Cod Almighty | Diary

From Peterborough to Castleford

4 June 2020

"Playing at Grimsby Town makes me feel like a Premier League star", James McKeown tells the Grimsby Telegraph. He is not talking about his salary, needless to say. Still less now that players and all other staff at the club are reported to have agreed to take a cut in pay of up to 25 per cent. Against the bigger unfairnesses of the world, impossible to suggest what else the club could do: "The only way we can see is fair is asking the players to take a cut and be in it altogether." says Ian Holloway.

McKeown is talking about the profile he has as a player for a town with just one professional club, some way distant from any rivals, comparing it especially with his time at Walsall, in the built-up West Midlands. If anyone gets the chance, ask him how Town fans compare with Peterborough's perhaps. A comparison with the Devon clubs might also interesting, if anyone can provide it.

A digression. Does anyone else - you'd have to be of Middle-Aged Diary's generation - remember the late John Peel being very taken with a song put together by the business promotion department of some council, about extra-terrestrials finding the only place Earth on with the technological infrastructure to meet their needs is in their locality? If so, am I right in remembering that town was Peterborough? Perhaps it was Northampton. It certainly wasn't Grimsby.

There are perhaps generalities that can be applied to the fans of clubs based on whether they have a rival in the same city and how successful they are relative to other clubs in the same region. The Leyton Orient fans I've met always have a mix of wry defiance and self-deprecation which comes of mixing with Arsenal and Chelsea, not to mention Boris Johnson bestowing on them the particular gift of having West Ham not so much on their doorstep as in their front room. Do O's have something in common with Walsall fans? Supporting a club other than City or United in the centre of Manchester, meanwhile, feels almost evasive.

Fans have probably become more parochial, more one-eyed, over the decades. Neville Butt's tales of his first game and his first away game in the post-war seasons make clear he looked at the players in the opposition in a way which I certainly don't. In the 1940s, apart from jerky fragments of newsreel footage, you only saw Tom Finney play if Preston turned up at Grimsby. Match of the Day was not an option. The opposing stars were part of the draw.

There'll always be differences in temper between individuals, of course, but did Grimsby, as a body of fans, lead the way in partisanship? I'm beginning to suspect so. I came upon this report in the Halifax Evening Courier: "A large unruly, and somewhat vicious crowd marred the pleasantness of the game. The Grimsby people obviously take an intolerant view of all visiting teams, and look upon them as their natural enemies. From first to last, [Halifax] Town were howled at as though they were a team of blackguards. To put the matter briefly, the home side could do nothing wrong and blamable, and the visitors could do nothing right and praiseworthy. I do not even make an exception of Castleford in saying that Halifax Town have never played before a more 'vicious' crowd. And the language at Grimsby is atrocious. If Second Division teams got that kind of reception from the Grimsby people that Halifax Town received, one cannot wonder that the Mariners failed to secure re-election. Yet Grimsby is an admirably organised club, with a delightful body of directors, and a manager and secretary who is a most kind and amiable gentleman. But what spectators!"

This is from February 1921. It's from a Grimsby Town reserves game. Even the Castleford fans went in pairs when the first team was playing.

See you.