Cod Almighty | Diary

50 hours and counting

5 April 2018

By way of news, after failing to win a professional deal at Grimsby, former scholar Mikey Davies has joined Haverhill Borough of the Eastern Counties Premier Division (at the ninth level of the league pyramid). If he's reading, we wish him well as he considers his future.

A larger crowd than usual is expected for the visit of Chesterfield on Saturday, so it's just as well if you make sure of your ticket now. Strange people, football fans. When did you ever see people queuing round the block at the cinema to see a film that everyone had said was rubbish? Or rushing to the beach because it looks like rain?

If Middle-Aged Diary writes "I can't wait", it is not in the usual sense of the phrase. I can't wait to know the very latest about the game, and I can't bear the idea of being anywhere but at Blundell Park come 3:00, but any suggestion of eager anticipation is 180 degrees from the truth. It may be our biggest game since the play-off final, but the emotion surrounding it is the opposite.

Except. I felt sick with nerves travelling down to Wembley. The sense was that we had bet the bank on going up that season. Operation Promotion could not be repeated, nor could we expect to hang on to much of the squad it had helped cement to the club, financially and emotionally. Fail that day, and it might have taken years to build again.

At that point in my thoughts, I looked out of the window and saw a couple laughing, relaxed, as they walked their dog by the canal. For a minute, I envied them their peaceful, uneventful day. They'll have forgotten it almost before it was over. We'll never forget 15 May 2016, even though a sliver of bitterness has entered into our remembering since.

That worm was in the apple even then. In the week before the final, the club got most things right. But there was John Fenty, putting the club's arse in front of its face to tell the world that promotion was important to build the case for Peaks Parkway. There he was again with his 'look at me' antics at the final whistle. And yet again a few days later, letting himself be quoted saying that having B teams in the league pyramid would be a great idea.

Happiness, Retro Diary once suggested, is knowing when you are in a golden age. We were lucky enough to know it, but it didn't last long. Perhaps the opposite is also true. Not happiness, but some kind of perspective comes from knowing when you are in the shit, but that state need not last for ever.

On Saturday, we'll be there, another day we may never forget, because what binds us to Grimsby Town is deeper than a trip to the flicks or a day by the sea. But this time part of our remembering will be the series of awful decisions that have brought us to this pass. There are a few frail shoots of hope in Michael Jolley and the Youth Development Association, but there is much to do. Win or lose, we must set about doing it.