Cod Almighty | Match Report

by Tony Butcher

15 December 2024

What an awfully pock-marked pitch we have grandma.

Crewe, Crewe, electric blue, that's the colour in which they loom. They're fourth, we're fifth, Artellball v Bellball, it's gonna be a top of the shop festival of football, soccer satisfaction guaranteed!

Town lined up as follows: Wright, Cass, Tharme, McJannet, Hume, Thompson, Luker, Green, Davies, Svanthorsson, Obikwu. The substitutes were Auton, McEachran, Ainley, Khouri, Barrington, Pyke and Rose. Tharme for Rodgers, Davies for McEachran. Mmm jumpers of goal posts, isn't it. We're sitting pretty near the top of the tree this Christmas. Did someone check the lights are working?

Nothing more to do, nothing more to say. Let's sit right down and wait for the gift of sound and vision…

1st half – Hanging around on a piece of ground
Crewe kicked off towards the Pontoon away from their 218 fellow travellers. And then…

What?

In this coastal town they forgot to close down, every game is like a Sunday. There's nothing on telly, there's nothing open, there's nothing to do but go to your Gran's for tea.

Here we all are, sat in silence, grey sullen silence, with an old grandfather clock ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking…pilchard sandwich anyone?

A leftly absence, Lankester turning, turning, turning. Wright finger-flipped the narrow scooplet up and over for a corner. What happened next? Would you like a jammy tart or a stale swiss roll?

Ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking…

Stumbling and tumbling, a distant Townite crumbling. Middlingly leftly, beyond the halfway line, Hume dripped a free kick longly into a void. Duck Farm, more than any other farm, Duck Farm, stooped to avoid scoring, noddling over from mere yards away from their static caravan in goal.

And that, my fine furious friends, is and was Grimsby Town on this day. That is all. Is it possible to have a minus xG? That's statistical nonsense you say. Oh indeed, oh indeed it is.

Ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking…iced gems. Such a treat for your average eight-year-old in those olde times of tan and orange. Lovely clouds, rippling in folds of porpoise grey. Is there a purpose to this porpoise simile? Well, as much as there was in the Town performance.

Isn't Thompson supposed to be our tik-tok man? Poor old Curtis, the grandfather clock is getting old and losing time.

Feeble fumbling under the Frozen Horsebeer Stand and a pair of scuttlers scootered away. Duck Farm, being a decent human being, refused to invade their personal space. What a well brought up young man he is, credit to his parents. A passy-cross, Lankester spun and crinkled through a bus stop and Wright plunged low and left to spectacularly paw aside. Denver booted before a Creweite looted.

They had a corner. They did. And another one. They definitely did. Perhaps even another. But it was only a fantasy, the ball was too high and we could see that no matter how they tried Town could not break. And the worms ate into our brains.

There was a moment that happened in a land far, far away that most people had forgotten about. The Crewe penalty area. Luker chased a lump and toe-prodded a dive that was neither a goal, nor a penalty, nor anything at all. The ball rolled dribblingly towards to the misspelt Marschall who seemed rather surprised to have awoken from his mid-afternoon nap.

Ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking…

Corkscrew semi-long chucks from the boys in blue were stuck in the mixer. Town were neither shaken nor stirred, Miss Toffeepenny. I'd rather a toffee penny that a strawberry cream, but there's a lack of quality in this street fight. Wright dropped a cross, Wright picked up the cross he dropped. Davies drop-kicked a runner on the blind side of the referee and finally McJannet smoothed the sheets.

This was all there was as we watched a slowly congealing pudding rot on a pudding of a pitch.

Drifting into solitude, over his head, don't you wonder sometimes what the point of Obikwu is? Spiderlegs down once, down twice and finally out of our hair as on bounded Rose. We've replaced a spindly pot plant with some fallen leaves flying around the patio.

Four minutes were added. There really was no point.

What's new with our pussycats? It's not thrilling and I'm not willing to share any more of this tedium with you. Go eat a Mars bar, cut up with a knife and served on a plate.

