Cod Almighty | Article

by Lee Partis

28 December 2025

Ever since he was a young boy he's been watching top flight football, from Highbury down to Brighton, he must have seen them all. Ah, but love is a many splendoured thing, it takes you to places you never imagined. Like Blundell Park.

I didn't choose Grimsby Town. I inherited them through marriage, like a slightly strange antique or a family curse that comes with its own fixture list.

It all began for me on 11 October 2003. I was living in Brighton, minding my own business, when the woman I was courting, now my wife, announced she was coming down because her team, Grimsby Town, were playing Brighton. She was born in Grimsby but now lived in Lancaster. This was not a casual pop in. This was a pilgrimage.

Brighton were in between grounds, so off we went to Withdean Stadium, which at the time was basically an athletics track with some chairs scattered around it. My son refused to join us because he didn't want to be seen in the away end. Sensible lad. I remember almost nothing about the match except that Town lost 3–0 and I turned to Sarah and asked, with genuine puzzlement, "How do you watch this sh*t every week?"

Although cricket was my main sport, I'd always been into football. My first live match was Chelsea in the 60s. Peter Osgood, Charlie Cooke, Peter Bonetti and John Hollins. I used to live so close to Highbury I could practically hear Liam Brady warming up and I'd pop in to watch his artistry and the glorious Pat Jennings. I was used to football as spectacle and entertainment; the World Cup, the Premier League, bright lights, petulant millionaires, TV cameras. This was not that.

Fast forward: we get married, I move to Lancaster, and during the week I'm working away in Cumbria, living in a caravan like a man in witness protection. To help pass the long winter evenings, I start playing Football Manager. I decide to take Town up the leagues. I fail miserably, but in the process I become emotionally attached to Craig Disley, Shaun Pearson, and the wonderfully exotic Andi Thanoj, who sounded like he should arrive on horseback.

Meanwhile, I’m hearing about Town's real life dramas. For years I genuinely thought Fenty's full name was F***ing John Fenty. Managers came and went as if on a rotating internship. Money was too tight to mention. Then Ian Holloway turned up; a man who'd taken a wrong turn on the way to a pantomime.

We started going to away games in the north west, and eventually, February 2019, I made my first trip to Blundell Park. A drab deceptive 3-0 win against Newport. Sat in the Pontoon. Couldn't see the far end. Could hear everything the fans were shouting. Some of it was even printable.

Town were relegated again in 2021, and the mood in our house dropped lower than the National League table. But Town finished sixth and made it to the play offs. The Wrexham semi-final was the most exciting match I'd ever seen, even more exciting than the '66 World Cup Final. Solihull Moors were brushed aside (it did take extra time) and the curse lifted. The Mariners rose again.

We kept following Town around the north west, and we'd invent excuses to head east so we could sneak in another Saturday at BP. Then in March 2025 we finally moved to north Lincolnshire, which meant we could actually attend home games without planning a military operation.

Summer of that year, season tickets bought. Weekends sorted. Marriage intact. I relished the rhythm of matchdays and the pulse of the Pontoon. I started to feel like I knew the players personally. I could see their faces, their expressions, and sometimes their existential crises. This was not abstract.

Then came August this year and a match so ridiculous, so electric, so utterly bonkers that it replaced Wrexham and '66. And we were there. In the Pontoon. BP shaking like it was trying to take off. Everyone grinning like they'd forgotten how to stop. Community victorious over commerce.

And that's when it happened. I had started saying "we" when talking about Town.
I realised that I am at the closest to feeling I belong somewhere. Even if that's the Pontoon.

And I finally understood why I watch "this sh*t" every week.

UTM