Cod Almighty | Diary

Dream

16 March 2023

It feels like everything that needs to be said about Town’s FA Cup quarter-final match at Brighton this Sunday has already been said. We all know how remarkable an achievement this is, given how it’s literally been a lifetime since we last made it this far into the competition. We all know its magnitude. Both our semi-final appearances in 1936 and 1939 came when we were a first division side, and our journeys began in the third round. We finished 17th and 10th respectively in those seasons. Today we’re effectively 83rd.

Your West Yorkshire Diary will be following the action on the BBC when the programme airs at 1.50pm. As yesterday’s Deviant Diary alluded to, it’ll be interesting to see which pundit the corporation will choose to represent Grimsby Town in the interests of balance and impartiality. Anyone could, but not with any intelligence. Spoon-fed data and a faux interest in lower-league football only gets you so far. Not that the armchair fans will even notice (or care).

There’s a whole generation that now look at the Mariners and see nothing more than perennial fourth division strugglers. They’re simply not old enough to know that, although this has turned out to be a barren patch lasting much longer than any of us anticipated when we were relegated to this level in 2004, most of our history has been played at a higher level.

We haven’t had a moment like this on national telly before, so it feels important that this data-driven, xG-obsessed crowd are given some kind of education, even if it is just the top line stuff, and that we’re not lazily described as ‘plucky little Grimsby’ too much — or as ‘breathing space’, as ex-Seagull Warren Aspinall put it on BBC Sport’s live news feed last night. We have a proud history and it’s worth sharing while we’re in the spotlight.

Not many managers have got the same club promoted from non-League twice, and certainly no manager has led their team to promotion in the way Hurst did last year. And no one’s got Town this far in the FA Cup for 84 years. He’s faced (and will always face) a certain level of scrutiny while manager of Grimsby Town, but whenever his judgment has come in for some criticism — and occasionally it is justified — he’s always responded with a result, or a run of form, that steadies the ship and moves it on.

This cup run has been remarkable in a season when our league form has been so unremarkable. It was the same in 1989 when we were knocked out by the holders Wimbledon. The most beautiful thing about this moment, right now, is that the dream is still alive. We can imagine. I never thought I’d ever see us play at Wembley in an FA Cup match, unless it came with an asterisk because it was Spurs’ temporary home or something. We are just 90 minutes away from achieving such a thing.

League seasons are a slog, and at the end of them you normally end up where you deserve to be. Cup competitions, on the other hand, are much more volatile, where luck holds much more value. We’ll need a whole bucketful on Sunday, but if you’ve got a chip on your shoulder as large as I have, and you have a Top 20 list of times we’ve been royally shafted by bad luck (which, let’s be honest, translates as shit officials) then you’ll believe the fortune we enjoyed through VAR at Southampton still falls way short of full repayment (some may argue luck wasn't even at play — just soft decisions that were simply correct by the letter of the law, using technology that was available on the day).

And if we cash in all our IOUs from Lady Luck on Sunday then it may be enough to see us through. I’d say crazier things have happened, but they haven’t. The only other fourth division sides to reach the quarter-final of the FA Cup (Cambridge, Bradford, Colchester and Oxford) all fell at this hurdle, as did non-League Lincoln City. A victory would see us write more history.

Roberto De Zerbi potentially serving a touchline ban could be the trigger that sets off a chain of lucky events that snowballs in our favour.

I refuse to listen to my gut, or my head, for this. I’m all heart going into this weekend. If the journey ends on Sunday, I’ll regret not allowing myself to dream, so I’m dreaming big time here. We don’t get this week back. Relish these next few days — it’s likely you’ll be talking about them for many years to come.

UTM!