Cod Almighty | Diary

Some of my best friends are Victorian edifices

7 October 2016

Retro Diary writes: Do you remember when this season’s fixtures came out? How delighted we were just to see all our old friends from the fourth division again? To be back in the proper world? The results weren’t even going to matter too much this year, just as long as we could comfortably avoid the bottom two. Well that soporific fug lasted until October, but the first grudge has now arrived. Now, while I’ll still be happy just to avoid the bottom two, I’m extremely keen that we finish above Hartlepool. There were many seasons, it has to be said, when those two things would have been one and the same thing.

I’ve only been to Hartlepool once, many years ago. All I remember is opening my car door on an exposed Hartlepool Golf Course in an easterly gale, and it blowing clean off. That’s the sort of thing you remember about a place. More recently, I understand the redevelopment of their urban seafront area has set an example that we in Grimsby should surely follow – in that, at least, they’re ahead of us. And I’ve never met a Pools fan I didn’t like, although I’m sure such a thing is technically possible.

But do I fantasise about Podge and Toto spending the second year of their precious two-year contracts in the non-league. To serve 'em right? Yes, in a sort of 'tough love' way. And Pools have had to apply for re-election fourteen times, so it’s certainly an eventuality the two have flirted with by going there. This is a club that’s done the crime, but so far not the time.

Hursty was said to be disappointed by the difference in reception between our two exes. Personally, from the Main Stand, I thought they both got a mixture of good and bad which accorded pretty logically with a nuanced set of circumstances. It was always going to be difficult for the fans to express the profoundest appreciation for last year whilst also showing extreme displeasure at being rejected for a smaller club, en masse, from thirty yards away. When a crowd tries to convey a message so mixed, the result is not so much an opinion as a centre of gravity. I tend to think that under those circumstances you get what you get.

Toto was the one of the two who actually said, openly, that the fans drove him out – a very important consideration when asking for a good reception from those same fans. Podge was substituted before the end, giving the crowd a chance to show their appreciation exclusively to him for thirty seconds or so, while Toto stayed on. Had Toto been substituted as well, I’m fairly sure he would have received a similarly warm reception. There was no chance of an exit for him, unfortunately – he was playing a blinder.

Funny really, because when Podge scored he looked as miserable as sin, while Toto was the last player off the pitch, spending the extra minutes having a love-in with some Town fans and leaving with a grin as wide as the Humber. So late off was he, in fact, that the tunnel had been withdrawn and he had to make his way to the dressing room through the exiting Main Stand crowd, who showed neither welcome nor hostility to him, but benign equanimity, despite a humiliating defeat. There’s really no need to feel sorry for the bloke – anyone could see he went home pretty happy.

Was I the only one to find Podge’s lack of goal celebration slightly patronizing? Had we forced him out – dumped him - and he really still wanted to be a Grimsby player, then fair enough. But we wanted him to stay and he left us for a much smaller club. That is a very insulting rejection. If you don’t like scoring against us, don’t leave, or at least go up two divisions so we understand the appeal. No, fill your boots my old Zidane-bettering friend – cheer and punch the air. You’re going to need to take the joy wherever you can get it from now on.

Hursty’s stock with the fans has never been higher than it is now. He feels like family, whether he does right or wrong, and nothing would give us greater pleasure than to see him preside over years of success, becoming better and better at his trade as time goes on. He seems to have mellowed accordingly. But his tendency to criticise the crowd still bothers me a lot.

It’s such a dangerous and counter-productive thing for a manager to do. The crowd is not a single lunatic – it is a mixture of people who know anywhere between 'nothing' and 'a lot' about football. They have almost all been here longer than the manager, and so occupy a very different point in the plot. And they’re all paying customers – indeed not even customers, for their loyalty makes them more than that. It doesn’t become footballers and managers to be too sensitive, and I think they understand that when they take the gig. The abuse which followed Scott McGarvey as he ran down the Findus-side wing was the nearest thing Blundell Park has ever seen to a Mexican wave, yet his interview with CA last week showed that he survived the experience perfectly well and is now enjoying a relatively untraumatised middle age.

The day after Tuesday’s cup game in front of rolling acres of emptyness, I watched Hursty’s interview on Mariners Player with everything clenched, waiting for criticism of the crowd again - but it never came. Indeed, it was one of the smiliest and most nonchalant post-defeat interviews I’ve ever seen, so maybe he’s one of us after all. That’s the end of the competition for us then, bar the dead rubber against the Blades, and we pass the apathy baton on to others to take forward, and hope they don’t cave in and start attending as Wembley comes into view.

Tomorrow it’s Exeter – a team we have no real opinions about, but who gave us two of Blundell Park’s great history-making end-of-season days. History-making, of course, because we beat them when we really needed to. The Grecians have lost every single league home game so far, and haven’t scored at home since 13 August, except for a single goal in an EFL Cup defeat to Hull. This makes the game an interesting test of football’s perverse natural rhythms. Hursty’s take on it is that he thinks Exeter might be due a win, but that’s superstitious nonsense isn’t it? Except if you believe it of course, and then it can quickly become self-fulfilling. Utter domination right from the kick-off must be the aim.

The two Pauls, Hurst and Exeter’s Tisdale, are the league’s second and fourth longest-serving managers. Hursty might be soon to rise in that table, although it seems unlikely the Grimsby Reaper will strike this weekend. Hursty has the tiniest of digs about fans - theirs primarily, but our by extension - being fickle. I’ll let that one go, I think.

In today’s Telegraph, Geoff Ford dedicates his whole column to the new stadium, and has a little go at NIMBYs. He weighs up the proposed sites, but still doesn’t explain – as no-one has - why the ground and the enabling stuff have to be in the same place. Town are currently “marooned in a Victorian edifice”, he says. Sort of like Balmoral then, or the Royal Albert Hall.

For us, Sean McAllister has aggravated his existing groin strain, and Ashley Chambers still has the staples in. There will be no keeper on the bench again, as Henderson is still on international duty, and Andy Warrington (Woggy, to the players, apparently) is injured.

UTM