Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Friday 3 April 2026

Division 4

Grimsby Town 1 Green (39)

Harrogate Town 3 Brenan (21), Evans (27), Morris (80)

Attendance: 7,911 (206 away fans)

AKA who would they like to meet. Today's fish and chip chompers wanted to meet Jinking Jaze. And they met him. I hope they enjoyed the moment more than the match.

There is no dark side of the moon. As a matter of fact it's all dark.

Walker was woefully, wretchedly weak; Turi looked as though he was still on a sun lounger in San Marino; Staunton's delivery was worse than the Royal Mail (©Charlie Chester on Jokers Wild circa 1972); poor little Darragh was bullied by his full-back and berated by Cook; Rodgers started to have an existential crisis as the game wore on and Cook spent half his time playing the blame game, not the actual game. You choose.

The striped Svengali looked out to sea and sees no ships again.

"By far the better team for the first 20 minutes…we just needed to keep playing well…we could have quite easily gone in level which is the least we deserved…It would have helped if it had gone in the first half as we were much the better team and up to changing shape and their third goal going in, we were also the better team…I thought we were always in the ascendancy until the last 15 minutes…The big difference was their finishing…The performance was good, certainly above average."

"Good". "Better". Sometimes I wonder what dictionary he is looking at for his definitions. So why does your Grimsby Town team struggle against the stragglers so much?

"We've commanded the respect that the struggling teams have warranted us. It's something to look at."

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Sensible Simon made sense of the chaos inflicted by his bunch of waifs, strays and cast-offs playing sensible soccer. He got them to do what they needed to do and he knew full well what Town were trying to do:

"They were absolutely superb from start to finish, the passion on show was there for everybody to see. I think we deserved the win on pure desire alone. The intensity was there, tenacity in midfield led to the first two goals …it's a big scalp for us."

“We’re back in the ring, we’re back in the fight, we’ve sent a message with a big win at Grimsby”

I can’t say we’re glad to be of help, but well done young man. A coherent explanation of a coherent plan.

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Two weeks off and they regressed to the timid torpor of that late Autumn drift into the December doldrums, starting as a shower and ending up as big drips.

In contrast to the Sulphurites, Town simply lacked intensity in the moments that matter in footballing life. It was as if they were stuck in training mode, or that they merely had to be their true selves to defeat the bottom feeders of the fourth. And when the fancy flickery and tricky triangulation didn't work they lumped it to the Cookie Monster.

The flanks were on the dreadful side or dire, with Rodgers regressing into last season's model, Burns shrinking further and further back into his tiny shell, Staunton having a shocker and Kabia was an ephemeral butterfly, the least worst of a sad lot. We didn't have a midfield, we had cardboard replicas who dissolved in the rain.

Yet again this Town could not find a way through a well-constructed maze of tall trees and spiky bushes. To put it bluntly, we still don't know how to beat a fourth division team playing fourth division football.

And here's a thing. Andy Cook. When does fighting spirit, determination and a "winning mentality" become simply moaning at your team-mates when something goes wrong? Today, Matthew, all of those promotion dreams looked empty and meaningless as Town were falling apart at the seams.

I think they'd like to play us every week.

They wobbled for a while after Town scored with hints of dither and panic, but on this showing they're what they always have been – a team nowhere near bad enough to go down and just good enough to biff the weary and unwary on the nose. They did what they had to do: run around in an organised way and sneak a goal on the break. They flew into tackles and got stuck in, playing with intensity, a little verve and held their nerve.

Annoying. That's what they are. If they play like this for the next month they’'ll stay up. And annoy us all over again next season. How annoying.

Ah, the big crowd vibe. It was alright for a while, some could even smile for a while, but then they were alone and crying, crying, crying, crying.

Mr Andy Humphries

Watch out, watch out, there's a Humphries about.

At his best he was an inconsistent applicant of the laws of the game, generally waywardly pedantic and wilfully wrong. He awarded Town a penalty for an obvious dive, but punished an induced stumble with a booking. His drop ball technique leaves a lot to be desired too.

As I was about to explain, someone was losing their brain. Madness, madness, some call it madness: 4.702.

Huffing and powder-puffing. Is it December again?

In a word: hubris