Cod Almighty | Diary

For every Southampton there's a Wealdstone

5 November 2024

Yesterday, Newbegin Diary's wife met a long-standing friend who over the last 13 months has become an avid campaigner on the Middle East. She is aware it has obsessed her, but she cannot help herself; she is apt to respond to whatever grumble she hears with a reminder that women and children in Gaza are suffering far worse. As my wife tried to tell her, it really doesn't work like that.

In the same way, if you are still upset by Saturday's result, it won't help just to be told to put it in perspective, that we might have far bigger things to worry about if today the United States vote in as their President a woman-hating, climate-change sceptic, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu apparently the only non-US citizens he respects. Personally, I will be up in the small hours because it will be easier to bear if I watch the worst unfold, rather than wake up to shattering news.

If there is one thing I have learnt after half a century of fretting about Town, it is that seeing it for yourself is always preferable to learning about it later. I was twelve years old and living in mid-Wales when Grimsby lost in the first round of the FA Cup to Gateshead. It stands out in my memory because it was a rare occasion when my friends bothered to tease me not for who Town were - a mid-table third flight team, far removed from the Tottenhams and the Liverpools who they followed - but because of what we had done: suffered the biggest "giant-killing" of the day. From 250 miles away, that felt like a monstrous injustice unleashed on us by a savage god; our defeat by Wealdstone, I saw, was exactly what we deserved.

"Giant-killing" is an exaggeration with a kernel of truth. It was worth watching Wealdstone's celebrations at full-time, and hearing them afterwards in the pub, to realise just how much victory meant to them. It was a kind of compliment, a success they will talk about for months to come. As their answer to John Tondeur might have put it: "Grimsby fans will never have a day at Blundell Park like the Stones had at Blundell Park."

Meanwhile, Town have broken with tradition and taken a proactive approach to securing important players - Danny Rose and Kieran Green - long before their contracts expire. On Friday the youths came from behind to beat Mansfield in the FA Youth Cup and on Sunday the women's team extended their unbeaten run to five games. For some, that is evidence that the good ship Grimsby is making steady progress. For others it adds up to nothing against a first team which shows no sign of learning from experience.

Grimsby Town are also a long-standing friend. Now and again, they develop enthusiasms we find impossible to share, whether its hoofball or an unhealthy determination to keep us shape. They form relationships with the most unsuitable people but we stick by them, because we have bonds we have forged in our childhoods and on long journeys together, bonds that will never be broken. Often, they disappoint us because we want the best for them, but still we are there, hoping it'll be right, and because the good times more than make up for the bad.