Cod Almighty | Diary

Congratulations regular / original Diary's Mum

3 May 2019

Finally, the season limps to its limp conclusion. If only we could have quit while we were ahead at the end of February. We'd be going into the close season reflecting on the heroes of Selhurst Park and the one more heave we needed to mount a genuine promotion challenge.

There are great seasons, seasons worth celebrating decades later. Next season will be the 40th anniversary of - objectively, taking together the League title and an epic League Cup run - the greatest season Grimsby Town have enjoyed since World War Two. Some might say the past is the past, it's the future we need to worry about. Presumably those people never look at old photos of their children, never reminisce about holidays they have enjoyed, never tell stories.

Great memories enrich the present. Rob McIlveen has captured one from the 1979-80 season and is gathering more. Thanks to the readers who have already responded with their own memories from that time, and please keep them coming. Middle-Aged Diary is looking forward to enjoying them.

Sometimes, the memories bring lessons with them, because before the great seasons there are the seasons which prepare for them. Our last good FA Cup run before this season was in 2013-14 when we beat Scunthorpe and Northampton and were unlucky against Huddersfield. Like 2018-19, the season came only to an anti-climax, but it was a season, along with the next couple, when Paul Hurst was building what was needed to achieve promotion.

1979-80 was preceded by seasons in which the club had suffered relegation even as it blooded local youngsters. Those players - Tony Ford, Kevin and Dave Moore, Kevin Drinkell - needed time to develop, first regaining our place in the third flight before going on to establish Town as a force in the old Division Two.

No one can say that Max Wright will become a new Tony Ford, or Mattie Pollock a Kevin Moore. But, just as I am looking forward to reliving 1979-80, I am also looking forward to seeing how those players do grow in 2019-20.

But tomorrow, for a game between two teams with nothing to play for, all you can do is enjoy the moment. Let's hope they treat us to something worth remembering until August.

Oh, and take a good look at the floodlights. They lit those great games against Everton and Wolves in 1979 and so much more. They are a little part of us which we have neglected. There's a lesson to learn there, as well, I suspect.