Cod Almighty | Diary

I'll have what we're all having

31 March 2015

You can look at it two ways. Our next game is at home to Gateshead who, after tonight, may no longer be in realistic contention for a play-off place. Our two away games, at Alfreton and Southport, are against sides near the bottom, but not desperately scrapping for points, with reasonable comfort zones above relegation. The same applies to our final opponents, Aldershot. That leaves Wrexham who, by sacking their manager yesterday, have tacitly admitted that the rest of their season is about experimentation.

Or you can say "blow that". No matter what the motivation, the form or the ability of our remaining opponents, if Grimsby Town play to their potential we can win all five matches. We fear no-one. And even if Barnet match us point for point, that carries through into the play-offs as well.

We have had runs of good form before in the last five seasons, but there has always been a fear that it won't last, an implicit sense that our best may not quite be good enough. This time it feels like genuine promotion form.

Some credit first to ourselves, the fans. As original/regular Diary said, the fancy dress drive for away games has been all the more effective because it has come from below, spontaneously, and the players appear to have responded. Nor is it just about the away support. Middle-Aged Diary was at Chester, and felt how tension was transmitted between the coaches, the players and ourselves when Chester got back into the game.

On the other hand, on a rare trip to a home game for the Eastleigh match, what struck me was the patience of the home support, the applause for good intentions undercutting the groans when those intentions went awry. Both our goals owed a little bit to patience – the calm in front of goal and the reconstruction of an attack after the initial impetus was lost.

Some credit, too, to those on the non-playing side of the club. Do not adjust your set: you are still reading Cod Almighty. But the way the club has promoted itself this season, through the videos (which would be of surprising quality if they were produced by a Football League set-up, never mind a Conference team) and the matchday programme has imparted a sense of a club recovering its self-respect.

There is still a way to go (and I see that the official site has released a statement which partially answers one of the questions posed by original/regular Diary last week on the stadium). But in a brief meeting with Dave Roberts of the Mariners Trust to discuss the Mariners anthology (and it is very nearly your last chance to vote in the Great Grimsby XI poll), I was struck by the fact that some very good people – people who put the club first – are beginning to have a say in how it is run.

Most credit, finally, to the players and the man who assembled them, Paul Hurst. At the start of the season, I suggested the nickname Mr Football Club Repairman for him, a man with a humble persona in a sport that tends towards hero worship. He isn't perfect, of course. Like most of us, he is far more likeable when he is being self-deprecating about a success than defensive about a misjudgement. However, it is apparent that he knows a decent player when he sees one, and he has the knack of making those players want to play for him.

I'm not writing a premature eulogy for this season, by the way. But let's remember how it feels when everyone at and around the club is pulling together. And let's keep to this course – whether success takes five matches, eight, or even a further 46.