Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 5 November 2022

FA Cup (R1)

Grimsby Town 5 Smith (9), Efete (33), Kiernan (39, 58) Glennon (45+7)

Plymouth Argyle 1 Randell (3)

Attendance: 4,571 (338 away fans)

They pay their money, they make their choice of who they wish to spend 12 seconds getting wet with. Wouldn't we all happily get soaked standing with Harry?

It could have been anyone, it could have been everyone. Hey, let's keep it local. Hassletastic Harry is the greatest gift that we possess. Got no silver, got no gold, but he's got hard work in his soul.

You can always trust Mr Happy to talk with crowds and keep his virtue:

"We looked a bit frightened and a bit timid to start the game, but credit to the players for turning it around…We exploited their game plan very well this afternoon, and the players took the opportunities that were presented to them in the game."

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Let the emotion speak for itself:

"We got what we deserved. Grimsby Town were by far the better team, showed more energy than us, showed more passion and more commitment to win the game and more desire, so they deserved to go through to the second round and we deserved nothing from it."

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We don't need no centre-forwards, we just need Kiernan on the prowl.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing Town had to fear is...fear itself. Fear, that nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, paralyses all efforts to convert retreat into advance.

All it took was one attack to cast off the psychological shackles and Town became fearless and peerless in their omnipotence and excellence.

The most striking feature was that Town's lack of strikers didn't cause a striking crisis. Big Bren blossomed when he was reduced to a single function – run after the ball. Clifton roasted the self-basting wing-backs for 90 minutes at 220C (200C for a fan oven), almost single handedly driving them back to Devon. Efete, after a single lapse, concentrated fully and joined in the fun in the sun, adding to their pain in the rain, contributing to the might on our right. Hunt and Morris clamped, Holohan had a ball, Smith overcame early jitters against the Janners and had a jaunty afternoon wrapping a duvet around second division-bound opponents. Utterly compelling, utterly marvellous.

Worked hard, played hard. Plymouth hardly had a chance.

Hazy were the visions of these Greens playing.

Petrifying for five minutes. Unfortunately for the gaggle of Pilgrim mothers and fathers, their representatives of football earth forgot that not only was there another team on the pitch but the game lasts 100 minutes these days.

Unimpressed by Little Grimsby's squawking and clucking, they sat back contentedly in their rocking chair and dreamed a little dream of easy pickings. Hubris, arrogance, mental and physical laziness, take your pick. A clove of garlic and a little ray of sunshine was all it took for the Gargoyles' cookie to crumble.

They became a shape without form, shade without colour, a paralysed force, who gestured without motion.

Hardie was tardy and Sam Cosplay had the shoulders but nothing inside the head or heart. The fling-backs could neither defend nor attack, caught 'twixt and 'tween, lacerated by the sheer enthusiasm of the striped marauders. And as for poor old Virgil Van Lightweight - with the floodlights in his eyes Kiernan beat him blind every time.

Like Crewe these bug-eyed monsters took Town too lightly and aren't quite as good as they think they are. To craft you first have to graft else lest ye be the meat to mock upon.

In every dark hour of our life, a leadership of frankness and of vigour has met with the understanding and support of the people themselves, which is essential to victory. Apart from that bloke in the Dentists Stand.

Mr T Parsons

In the end he felt sorry for the poor Plymouthians streaming out of the Osmond and spent the last half hour avoiding conflict. The fluorescent flouncer blew his whistle at appropriate times but don't trust him with a streetmap, for he had the strangest notion that offsides should be taken where the ball ended up. A minor character, a functionary who functioned adequately to earn his fish and chip supper: 7.444

And I don't know how it gets better than this.

In a word: fearless