Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 27 October 2010

27 October 2010

Like many thousands of other Grimsby Town supporters, your original/regular Diary wasn't at the game last night. I heard the result more or less as it happened, but as my hands were a bit full (of a guitar, to fill in some detail), I didn't go online, turn on the radio or text my mates to find out anything more. I haven't read a match report or anything since. Like many thousands of other Grimsby Town supporters, I'm finding it easier not to care so much right now. I'm still going to every game I can, but here and there I'm finding myself switching off.

It's not as bad as last season, though, is it? Of course, there's the obvious fact that last season - as we had been for 116 of the previous 117 years - we were a Football League club, and this year we aren't. And that, given Town's level of support and more successful past, it's disappointing to see the club playing at this level. But, while the team hasn't set the world on fire in the 2010-11 campaign to date, be honest with yourself: it is not as bad as last season. Nowhere near as bad. Players such as, say, Dwayne Samuels and Lewis Gobern may have contributed little to the cause thus far. But they're a lot better than Tommy Forecast. And they're a million miles from actively taking the piss out of us, in the manner of, say, Barry Conlon and Peter Sweeney. Getting knocked out of the FA Cup at home to Tamworth is bad. But it's not as bad as getting knocked out of the FA Cup at home to Bath City.

Oh, you might bluster, so you think it's acceptable for Town be playing non-League football then, do you? Well, for one thing, you've made a bizarre jump of reasoning with no basis in logic at all. And secondly, how, exactly, do you 'accept' or not 'accept' the Mariners' status in a particular division? Do you not 'accept' it by walking away? Well, there were perhaps a thousand Grimsby Town supporters who deemed it unacceptable for Town to be playing third- rather than second-tier football when we were relegated in 2003. They stopped going because they deemed it beneath the club's dignity to play below the level now known as the Championship. Were they wrong to do that while you're right to walk away now? I don't know. Nobody knows. There's no such thing as a club's 'natural level'. But if you look at the non-League clubs that achieve Football League status, they don't do it by having fans walk away from the club. Just saying.

Thanks for reading, and apologies for the absence of 'news' (although I'm sure you appreciate that reporting the news has always been secondary in the diary to providing an alternative slant on it). And this is all a note of self-reproach as much as anything, by the way, so don't go off sulking because I'm lecturing you. I'll save the lecture for next week.

Joking!