Cod Almighty | Diary
A match where the kick-off is the most important part
5 August 2016
Retro Diary writes: If there’s anyone out there still in any doubt about what a monumental day tomorrow is in the history of Grimsby Town, let me immediately remind you by showing you this.
Do you remember that terrible feeling – the one where you couldn’t be completely certain that we’d ever come back?
On the way back from that Burton match in 2010, I dropped off my single passenger at Doncaster and drove the rest of the journey on my own. On the M18, to avoid the radio, I stuck the iPod on shuffle. The first song that came on cemented the desolation in my mind forever, and the memory will never leave me. I am haunted by that song. I won’t tell you what it was, because it means nothing to anyone except me, but I’ll just say that the line “a town by a river all muddy and brown” was the one that really got me. I can never listen to that song ever again.
On the way back from Wembley on 15 May just gone, it wasn’t me choosing the music. The driver’s stereo burst into life on the A1 round about Baldock, and that first, rather insubstantial bit of pop music will also stay with me as long as I live, but for quite the opposite reason. Whenever I hear that song, even now, I am transported to a state of indescribable, unalloyed joy. It’s as though I’m travelling into that May sunset and Nathan Arnold had just stuck the ball in that net within the last two hours all over again. Once again, I won’t tell you what the song was, because it could have been anything. But to carry through life such easy access to a state of euphoria is a rare thing, and I sincerely hope that the day created your own version of the same thing. If it did, treasure it and use it sparingly for maximum effect.
There aren’t many football matches where the kick-off is the most important part of the game, but tomorrow is one. It will be a moment of existential meaningfulness for Town fans everywhere. How we took League status for granted all those 99 years – never again. We are back, at last, for the year number 100 we thought we may never see.
Once more, we have something to pass on to our children that we haven’t ruined. Once more we can travel the world knowing that our home town is scrapping to keep its place on the map. And once more we find ourselves able to drift contentedly into the sunset knowing we’re leaving our club as we found it, for others to create their own special memories with. Oh my God we’re back. What a relief.
The course of League football won’t always run smooth. There will be trauma and frustration. Maybe it won’t run smooth tomorrow (we rarely, after all, win the first game). But the big picture is all good. I don’t care, for once, about the opposition or the team news, and the memory of the score will diminish with time. Tomorrow, it’s the kick-off that will be the stand-out moment of the day.
So ladies and gentlemen, Saturday at 3pm is nearly upon us. Kindly take your seats for League football, and let’s begin the rest of our lives, a little humbler and more thankful this time round, and acknowledging, though not too openly, some of the little bits of luck that helped us get here.
UTM