Cod Almighty | Diary

How many beans make six

4 March 2016

Retro Diary writes: This week, Friday is match day, as we visit the New Lawn to take on that endlessly fascinating entity which is Forest Green Rovers. There was a time when we thought this match might be a six-pointer in the scrap for top peg. Rovers manager Ady Pennock has already got his excuse in by saying that Grimsby can still win the league. But I'm afraid that for us now, this is most definitely a three-pointer. Nevertheless, the three points would still be nice – we can't afford any more slippage.

Forest Green – what can you say. Some teams are born dislikeable, some achieve dislikeability, and some have dislikeability thrust upon them. MK Dons are the first, and Leeds the second. Forest Green are not in the same class; their fans aren't actually dislikeable at all – we may remember they helped to pay Town fans' travel expenses when the floodlights failed two years ago. But their own club has certainly done its best to thrust dislikeability upon them.

Rovers started out very likeable indeed. They are a venerable old non-League club whose history goes back much further than many teams we now consider to have existed for ever. But recently they have dumped a lot of that, taken the lurid kit, violent stewards and fat centre-forward route, and adopted the highly risky 'speculate to accumulate' business model.

Rovers haven't got everything wrong. Maybe you would think so if you're a beefburger-munching petrolhead, but if you're one of those (and I can understand the appeal) you have to accept that you're killing the planet. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. Don't take my word for it – it's actually not in dispute.

So the one thing we shouldn't dislike about Forest Green is their veggie solar panel stuff. Of course the players and most of the fans are not veggies, and the environmental stuff isn't really Forest Green: it's Dale Vince's Ecotricity, for which the football club is merely a loss leader, advertising vehicle and plaything. But being kind to the environment is good, and if you say it isn't then you sound like a nutter. It's sort of like if MK Dons were teamed up with Cancer Research. What the hell do you do with that? It makes you feel a bit like a kitten-kicker.

Somewhere, secreted within Forest Green's home crowd, are 800 proper old stalwarts who turn up because they always have, and they're Nailsworth born and bred. Fans who watched them when they played in the same kit as Town, with the beautiful red socks, and struggled to survive in non-League's top tier year after year. The black and white stripes still appear on Rovers' club badge, like the ghost of integrity past.

But I wish somebody had sampled the little strangulated squeak I gave out when 'FGR Media' recently described Forest Green as "the world's most sustainable football club". It would have become a drum box staple for years.

Football, as ever, is not simple. Would you catch a fine club like Town being propped up every year by an individual's private money? I think you might

Sustainable? Well, yes, if we're calling sustainable a football club who incur losses of between two and three million pounds every year but who are not in debt thanks to the charity of an individual gazillionaire, paying wages which are profoundly out of reach of anything the club's infrastructure could support on its own. Sustainable they are not.

Most unforgiveably, Forest Green are a club who do not need fans – which, if you're a fan, isn't good. Worse, they give every indication that they don't really want away fans there at all.

But football, as ever, is not simple. Would you catch a fine club like Town being propped up every year by an individual's private money? I think you might. And we changed our colours in 1910 – just because it was a long time ago, does that make it different? For us, though, at least the fans are the absolute point. Jock Stein, with his most famous quote, was ever wise.

What makes Forest Green's obstruction of our Football League return both so irritating but so consoling is that their model is one which must inevitably fail in the end. A big hello at this point to Rushden & Diamonds, if we can find them. Fleetwood and Crawley too, your time will come. The only club recently which has emerged from the non-League with any credit is Bur…  er, Bur… sorry, I can't say it. Just to say that they play in yellow and I've still got a bit of their goal net in my shed.

On their forum, Forest Green fans are ambivalent about Grimsby. They heard about the trouble at Halifax, which some of them take as us being undisciplined morons who are too big for our boots. They speak about us with the kind of self-righteous disdain through which a grudging respect, jealousy even, can never be completely concealed. Others are more openly generous, rightly putting our over-egged troubles down to a handful of lunatics among an essentially incredible following. We represent a world that they can only dream of – one of mass hysteria, anarchy and fun, and all that comes with it.

With the season entering its final flourish, we find ourselves considering whether we're better equipped to take on the play-offs this time round. I think we are. It doesn't guarantee success, of course – in so few games there will always be a strong element of luck. But the way we suppressed the two Wokings in a week without a hint of nerves, despite bad luck and refereeing incompetence along the way, showed a confidence and ruthlessness we haven't been used to. Our strike force is incomparably better now. We were supposed to finish top – that didn't happen, but there are still reasons for optimism.

For us, Marshall has a knock and a bug. I expect to see Hoban on the bench to start with, but any of the three could technically partner Podge.

Tonight's ref is Simon Bennett, who sent off Josh Gowling at Lincoln.

For those making the trip, superb effort. It remains to be seen whether inflatables will be tolerated, but I'd be tempted to force the point. For those not going, coverage on BT starts at 7:15. UTM!