2nd half – I guess that's why they call it the blues
No changes were made by either team at half time. Curtis Thompson was still on the pitch. We shall leave that sentence there, your thoughts left hanging like last year's uneaten chocolate bauble on your Christmas tree. It's just getting staler by the minute, you may as well take it off now, it's just degrading.

At 16.04 on Saturday 14 December 2024 the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest telescope in space which allows us to view objects too old, distant and faint even for the Hubble Space Telescope, found something new, something to give hope to humanity: signs of life in the second half of a game of football at Blundell Park

Green barundled down the right and a blue boot swiped before the Rambling Rose arrived at the near post.

Sorry, it was just a bit of dust on the lens that skewed the data. Don't worry, the underlying performance of this telescope is still strong. It will find new life and new civilisations as long as we continue to go where no Town team have gone before.

The underhit Town corner was cleared and Thompson was booked for a hook after a fancy Dan swung past last year's short term fix. A wall of blue and a line of stripes moving left, moving right, moving back and back and back.

Ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking, time slowing, slowing, sllllllooooowwwwing...

This game's got 0-0 written all over it….

Fey flicking against the blue wall and Sanders simply launched it straight down middle. It went straight down the middle, it went zing down the middle. Sailing on and on over the halfway line and on and on towards the penalty area. But Wright stopped short, never to go again, then this game died as Lankester lobbed over the stranded strapping keeper stuck in no-man's land. Oh dear boy, you didn't do what you know you oughta, with great sorrow something tells me you won't stop the slaughter.

I hate to break it to you so soon, but this is the end already.

Ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking, when is the bell going to toll?

Hume's free kick was half headed away. Svanthorsson was flicked aside like a dozing fly, Thompson was a rotten old garden fence that toppled in bluster and off they ran like a pack of dogs chasing a rabbit. Lankester played piggy in the middle with the retreating Hume and exchanged passes with Tabiner who calmly passed into the right corner.

Has Blundell Park ever been so quiet?

McEachran and Khouri replaced Thompson and Davies. We were certainly less worse than we were - less holes, less likely to be trampled underfoot.

Omar comin'! Not in his prime is he. This Omar is a doomed character living off his reputation. Oh indeed. His name is his name and that is all.

Wright sprung splendidly to tip a soaring volley over the bar. He did, he really did. It was a save, it happened. When? It doesn't matter when, it made no difference to anything but the size of defeat. McJannet, he made a difference to the size of the defeat but in a good way.

Rose's shot deflected for a corner, this is a fact. Beyond this fact there is just friction in the crowd.

Svanthorsson and Luker slid off the pitch and Barrington and Pyke slunk on. Pyke: Action Man now with real hair! And just as much animation. He doesn't move by himself, you know. And as for Barrington, well, he immediately made one pine for the good old days of Svanthorsson's robust, rugged psychopathery.

What? A flip by Tharme from a dreary, weary, wafty cross. In the context of this game that was a Town chance, a shot on goal. I must stress for the record, your honour, that this can only be regarded of relevance and interest in the context of this particular football match. Its resemblance to actual football is entirely without the scope of this Court.

Seven minutes were added. There is nothing worthy even of pity left to ponder. Is there anyone left in Blundell Park? Physically a few begraggled stragglers counter-intuitively remained to beat the traffic, but psychologically we'd all checked out before we'd arrived. It's called experience. Town just did what Artell's Town always do and got what they deserved when opponents can be bothered to learn their lines. We were mere actors in a play written far away. If the strolling players turn up without a script we're ok.

Sub-par Mariners on the pitch, footballers incognito. Overpowered, over confident and we're glad it's all over for there's nothing to do, nothing to say, just 90 minutes of slumbering. Tick, tock, tick, tock. A game memorable for being so forgettable.

I'm off for a curry to drown my sorrows. What did I want? Mixed Tandoori, Bombay potato, pilau rice and five more wins with some mango chutney please.