Cod Almighty | Diary

Walking on Broken Glass

7 March 2022

Miss Guest Diary writes: Were you one of the folk who left Blundell Park early on Saturday then rushed back in to celebrate when Town scored in the 95th minute? As you're reading Cod Almighty, I suspect not – I feel our readers have a higher than average tolerance for the trials and tribulations of supporting Town and wouldn't dream of walking out before the end of any game.

The phenomenon of mass departures when your team go a few goals down – amusing when seen from fans of a 'big' team on Match of the Day – has always mystified me. Like those people who pay a fortune for Test Match tickets then spend a large part of their time traipsing to and from the bar or queuing for over-priced food. Take a picnic!

Anyway, back to the weekend. By now I am sure everyone knows that the denizens of Cod Almighty Towers were privileged to be the guests of the club after Saturday's game in celebration of our 20th anniversary. It was a pleasure to meet Town's new owners and CEO but, even better, to put faces to the names of diarists and contributors who were previously just aliases or Twitter handles. Towards the end of the do we even had a visit from Paul Hurst – what a lovely chap, so smiley and chatty – and Chris Doig – less smiley, more intense, but just as lovely.

Afterwards a few of us went for a curry and at one point the conversation turned to those early leavers and, inevitably, to our credentials for sticking it out to the bitter end of heavy defeats over the years. As always, the first to be mentioned was the 8-1 at Hartlepool, followed by the 6-0 at Oldham in 2004, then the 7-1 at Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup. I missed that last one but I was able to contribute my recollections of being at the 6-1 against Bolton in 1996.

This match has always stuck in my mind, not for the awful performance, but for an overheard remark from a fellow Town fan. Playing that night was Darren Wrack who had recently been signed by Brian Laws from Derby County. A chap standing near me remarked on Darren being a local lad from Cleethorpes who had said he would "walk over broken glass" to play for Town, to which his mate retorted that "The way he's playing he looks like he has."

Going back to the Oldham game, the more mature reader will know that this was Paul Groves last one as manager. Now Grovesie is one of the Cod Almighty match reporter's favourite players so he put his heart and soul into that report. Several years ago, I noticed that the report had become corrupted on the site and was only half there. I searched high and low without success on old laptops and CD-ROMs (kids, ask your parents) for a back-up copy.

Mentioning this on Saturday evening, I was astounded to discover that there is a virtual cave somewhere in which old website content is stored and in which the IT whiz sitting next to me found an original copy of the match report with a few clicks and swipes on his phone. He sent it to me and I have restored it to this site. If you feel like a trip down memory lane, have a read – it's good, though rather sad.

Back in the present, Town have a game at Southend tomorrow evening. As predicted a couple of weeks ago, this came too soon for my other half to get time off work so we won't be there. So no Butcher match report. Maybe an aspiring writer would like to step in and plug the gap, then they too can join in future celebrations of our longevity.

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