Cod Almighty | Diary
Down the plughole
20 October 2022
It's Thursday, or Thor's Day — God of Thunder. Nothing thunderous occurring today, it appears. Grimsby Town is a place of tranquillity these days. Good, sensible people doing good, sensible jobs. A friend once posited: all you need to achieve success at fourth division level is competence. Competence will get you somewhere in a world where people all around you do daft shit all the time.
In the last two years Grimsby, Southend, Scunny and Oldham have done the kind of daft shit that keeps bat-shit clubs like Colchester in the League. There is a clutch of perennial strugglers that would be nothing more than also-rans in non-League, but they continue to exist in the Football League on the basis that, each year, two other clubs are being run worse than them.
Now that we're back in the Football League, do we still support a three-up, three-down system? It'll help to clear some of the gunk that's been collecting around the league's plughole and potentially improve the quality of the division. As we know well, some big teams are sat in the s-bend, waiting to re-emerge after being washed down a few years ago. But the bottleneck won't be addressed any time soon.
It's long been mused by football fans that your club chooses you, not the other way round. I guess that's why, having watched the entirety of Welcome to Wrexham, I'm still troubled by the motives behind the Hollywood investment, since there appeared to be little or no calling to Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds from a working class town in north Wales.
What struck your West Yorkshire Diary most was the complete contrast in cultures. On the face of it you have at least one driving force that understood the fever and passion of sport, but will McElhenney ever understand the sport? The difference between, say, NFL and cricket is huge, owing to how each reflects the societies from which they were born. But the difference between Premier League football and non-League football in England is equally as vast. It's likely that McElhenney has some comprehension of the sport Chelsea and Manchester City play, but the series exposed how blindsided they were by the sport Wrexham and Maidenhead play, and how non-League football generally works.
Even those who know how it works in this country fail to succeed at it. Perhaps the most worrying or even damaging element of their ownership is in how they have selected and entrusted Shaun Harvey to bridge their knowledge gap. Either they didn't do their research or, worse, they did, and they still chose him.
The irony is that you could almost go into the Premier League cold, feign intelligence based on what you've seen on TV and probably get away with it. Non-League is a harsh and unforgiving land, but also a frail one too, where just one poor decision could expose your limitations and end a club entirely, causing irreversible damage to the communities you're supposedly in it to improve.
As a documentary it was thought-provoking and emotional in places with a handful of topics sensitively covered. It had heart, with McElhenney in particular keen to show his empathy for a town stricken by tough times. Reynolds, on the other hand, is much harder to read. Someone who is constantly in acting mode always is.
Seeing Wrexham and non-League football through the eyes of Hollywood felt very different from the Wrexham and non-League football I experienced last season. I suspect it wasn't the programme's motivation to make me feel even more grateful to have Grimsby Town's current owners in charge, but that's how I felt at the conclusion — and I'd be saying that even if we lost that play-off semi-final 5-4 and watched Wrexham win promotion the following Sunday.
Not much news floating around today, and that's the way I like it. No dramas. You know that Hurst and his coaching team will be preparing sensibly for the visit of an in-form Bradford this Saturday, with an in-form striker that once played for us. Andy Cook is now 32 years old but he's enjoying his football at the moment, the Telegraph tells us after lifting the quotes from a TV interview Cook gave last week. No one from the local paper was available to get quotes from Cook directly, such is the way modern journalism now works. I'd have been interested to hear his account of his time at Blundell Park.
I was a fan of Cook when he was here. As a player in his early twenties, he held the ball up like a striker in his early thirties. He's in his prime and it's yet more proof that Hurst knows how to spot a striker. Clearly, he wasn't prepared to work with this striker once his two-year spell with us had run its course, but Mark Hughes seems to be getting a tune out of him. Luke Waterfall will certainly have his hands full.
The away end sold out a long time ago. The home end is close to a sell-out every match owing to the sheer volume of season ticket holders we have. It should be a cracking atmosphere — it's the kind of game you really miss when you're being fed Wealdstone, Eastleigh and Dover week after week. These Bantam fans will rouse the Town fans in a way that Crawley's loyal 47 were never capable of doing.
This morning Town announced we've sold out of Hartlepool tickets. Only a few shy of 700 were made available but, given the away form we've been showing this season, I reckon we could've taken double that number. It's certainly a good time to be following the Mariners over land and sea, and Yorkshire. Let's keep the good (and sensible) times rolling!