Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 17 February 2012

17 February 2012

For Middle-Aged Diary, it's easy to idealise the past. Take kick-off times. Variations from a 3:00 start on Saturday afternoons were idiosyncratic. Torquay played their football on a Saturday night. Aldershot consulted local timetables or shift patterns and duty rosters. Or, perhaps to accommodate the club chairman's post-prandial nap, they decided their games should kick off a quarter-hour after everyone else. These arrangements were maintained over seasons, catering to the local needs of those who wanted to be part of occasion, rather than merely to watch someone else's spectacle.

Tonight's game has been moved to suit the few who might be persuaded to pay to see the game on telly. It is another instance of the obstacles that make it harder for audiences to bond with a team. But those obstacles were there, twenty, thirty years ago. The internationally rich buying clubs as investments or as playthings may be new, but local businessmen - their knowledge of football represented in the blank page of Len Shackleton's autobiography - masking their insecurities by an attempt to cow and patronise those who make the club a living thing are as old as the game itself.

Among the idiosyncratic arrangements of the mediocre old days, Tranmere and Southend played their football on Fridays, and so gave me the happiest Friday night of my life: Roots Hall, 20 April 1990. Rain was pouring onto the open terrace where Southend gave space to the away support. The view from this low terrace was such that when Grimsby went a goal up at the far end, we had to ask each other who had scored. You'd have thought the beanpole figure of the only black player in the Town XI would have been distinctive enough. No mistaking his second, scored in front of us, Alexander shaping to meet a cross from the left on the volley, mistiming the flight but the ball striking his shin truly enough to thwack into the net. No mistaking his delight.

Watching from terraces tight to the action, we always shared the emotions of Alexander. Whether his despair at missing from five yards at Layer Road or now his delighted huge grin as he scored the goal that made promotion a virtual certainty. The rain - the pouring, soaking rain, lit white like champagne - added to the delirium. We bathed in success. The team had become an unstoppable force and players and supporters were there to share the joy.

Falling in love with a team happens by degrees, but you make a lifetime's commitment to them, for better for worse, on nights like that. A few months ago, it seemed the obstacles to a new generation of supporters falling in love with the Mariners were insuperable. Now it is not so hard to imagine some other middle-aged diarist boring his audience in 20 years' time with memories of Liam Hearn. Tonight, for someone, may be the night they realise that Grimsby Town are part of their life, to love and to cherish.