Cod Almighty | Diary

Thursday fixtures may now be rare, but once it was a big day in the football week

14 December 2022

Christmas has already started, at least if you are a union-goading breakfast TV presenter, and so to Grimsby's Christmas programme: Mansfield on Saturday, Harrogate on Boxing Day and Salford on Thursday 29 December.

It must be some years, or even some decades, since we last had an evening game on a Thursday. It was the last day of the week to be invaded by televised football. For a long time, almost the only times it made it onto the lists of forthcoming fixtures were in April, when a club with a fixture backlog was made to play Saturday - Tuesday - Thursday - Saturday, the hangover from a cup run or a cold winter.

Yet in Grimsby Thursday must once have been second only to Saturday in the footballing calendar. The Sabbath was off-limits for sport so the half-day holiday was the big afternoon for recreational soccer, and it fell on Thursdays. It was the Grimsby Thursday League which set up the women's team which played three matches in 1921, before the FA ban.

Before floodlights made it possible to play when darkness fell, the half-day holiday was also useful for games that needed to be rearranged. In January 1926, Grimsby had been losing 1-0 at Doncaster when the match was abandoned to fog. It was not possible to replay it until Thursday 22 April. By then Town were one point behind Bradford (Park Avenue) at the top of Division Three (North). With two Saturdays left in the season, this was their game in hand.

For Doncaster fans, it must have been a strange occasion, reduced to extras in someone else's drama. The 9,711 crowd had a large contingent of Town fans who had come by train, by motor car and by charabanc. There was also a significant presence from Bradford, including the Park Avenue players themselves, hoping the Rovers would do them a favour.

Grimsby won 4-1, a win less comfortable than the scoreline suggests. Two days later they had to do it again, but could only draw at Crewe Alexandra. There was only one promotion place, so the relief when they learnt that Bradford too had dropped a point must have been profound. Both teams won on the last day: Bradford comfortably, Grimsby by a single goal. It was a tremendously tight finish to a tremendous season.

Part of Middle-Aged Diary would welcome a more restful end to this season. But then if we go into the last game with promotion at stake, we'll all revel in the excitement. Whatever the year, and whatever the day, football doles out its rewards in diverse and unexpected ways.