Cod Almighty | Article

by None

18 January 2025

The latest of our winter collection as we fill in the gaps with the odds and sods from this season's massive cup runs! Wallow in Wealdstone, most people do.

When we think of Wealdstone we think of Stuart Pearce: Lawnmower Man.

Doing the Ruislip Lido shuffle

The FA Cup. Who cares eh? Well, we did a couple of years ago when we sneaked unnoticed behind the rope line and onto the red carpet to swig as many Martinis as we could before the bouncers turned up. But did anyone else really notice when we beat Plymouth and Cambridge and Burton? Only their fans for a few days. The glorious run will be forever with us, but no-one pays much attention to the travails and wails of others, especially before the third round. For the rest of the world that cup run is now merely a quiz question, we're just a starter for ten on University Challenge.

And the flip side of that national indifference is who but us remembers losing at Kidderminster the year before, or at home to Salisbury, famous for its 123 metre spire? What about Bath, and its beautifully sparkling spa waters? Gateshead with its car park from Get Carter? I still get a shuddering frisson of inherited humiliation when I drive up the M1 between Meadowhall and the A61 turning: Ecclesfield in 1890, now that was a disgrace. 8-2!

I see your shoulders shrugging from here. Dog days for us but great days for all of them, for we were their Luton, their Southampton. Football is like comedy, best viewed hitting up to give toffs a bloody nose.

It's knockout football, you've got take it on the chin sometimes.

And today we're temporarily the big boys, the potential source of a century of stories for those Stones that have rolled oop North.

Ah Wealdstone and Town, two discrete histories and expectations. Long ago and far away we met once among the shipping containers. Grasping and groping for anything relevant in the absence of any history our assorted contributors have dived down many a nook and cranny and Wealdstone have become a touchstone for impending doom, with our match reporter regularly tutting after a creaking defeat that "Hard work gets you a long way down here. Slack work takes you a long way towards Wealdstone."

And that was even before we fell back into the National League. As the sword of Damocles swung ever closer over Town in early 2022 our Domestic Diary was literally prescient:

"We shall have to hope that until the change of ownership is complete things fall apart no further. When the brave new world emerges, it may be we shall have to take the famished road, far from the madding crowd, where they play non-League football. No doubt we shall visit Wealdstone and Weymouth with both pride and prejudice. It shan't daunt us: we have known war and peace and one day, again, we shall climb the citadel.”

Fell we did, and play them we must. Our former Friday Diarist, known to be keen on calling every kettle he sees black, took a bad trip down memory lane, or more accurately a trip down his bad memory lane prior to the first meeting:

"I can talk knowledgeably about Wealdstone because I used to live very close to there, in Harrow Weald. What kind of a place is it? Like many boroughs on the outskirts of London, it is a geographical stodgy pudding of moderate housing with occasional shopping centres and bleak parks. If you live in Wealdstone, you will stand in your driveway with your new motor talking about brake pads with your neighbour. You will support Watford or Tottenham.

When I lived in Harrow Weald the thought of my beloved GTFC playing Wealdstone would have caused me no end of mirth. If you'd asked me where Wealdstone played I would have suggested one of the aforementioned local parks. It is fair to say that on a quiet Saturday afternoon I never thought "I know, I'll go and watch Wealdstone play."

Which is just as well because they left their ground in Wealdstone in 1991.
Wealdstone no longer play in Wealdstone or even the London Borough of Harrow. After itinerant hopscotching around they finally settled at the bucolic sounding Grosvenor Vale in Ruislip, something which greatly disappointed Sue Firth:

"I attended a college in Harrow and have fond memories of parking in the football club's car park when visiting the ABC cinema as a teenager. I was looking forward to revisiting a few old haunts.”

Though their new home does at least have some happy home memories as her brother did once get sunstroke at Ruislip Lido.

Grosvenor Vale, how quaint and genteel it sounds. The reality is a slopey pitch hiding behind some rusting shipping containers in a field, lost in suburbia. And that's exactly what happened to Town on a wild, wet and wacky night when Dear Old Lennie's shirt, aided by many blue hands, kept trying to escape from his body and, as if by magic, a traffic cone suddenly appeared:

"However could that have got there? Coke was finger wagged for debunking this urban legend, this Metroland myth and pointing out this was a man-made phenomenon. And that everyone had just seen their keeper, Slim Wickens, move it into the six-yard box."

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?
That game, that loss, sparked the infamous autumn implosion. That infamous implosion was the precursor to the Great Spring Awakening, the Miracle in May, which led on to the Great Cup Run. That game meant so much then, but so little just a little bit later. We can laugh about it now. Not at Wealdstone, but about that game at Wealdstone. Memories, it's what football is all about.

Wealdstoners have memories too. Stuart Pearce started his football career with 'em. Lovely lad they say. Who says? Well Mariner Sue's best friend lived next door to old Psycho and one day he popped round unannounced, unasked and fixed her lawnmower. He'll always be Lawnmower Man to us.

So hello again Stoners, we do appreciate you being 'round though we do hope that you'll help us get our feet back on the ground this time. One day they may be known for more than being Stuart Pearce's first club. They can but dream and that's what the cup's all about.

Some days your dreams do come true and then they become memories. And that's football.

These are the full versions of the Cod Almighty programme articles for the 2024/25 season. An edited version was published in The Mariner on 2 November 2024.