Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

18 April 2025

Let's not be provocative, let's reach for the evocative, let's take a Salford stroll past the gasworks, along the canal and through rows of urban desolation.

We may not see the pyramids across the Nile, but at least can see the abandoned cold store across the marsh. Just remember that, when dreams appear like Dave Moore in long trousers or Bilal Mohsni, it's an optical delusion from the dark days.

Dirty Old Town

Salford, we barely know you. Just nine games in five years, oh and that youth cup game in November which a post-op Miss Guest Diary used as a test run for a full return to first team action:

"Apart from forgetting that the microclimate at the ground makes it a few degrees colder that elsewhere – leading to some frozen toes – it was a success. The Youth of Today bring a different vibe to Blundell Park, everyone's so relaxed. Look around what do you see? Nicky Butt hidden under a hat, Chinese chicken curry (with crackers) on tap and, blimey, Dave Moore's wearing long trousers. We are truly in a parallel universe."

And we've got photographic proof for this shattering revelation.

Musing upon the slings and arrows of non-league fortune our then Manchester-based Middle Aged Diary recalled the days when:

“…a handful of their fans were always ready to cross the Manchester Ship Canal to watch their team get whipped by Trafford in the Northern Premier League. I bet they have days when they worry what will happen when their owners get bored.”

But now, with their high-profile backers, they offer an opportunity to indulge in some pantomime peevishness, as Daubney Diary filled his diary with his special list of Official Observed Minor GTFC Grumbles:

"See it as sieving through the Freshney in the hope of finding a sparkling pebble.
• Town are never on the telly, it's always Wrexham or Salford
• Town are on the telly and they've moved the kick-off time"

Football fans can always find an appropriate angle for angst, a galvanizing gripe, it's merely a question of adjusting your perspective.

Ah, perspective, that brings us to Tuesday, 17 September 2019 and the famous fourth official breaking the fourth wall game, where Nathan Pond and Manny D turned out for them. Our stand-in substitute reporter seethed:

"This was a fourth division football match with one camera present and no VAR. Yet the fourth official - 40 yards away from any goalmouth incident - had overruled the referee. We deserved nothing, but we were still robbed!"

Our North West reporters like to put the day, the town's the visit, in perspective such as Pat Bell's painting of his journey in 2019:

"Getting there is like a refresher course in A Level Geography, passing through the gradations of urban development: the concrete and chrome of Manchester city centre; the peeling paint and the rusted shutters of the transitional zone; the sterile edge-of-town retail outlets; and finally the stone walls and the trees of an old village now swallowed but not consumed by the spread of the city. And that is where we find the home of Salford City.

They play Dirty Old Town on the tannoy before the teams come out, but it sounds incongruous. The Peninsula Stadium is the other side of the River Irwell from old Salford, a couple of miles in distance, but another place altogether from anywhere Ewan MacColl had in mind.

It's as though they want to hide their celebrity in Gradgrindian functionality."

Or as Sarah Barber later put it more poetically, and more in keeping with the spirit of MacColl:

"…russet leaves fluttering down past the gasworks, the canal and the red corrugated portakabin…"

I wonder what they think as they wander down Grimsby Road?

In September 2020 walking down any road to go to a football match was the stuff of dreams, but in hindsight we were rather pleased not to be present in what proved to be the beginning of end of the old dynasty, pre revolution. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the follies of the past, such as those mystifying days of here-today-gone-tomorrow troubadours such as the bizarre Bilal Mohsni, Moped Man, whose hair moved more than his legs that day during a during a 4-0 thrashing.

"On came Mohsni the Assassin, a sentimental mercenary in a free fire zone. He was seen to move once, though that may have been an optical illusion as the shadows lengthened on this long, long season of shame."

You see, it was only the second game and we'd twigged what the future held.

As our TV critic observed of the then management as the camera panned across the emptiness to a hollowed out man:

"The crestfallen Confucius of Cleethorpes was confused. At the last minute he'd managed to hire a cheap charabanc for his special kids outing to the seaside and it had collapsed at the first corner."

Things didn't get any better when next they visited in 2022 after our grand return to the football league. Another weird game against Salford, another weird thrashing in that weird bit between Christmas and New Year.

After a horror show of a first half saw Town 4-1 down at half time: "Town were standing in the kitchen at their own party. But hey, listen, Town could still do this!"

Yeah, in theory.

"Town huffed and Town puffed but they'd already blown their own house down. Salford? Feet up, paper over their head, having a post-prandial snooze whilst waiting for Midsomer Murders on ITV4. The Bergerac years, obvs. Standards must be maintained.

Yeah, they were like my record collection – no Rush."

As everyone in black and white waited for the gates to open with five minutes left, we saw that most beautiful of sights, a full murmuration of maddened Mariners, a mass migration of the startled starlings flocking off home.

"The satyrs and satirists in the Frozen Uplands of the Findus looked down upon the Pontoon and saw a tired and lonely place where the weak and weary spilled out of the ark, two-by-two. Why are they going? 'Cos they ain't gonna be made to look a fool no more, Town've done it once too often, what do you take them for?"

And then we went on that cup run!

Since those terrible days the tables have been thoroughly turned and Salfordians are the ones gnashing teeth at thoughts of a trip across the Pennines, and maybe, maybe there's one or two of them entranced and enchanted by the colour combinations as the moon rises above the abandoned cold store yonder.

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 15 March 2025