Cod Almighty | Article
by Various
28 February 2025
Cheltenham, they just get in the way, especially if you're on your way to Bath. Yep, the footballing irritant down the other end of the A46 that irritatingly won Brtain's Best Chippy award for some fancy batter. Isn't it about time we battered them? Fancy that?
Separating the sheep and the goats
There's something about The Rocking Robins that gets our collective goat and definitely rubs our fish fingers up the wrong way. They probably don't even notice, let alone know why. Neither do we really, they just do.
Way back in 2006 Miles Moss's Rough Guide had already clocked them as our accidental, unfathomable nemesis:
"There's this kid at school who makes your life a misery. They're not a bully or anything, but bad things seem to happen every time you meet. They accidentally let a door swing back in your face once, and you lost a tooth. Sitting near them in class inevitably leads to an undeserved detention. Your shoulders sink every time you see them coming across the playground. Hello, Cheltenham."
And nothing changed as we occasionally bumped into each other whilst doing the shopping. Just before that Play-Off Final in 2006 Mat Hare tried to lighten the load after Cheltenham's local paper The Gloucestershire Echo produced a magnificent A-Z of Grimsby to give them a quick lowdown on us. We took it upon ourselves to reciprocate. Well, Mat did with his A-Z of Cheltenham, in loving homage to the original.
A is for a football club: Cheltenham Town are one, and have been for a while now. A is also for Andy Gray: the Sky Sports pundit once played for the club by which time he'd lost his hair. And his pace.
B is for ball: Cheltenham players have been seen kicking one of these, although the exact reasoning behind this is unclear. B is also for book: Steve Book holds the record for most appearances for the club with 159 to date. Which, of course, is nothing compared to Macca's record but bless Steve for trying.
C is for sea: Cheltenham isn't very near one. C is also for Christmas: the Robins is the nickname of Cheltenham and you don't get much more Christmassy than that. Apart from Santa Claus, presents, turkey and the little baby Jesus, of course.
And so on and so on and then they beat us, so who's the last laugh on?
Do you remember the first game of the 2009/10 season? Best not to given what followed. Our Diarist had forecast the future, seeing which way the wind was blowing:
"Here we are again, then. The season is under way, and its age-old rituals and routines have risen back to life and begun to repeat themselves once more. Town are playing well and losing against teams they really ought to beat. The players are telling the Grimsby Telegraph they know they can do better, and they'll try harder next time. The Telegraph is running a match report centred on an extended metaphor related to an aspect of the town where the Mariners' last opponents are based. And the Diary is taking the mick out of them for it. In Cheltenham's case, of course, this is horse racing - which means a barrage of references to the Mariners "galloping away", getting their "noses in front" and finally being "not at the races". The Diary is just not quite sure how the bit in the first sentence fits in, where Town "ran out of steam" in the second half. Perhaps the 'soccer writer' responsible had already started thinking ahead to this Saturday, Crewe and railways, or perhaps it's one of those newly invented horses that move by the power of highly pressurised water vapour heated using a coal-fired boiler.”
Ah yes, that Crewe game. Tommy Forecast's home debut. Shall we just gloss over all that and get back to the A-Z?
I is for 'I spy' - recently voted the most popular game to play on car journeys through Gloucestershire by AA members for the fourth year running. I is also for Ireland. Cheltenham is much nearer Ireland than Grimsby is.
We didn't play them for another six seasons after our terrible tumble into whatever the non-league decided to call itself that week. When they came back down to us they just carried on where they left off, beating Town up in the league games and, as Retro Diarist railed, adding an immense insult to all those injuries:
"On what should have been be a brighter note, the best fish and chip shop in Britain was announced last week. Oh good, you say. The winner? An establishment called Simpson's, in…Cheltenham.
Now I don't believe for one minute that Cheltenham has better fish and chips than us, any more than I believe their football team is in any way destined to forever lie above Town in the league. "Our batter has no MSG or bulking agent," they proudly boast. Woohoo. Yes, but your fish looks like battered stickleback. Get out!"
We see foul play! In our A-Z of Cheltenham F is most definitely not for fish nor football. Did someone say Harry Pell, the pantomime dame of lower league football?
R is for Robins, their nickname. It is believed that Cheltenham got their nickname after Robin Askwith approached them with a proposal to film Confessions of a Football Player at Whaddon Road in the 1970s.
S is for spa: Cheltenham is a spa town, which means there are more mini-marts and convenience stores per head there than in 95 per cent of other UK towns. This means that the locals are never short of a place to buy Hobnobs and booze."
And we'll leave the last word to the Bard of Blundell Park, Dr Seusses:
"Do you like that Cheltenham?
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am,
Will you like them in a while?
I will not like them in a while.
I will not like their World of Smile.
I do not like them here or there,
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like that Cheltenham,
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am."
Right, I'll just get my goat.
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 17 August 2024.