Cod Almighty | Diary

I'll neck an extra strong coffee and try holding my breath for three minutes and see what happens

26 September 2018

"The Grimsby Telegraph says that the new stadium is two years away"
– Cod Almighty diary, 13 April 2002

Michael Jolley is quoted in the local media today as admitting he is "under pressure" following a sequence of five consecutive defeats. It's such a slow news day that the quotes come from the interview he gave four days ago, immediately after the most recent game in that sequence. Not that I'm one to complain after beginning this diary with a quote from 16 years ago.

Everything and nothing has changed since 2002, when Cod Almighty began and I became your original/regular Diary.

The division we struggle to remain in now is two steps lower than the division we were struggling to remain in then – but the attendances at Blundell Park are more or less the same. Today we're watching Alex Whitmore and Harry Clifton looking to establish a reputation in the game; back then we were watching seasoned pros like Georges Santos and Darren Barnard. But both sets of players are seen as underachieving and respond by telling the Grimsby Telegraph we've not been the best lately but we'll get better soon, honest.

When I look at the Football League today, I get wistful at the absence of clubs like Stockport and Darlington, who were part of the furniture not just when I was growing up but well into the 21st century. I see their replacement by outfits like Stevenage, Crawley and Wycombe, and the ascendancy of longer-established, traditionally lesser clubs such as Brentford and Reading. And it's hard not to conclude that the landscape of football in England is reshaping to reflect the economic power balance of the country more widely.

By this I mean that long-established clubs from the impoverished northern homelands of the professional game are losing ground to arrivistes from the wealthier southern counties. And you won't need reminding that it was the support of those southern counties that sustained the Thatcher and Major governments – which laid waste to the industries of the north, plunging its communities into conditions of penury and despair which persist to this day.

Worse, the few northern success stories that exist have mostly been fuelled by artificial cash injections (hello Hull, hi Wigan). But others like Burnley and Huddersfield have gone about it the right way – and hey, look, Burnley didn't even need a new ground, just a pretty handy youth coach. Accrington Stanley are back and thriving, on crowds half the size we see at Blundell Park, showing Town how to engage a community and run a club.

Back in 2002 there was already cynicism about Town's mooted relocation from BP. The issue had already been rumbling on for so long, with no sign of progress, that a few fans had already concluded nothing would ever happen. Sixteen years down the line, the scepticism is more widespread, and more understandable. Not just around the club and its relocation but around Grimsby. Our town has been trodden down so far, and for so long, that any hand stretched out to lift us from the mud is swatted away with a bitter, mirthless laugh.

I get a sense now that we have reached a decisive point for both our club and the town whose name it took, 140 years ago last week. We can keep wallowing in the mud – or we can reach out, and try to haul up.

Take all that perfectly understandable cynicism and bitterness among the rank and file, multiply it by the towering incompetence of John Fenty, and Town will most likely follow the path of Stockport or Darlington, or worse.

The alternative? Reach out. Believe. There'll still be plenty to overcome. We might still fail. But reach out and believe, and at least we give ourselves a chance. Hold on to the dream. One day not too long from now, Grimsby might be great again, newly prosperous from the green energy boom, with its football club having successfully relocated to an attractive, distinctive new stadium in the heart of the town, back in the second tier of English football, and throwing a central defender up front at the end of a crunch six-pointer against Barnsley in a desperate last-ditch bid to avoid relegation.