Cod Almighty | Diary

Grimsby Town Women – the coming thing

4 July 2019

Open Diary writes: When I went to university back in the 1960s I was surprised by the sight of rugby posts in the city in which I was going to spend the next few years, and to find that several of my fellow (male) students played hockey. At that time there may have been a rugby club in Grimsby but I couldn’t have told
you where it was. Hockey was – well – a game played by girls. Boys all played football.

It made me realise what a football-mad place I came from. I still can’t work out why, given all the local teams and leagues, why we don’t produce more professional players in the way that places like Wallsend seem able to.

Nowadays, of course, football has an even bigger profile. There is what seems to be wall-to-wall football on TV and tickets to any Premier League match seem to be like gold dust.

Maybe, then, it’s no surprise that Wednesday night’s Women’s World Cup semi-final attracted the biggest TV audience of the year. More, for example, than the Liverpool v Spurs Champions League final, the FA Cup Final, in fact more than any event or attractions you care to mention.

So maybe it’s not before time that Grimsby Town now has its own women’s football team. A manager and coaches have been appointed and players are being recruited to play in the Lincolnshire women’s football league. They will, however, be starting at the bottom of the women’s football pyramid which is a couple of tiers below where Lincoln City Ladies will be playing next season.

It’s quite likely that women’s football is going to be the next big thing in sport. England may have gone out in the semi-finals but by being one of the last three European teams in the World Cup they have ensured that a Team GB will automatically qualify for the women’s football event in next year’s Tokyo Olympics. (The men, on the other hand, won’t be there because the various national FAs weren’t prepared to put their independence at risk by entering a joint team as they did in the 2012 event in London.)

The media is going to be full of it over the next year. It could be a lot like the way in which men’s hockey emerged in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Great Britain didn’t win the men’s event but, to everyone’s surprise, won a bronze medal. The media got behind it and four years later in Seoul they won the gold. Or the way in which Andy Murray was seen as a serial 'choker' until he won the Olympic tennis gold in 2012 and then went on to win Wimbledon twice.

This could happen to women’s football in Britain over the next twelve months, with a combined team and a year’s experience to build on. And then having a women’s team won’t be a fringe activity because the Premier League is already looking to take over the WSL and it will appear regularly on one of the subscription-based TV channels.

The men’s pre-season kicks off on Saturday with a friendly against Cleethorpes Town. It goes without saying that it needs to lead, at the very least, to a realistic challenge for the end-of-season play-offs. But it seems equally important to establish a successful Grimsby Town Women side if we’re not to be left behind there too?

Right now, it’s not clear where they will play, how many fixtures they are
likely to have and who will be in the side. The club and the fansites need to catch the wave if we are not to be left behind.