Cod Almighty | Article

by Pat Bell

10 March 2025

The Grimsby Town Heritage Project is inviting you to name an all-time Mariners XI. Pat Bell marks your card with some of the greatest players from our greatest era, between 1925 and 1939

Since before Covid, I have been using the resources of the British Newspaper Archive and the Grimsby Local History Library to travel back in time to the 1920s and 1930s, when the Mariners rose from footballing squalor to rub shoulders with the elite of the game, competing in two FA Cup semi-finals as we more than held our own in the top flight. A club from an isolated town competing against the biggest cities in England, we earned the epithet "The Cinderellas of the Football League" and that is the working title for a book to be published this year or next.

The seasons immediately after World War One are fascinating to look back on but were as hard for fans to endure as our seasons in non-League, so when it comes to finding our finest players we can pick up the story with promotion from Division Three North in 1925-26. That season was pivotal for it was marked by a new offside law. It cut from three to two the number of players needed between a forward and the goal for him to remain onside, opening out play from a congested midfield. Part of the Mariners' success was that they had the players to adapt to the new tactics it required.

The old 2-3-5 pyramid formation evolved into something more like a 3-4-3 or a 3-3-4 as the centre half fell back back into a more defensive role, and one or both inside forwards also dropped back to engineer openings for the centre forward and the wingers. Understanding the old positions, and slotting them into the 4-4-2 of the Heritage Project's all-time team, is a challenge, but they are best understood as a series of duels. The inside forwards and the wing halves competed to engineer and to stymie attacks; the centre forward and the centre half to win and to use the ball. Only the full backs played purely in defence. They were expected to tackle and to clear cleanly, but rarely advanced with the ball, just as the outside forwards who they marked hardly ever tracked back.

With offside traps less effective, even the role of the goalkeeper changed. Jock Archibald was a man of extraordinary reflexes, a fine shot-stopper during our Northern Section title campaign but he was uncertain if he had to come off his line. When Tommy Read took over in 1928 he was given the nickname "Rocket" for his speed sweeping up through balls. If we'd had none better than Read, Town would have been well served, but George Tweedy was almost faultless, reliable in his judgement and his positioning while making the same stupendous saves. Goalkeepers had to be swift and strong in all they did, for if they lingered on the ball they might be charged into the net; Tweedy would catch balls under his crossbar and clear to halfway as though it were a single fluid motion. Tweedy won only one England cap; it was not just Grimbarians who thought he deserved many more.

Jack Bestall was another England international: almost the shortest and the oldest to win a first cap when he was selected in 1935. He is the first name on anyone's Town team-sheet, yet that did not mean he won universal praise, for even in our golden age the Blundell Park crowd was hard to please. Once, a reporter from the Liverpool Echo watched him do everything it is possible to do with a football except waste it, but was told that he could do better. A new style of inside forward - a creator more than a taker of chances - some Grimsby writers criticised him for playing behind the front line.

The men he engineered openings for were the links in Grimsby's celebrated centre forward production line. Jimmy Carmichael was a footballer's footballer, excellent in his control and intelligence. By contrast, Joe Robson cared little for the finer points of the game: he turned that into a strength, attempting shots another player would never consider. Tim Coleman had the adaptability to succeed in any position across the forward line and went on to win a League title with Arsenal. Three greats, but Pat Glover, six feet tall and gathering momentum as he bore down on goal, was a wonder of the footballing age.

His 198 goals (some published statistics leave him one short of his due) are only a part of the story. Glover turned the tactic of the stopper centre half to Town's advantage, roaming from wing to wing, taking his marker "for a walk" to create openings for others. It was an unselfish strategy dependent on his stamina, his strength, his sound control and his judgement. Glover had them all, to go with his formidable finishing. Injury stopped him short, or else he might be remembered more widely, for even after helping them to a clean sweep in the 1936-37 Home Nations, he is almost forgotten in his native Wales.

The last of our internationals comes as part of a set of three. Ted Buck made his first Grimsby appearance on Christmas Day in 1929, and Alec Hall a few months later. Harry Betmead didn't come along until 1931. Their first appearance together ended in a 4-1 defeat and they were the main source of Town's weakness. Buck had been too slow when he joined Grimsby. Hall was fixated on tough tackling. Betmead got caught trying to dribble out of defence. It was a couple of years before they welded into a formidable half-back trio.

Buck was sound in all his did and Betmead had that true defenders' knack for covering the ground without seeming to hurry. Hall was quick to make himself available so that Bestall always had an extra option; after Bestall retired he became the heart-beat of the team. Betmead was capped and Hall might have followed him into the England team if World War Two had not intervened.

After the names whose fame lived on, we are left to find our full backs, our outside forwards and an inside left. There are many men men who deserve to be recalled: James Kelly whose arrival coincided with a ten-game unbeaten run to banish the threat of a second consecutive relegation; Ned Vincent, with one of the best right feet in the game; Hugh Jacobson, who was persuaded to come to Grimsby so that he could live by the sea and who never quite left, picking up many a knock in the cause of his adopted home town; Dennis Jennings; who learnt to kick with both feet when a school-friend let him use the left from a pair of football boots; or Cyril Lewis, an all-action winger whose body too often let him down.

But at full back: Charlie Wilson and Jack Hodgson, both converted into the position by injury crises. Wilson took to it immediately. Quick to look for opportunities to launch an attack, he was something close to a modern right back. Jack Hodgson, with his sheepish smile and his beanpole figure, was awkward at first, but came to figure among the opponents most respected by Sir Stanley Matthews. Hodgson studied the ways of the man he was marking so that they rarely got the better of him twice in a game.

Outside right was a source of weakness, but James Dyson came to Town as a panic purchase in 1932 and though his position was often under threat, he usually proved himself the best we had, neat in his control, his movement and his passing. On the other wing, Billy Marshall was a blur of red-headed energy. His crossing variable, the change in the offside law gave him licence to cut inside and hare for goal. He scored one goal at Hull's Anlaby Road, his head swathed in bandages as he dribbled from halfway past three defenders, which was the highlight of a memorable derby day.

We are left looking for an inside left. Charlie Craven, on form, was a man worth several admission fees all on his own. When he went on one of his swerving runs, he had a knack for dragging the ball along with his trailing foot which was the despair of many a defender. But his best was too fitful and too short, and critics pointed out that it didn't matter who Grimsby played outside him on the wing, for he'd never receive a pass from Craven. The man he replaced, Joe Cooper, did not have the same pace or goal-scoring threat, but they were equals in their ball control, and Cooper was the making of both Glover and Marshall: he had an unsurpassed ability to bring the best out of his team-mates.

In reality, we don't have to decide: we can revel in Cooper, Craven and all of their many colleagues. There is no point in compiling an all-time XI unless you also dwell on and enjoy all the fine players you are forced to discard but who helped make our heritage. Nowadays, we can only imagine watching them, but we watch with them, for their deeds have soaked into the Blundell Park pitch and are ingrained in the timbers of the Main Stand.

Vote for the Grimsby Town Heritage Project all-time XI here. Make your selection by 4pm on Friday 14 March.