Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

9 February 2025

Are you sitting comfortably, good, then we'll begin with our romp around our arbitrary memories of the crooked Spireites, the only team named after a sofa.

Fortitude and Foreboding

Hello there Chesterfield, the only professional football club named after a settee. Or is it a sofa? Being a fellow Midlands-ish town they, like us, sit uncomfortably upon that great geographic divide. Well, we're Northern, so it's a sofa to me and thee lad.

Are you sitting comfortably now? Then we'll begin.

There was once a time, not that long ago, we friendly fisherfolk could get all hoity-toity about our respective grounds. Through the first decade of this century this Atlantis in Derbyshire was an oasis in stasis, a crumbling land waiting for something or someone to show them the way out of their maze. In 2008 we stood on the terraces and marvelled at the scene before us, one hardly changed from the day it opened in 1871:

“Welcome back to the regressing ground that time still forgets. The last time we came it was like 1984 never happened and now? Hello! It's 1972! Is Ernie still number one? It looks like a place that still has milk carts. The travelling Townites reacquainted themselves with the chipped concrete terrace and chivvied at the price of chips, though not with the nice lady from Cleethorpes in their maximum security refreshment cage…

The gents' don’t have a roof but the ladies' don't have any walls, which sounds like one of those ridiculous Californian psycho-babble books. Now, that's the difference between men and women.

Ah, that old toilet al fresco feel. Roofs are for wimps! This isn't Barnsley you know. This is the heritage football experience.”

Those days have gone, let's not criticise now that we cannot stand, for the times they have been a-changing this century.

By 2010 they'd finally moved to a swanky new ground, but we'd disappeared from their lives before the big reveal. Renovation, rejuvenation, relegation and eventually our Town came back to their town. First impressions from our match reporter as he booked a viewing? Ooh, they've changed you know, now they've gone up in the world with their nice new home on the Elm Lodge Housing Estate.

"So I walked on up to the turnstile, and is this our future: not as a bad as it could be?

Chesterfield used to be solidly, reliably working class; good old salt of the earth types, with salt of the earth names like Brian or Michael. Now it's all Dion and Delial, Jak and Jordan. Just look at them in their new home, with the new sophistication. I bet they have a fondue set and go on foreign holidays."

The boot is very much on other foot now in terms of our respective grounds – we're the heritage experience for them. We do have an outside loo, but it does have a roof.

That's the architecture, what about the football? Of all the games in all the world two stick out like a sore thumb; one in their old world, one in their new, both with lasting impacts.

Let's start with that freakish 4-4 draw in 2004 before a crowd of 4,444. In a game that was essentially a relegation decider, it all started so dully that our match reporter was counting the lamps in the floodlights as the ball was always up where it doesn't belong, sailing towards the stately homes of England that line the faraway Derwent Valley.

"It went in the air, it stayed in the air, it eventually went out. Repeat. Hit it long, hit it high; at least we could see the ball without these new-fangled modernist notions of a roof. Some Town players tackled Chesterfield players. The referee blew his whistle and Fettis even nearly almost thought about coming off his line to flick a crisp packet away from the penalty spot.

Bored already? Let's talk about the alfresco toilets then. We had the traditional Yorkshire wall, painted black and with a perfect view of the...oh sorry - Chesterfield Is Not In Yorkshire. There's a T-shirt in there somewhere, isn't there?"

Stu's half-time toilet talk was full of morose humour as black as the toilet walls:
"The only way Town'll get three points is if the coach driver was speeding through Staveley." "Take your brolly to the toilet - wasn't that by Iron Maiden?"

Despite the general Keystone Coppery the goals kept flying in. Chesterfield led 3-2 with five minutes left and then the game really went bat crazy banonkers. After a rat-a-tat of a Barnard sand iron free kick and Rankin's rolling tap-in the Town fans began to count chickens as survival beckoned.

"Oh what a party, Chesterfield defeated, abject, dejected, streaming out of the ground in their tens.”

At the very end of the very final minute of added time a Chesterfield free kick deep, deep by their own corner flag was wellied upfield from nowhere near the fouling spot.

"What does it matter, eh; the game has been won, such trifling matters can be overlooked. Oh-oh, the ball headed on and Brandon, a pesky little blighter all afternoon, skipped past Coldicott, Crowe stood his ground and Brandon tumbled spectacularly over an invisible leg."

And the course of history changed as Reeves walloped in his second penalty and a Town win became a draw and we were relegated, one point off safety. One point behind Chesterfield.

Seventeen years later in a different corner of this foreign field it was Town's history that changed. The sights and sounds, our dreams ultimately happy on this day.

"The traffic is stuck on the ring road and not moving anywhere, but it's a beautiful day. Ah yes, here we are again in Chesterfield, one of the four princes of BT Sport sitting stately on the play-off floor. There are police vans out on the side roads, cheery stewards at the door, and 1,718 Townites simply wanting more in our never-ending tour of small-town England."

The game started with the police and the Town teenage fan club having a rolling maul with the Haxey Hoodie but after an early poach from Maguire everything was falling apart for Chesterfield as two crackerjacker long shots from McAtee and Holohan broke the net, broke home hearts and Spireite spirits.

"They look like they'd just heard that Leggy Mountbatten had taken up a teaching job in Australia. Shocked and stunned. Shocked. And stunned. Very stunned."

"Chesterfield's midfield, a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas. They shall not pass, they did not pass. Town passed.”

As Taylor's fourth goal hit the net that ring road was about to get clogged up again:

"…we're bouncing, they're flouncing, for in the home stands they weren't looking for anything more than a way home. Something is stirring, for this didn't feel like a fluke, a one-off freak show…Town were utterly, totally in control, the score line flattering the flattened, flat-lining homesters. It was wonderful to be here, certainly a thrill.”

There always something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear, for games against the Spireites sometimes, now and again, inspire great moments and become era-defining. For what it's worth, it's only when four goals are scored.

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 18 January 2025.