Cod Almighty | Diary

Don't be late to the party

8 December 2015

Like our season as a whole, after last night's 0-0 draw our FA Cup tie with Shrewsbury is poised. The Mariners played well enough to suggest we still have every chance of progressing to a third round tie at Russell Slade's Cardiff. There is nothing about Shrewsbury's home form to suggest a trip to the New Meadow is an especially daunting prospect.

There is a rumbling underfoot, and it's us. And for once the word is rumbling, not grumbling. We are the team about whom others are worrying. And if they are not, they should be.

March 1990 remains Middle-Aged Diary's favourite month, but November 2015 too might come to be remembered as a month in which a Grimsby team started to realise its potential. Among our five wins, three teams swept aside, twice overcoming the setback of going a goal down, one of them without even playing well. Then we stopped letting in goals. Indeed, against Eastleigh, Kidderminster and now Shrewsbury we conceded just two clear chances in three games, each of them from a lapse in concentration. It's quite a contrast with the first 11 games of the season, when we didn't keep a single clean sheet. But at the other end, Pádraig Amond is still banging them in.

Pressing our opponents hard when we don't have the ball. Moving it around nicely when we do. Comparisons with 1990 might not look so fanciful by May. The momentum that comes from winning plays its part in this. Paul Hurst himself seems to be growing in confidence, ready to treat his loan players as he does all the others in his squad and pick them on merit.

Playing tricks with that confidence is a dangerous game. When you are winning, you come to seem invincible and things happen for you. A Kidderminster player advances, only the goalie to beat, but shoots against the inside of the post. In another one-on-one, James McKeown looms large and is able to stick a boot out to make the save. When teams stop expecting to score against you, they don't.

We are poised for great things but we haven't yet achieved them. As Devon Diary said, we now need a December, and a January, to go with our November. I hope Hurst does use the depth of his squad against Solihull on Saturday, but only because there are players we can bring in who will scarcely weaken the side.

There will be seasons to come when we will wonder how we could be so spendthrift as to hope for defeat. Keeping winning is a nice problem to have.