Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

9 March 2025

A cafe. One table is occupied by a group of Vikings wearing horned helmets as two Fleetwood fans enter. Well, what you got?

Altogether now…

Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fissssssssssh, chips and fish. Lovely fish, wonderful fish.

There’s always been something fishy about Fleetwood.

The last exit from Blackpool

Sometimes it's better to travel than arrive.

The long, ancient cross-coast rivalry comprising all of 15 years and six games. And Town've lost every blooming one of 'em. We've scored a couple though. Well, one, the other was an own goal. It all started so innocently with many a contributor eagerly anticipating this new foe, the new kids on the black and white block. Hey, they're just like us, how can we not like them?

As Rich Mills observed in his 2010 Rough Guide:

"Once a successful deep sea fishing port, the town lost its industry in the 1970s and has been in steady decline since then – now operating more prominently as a seaside resort. But what about Fleetwood?"

Boom-boom.

Gordon Wilson swapped Fleetwood for Grimsby a long, long time ago and can still remember when football used to make him smile. In 1968, the inaugural year of the Northern Premier League, Gordon climbed over the fence to see them draw with Don Donovan's Boston United, so the imminent inaugural clash of his two worlds brought back familiar and family memories:

"The product of Fleetwood fishing fraternity that arrived at the Wyre port back to 1846, I followed the fortunes of the club as a teenager when they were in the Lancashire Combination. My Uncle Sid played in goal in a great romantic home defeat at the hands of the mighty Rochdale in the first round of the FA Cup."

And Richard Dawson, after hearing our own Pete Green one late night on Radio 5 "discussing the annoying habit an increasing number of clubs have of playing goal music" was so enchanted by a sea shanty he temporarily lost his Mariner marbles:

"…Fleetwood (bless 'em) play the Captain Pugwash theme every time they score. Joyful, magnificent, nostalgic and perfect to do a crazy-because-we-scored jig to, eh?

That Pugwash thing has made me determined to try to get to Fleetwood in February when we play them. It'll be the first time I can recall wanting the opposition to score at least once so I can witness the Pugwash dancing. As long as we bag a couple though, obviously."

Ah, and then we played 'em. Life can be so disappointing.

First game, first impressions?

"Fleetwood play in Morecambe's kit, with a bunch of round the north-west houses lower-league trundlers. And just because you've grown a beard doesn't mean we don't recognise you, Mr Linwood. Oh, it does mean the knee-jerkers don't recognise him. Maybe it's because he looks like Action Man with real hair."

At half time there was only thing to say "What do we think of it so far?" Well, we did say they looked like Morecambe. Wait, there's more…

"And as time ticked on Hudson and Cummins were sat on the ducking stool next to The Big Pond and the fleet-footed crocodiles swallowed Town whole."

Town were eaten and beaten and all summed up rather world wearily:

"Mariners marinated for an hour, then flash-fried on a griddle. Mariners marinade? More like a pickle."

The next season things did not get any better as our match reporter sought solace by slithering into another dimension:

"You do realise that by the end of this report you will have no memory of the events that follow. Slowly, your mind will erase everything. You will be happy because you have nothing to make you unhappy. You will simply not know. It's for the best in this the best of all possible Mariner worlds.

Do you still wish to go ahead (seven, six)? Commencing countdown (five), engines on (four, three, two), check ignition (one) and may Cod's love be with you. (blastoff)."

This was the era of the surges of Makofo and Anthony Elding leading the chorus line. How easy it is to forget. It really did happen. Or rather, it didn't happen for Town:

"Here we go again: Serge surged and 'Town' got a corner. You must remember, these are the highlights, the wet straw to which we grasp. And when you think about it, which I strongly advise you do not, as you will find yourself in an existential void from which there is no escape, the Serge surge is the only method seemingly on offer from this 'Town'.

It's like an acid house Boyle's Law - random motion eventually results in the works of Shakespeare being played on the spoons."

Hey, it was still 0-0 at half time! There's always hope! No there wasn't, but at least we could be distracted by noises off:

"De plane, de plane! Welcome to Fantasy Island. An aeroplane appeared above the Osmond stand, looping the loop and defying the ground with twists and turns and stalls and falls. Shall we just watch that instead?"

Whilst sky divers plunged towards Cleethorpes beach Town plunged down the rabbit hole and Fleetwood scored two goals. That's just the way it was back then. Best to erase this from our collective memory:

"The last few memories are dissolving, we are nearly there now. You will be completely cured and have no recollections of Cleethorpes on 13 August 2011.

Three... two... one."

Which brings us to the March madness of the Vardy game, their home game that season.

'Twas a deep, dark night in the land where fish was as cheap as chips. It drizzled and the game fizzled, with Fleetwood forever banging and barging, haranguing and clanging. Town took the lead with an own goal and gave as good as they got, slugging out the first half as equals but, after half time, receded like royal hairlines for there be demons in those lands out west.

On the hour they wheeled out their siege engine Richard Brodie, a barely mobile distraction unit, sneezing and wheezing across the sodden turf to join Jamie Vardy "a mardy Mohican marauder who epitomised their attitude to life: a frantic, frenzied intensity that would do anything to win, did do anything to win, and did win."

A late penalty and an added time Vardy thigh-in. And then the moment many still will not forgive or forget, Vardy leading his team-mates into the Town technical area taunting our dynamic duo in the dugout, Scott and Hurst.

And as we trudged back to our cars, leaving the frolicking Fleetwooders to party all night long, defeated, deflated we may have been but there was at least something to take home. As the long abandoned feature 'Accentuate the Positive' reported, in this here land:

"The fish and chips were 28.73% cheaper with no reduction in quality."

We always end up thinking about fish instead of football when we meet Fleetwood. Even last August Sarah Barber sought common ground at a ground where we commonly lose:

"If Paris needs additional pizzazz for its opening ceremony there's an announcer and two pastel fish looking for a global platform. But in the chippies of both former fishing towns, however, the fish of choice is still haddock."

Well, Fleetwooders, we'll never have Paris, but we'll always have fish. Some things are bigger than football. Haddock, they are bigger than a 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 22 February 2025.