Cod Almighty | Article
by Malcolm Carson
29 May 2008
Those fleeting brushes with someone vaguely famous we've all had them. 80s uber-cow Nina Myskow once waltzed past me at Larnaca airport. Waiting for a bus in the middle of Leeds the last thing I expected was Paul Whitehouse walking past. Terrorvision have pushed-in ahead of me at a Bradford pub. Fame, fame, fatal fame.
And then there are the times when you have had a close unexpected encounter with someone linked with Grimsby Town Football Club. No, not those times you bumped into Tony Gallimore down the Pier. Or you worked at Nisa and your boss was Dudley Ramsden. No, no, none of that. They're all predictable circumstances. We want tales of the unexpected. Chance meetings.
When watching tennis players hurl their sweatbands or footballers their shirts into the crowd, I often wonder what the recipient actually does with them. The dilemma is whether to preserve it as it is - "this smelly piece of Chinese towelling or viscose that is emanating enough ammonia to make a dead skate gag was given to me by the winner of the Skegness mixed doubles, you know" - or to wash it and thus make it like any replica that one can purchase in that seminary of sporting minds, Sports World, staffed by brains that make its owner Mike Ashley look intelligent and discerning? I wish on some occasion the person who had been blessed with the sweaty garment would throw it back and ask for it to be properly laundered before forwarding to their address - "Here's my card."
The desire to get closer to one's sporting heroes is understandable, whether it is in the form of a scarcely legible scribble or a haughty disdain - "he ignored me once, you know" - or, heaven help us, going on to a social networking site (at this point, my confidence in what I am writing about fades).
My proximity with a sporting hero, however, occurred an aeon ago when Ron Rafferty came to Grimsby. This stupendous footballer, who could hang in the air from the moment the goalkeeper (Clarrie Williams?) took the goal kick that would grow upfield via Whitefoot and Scott, had come to sign for Town.
My father was the club doctor for 20-odd years and had to give all players a medical. I remember seeing Rafferty, not at the time hanging in the air but talking to other officials, and he smiled down at me and said hello. That, as you now know, was one of my greatest footballing memories - such innocence - but pales beside the next incident when, on getting back into the car, my father passed me over a corked medicine bottle to put into the glove compartment (we used to call them pigeon holes; do we still?). I remember it was warm and realised it had very recently come out of Ron Rafferty's bladder. My excitement was mixed, as you may imagine. However, I can still claim a unique connection with one of the club's greatest heroes.