the tulips but Lynch star jumped and collided with the bouncing ball.

With a couple of minutes left McEachran and Soonsup-Bell replaced Turi and Cook.

Have we run out of ways not to score yet?

Six minutes were added.

Booming and zooming and a steady stream of glooming Grimsbyites ran away down Blundell Avenue. It's that kind of British Bulldog spirit that made Grimsby Great.

One more heave, heave it more! Amaluzor chased the dream and spun a corner from a sow's ear. Staunton coiled outly from under the glaring scoreboard. A near post corner-bundle of flicks as bodies fell, legs scraped and an important arm was raised under the flaring glare of the scoreboard. Kabia ran off towards the Incontinence Pad Stand as everyone else followed Rodgers to the Ramstand. For the lineman had decreed that the ball had squirmballed under Lynch and over the line.

It's a supernatural delight, everybody's dancing in the moonlight. Well, not quite everyone, as the blue meanies booed and hooed, chasing the ref around the pitch.

It's delicious, de-lovely and delightful as everyone decamped into the Town half. From the off an up and under, a kick, a flick, a cross and the unmarked Potter headed over and indeed for you, our less than fine former Fisherman's Friends, it is over bar you howling at the moon and shouting at the ref again.

Cruel on Fleetwood? They didn't even deserve nought. We'll take that and move on.