Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

12 April 2025

Put your hands in the air, shake them all about! It's...time for some tall tales of Simple Simon's adventures in Blunderland. Amidst the fire and cracks of sulphurous roaring here's a short history of not much at all really.

The beautiful sparkling spa waters run deep

Ah, the beautiful sparkling healthy spa waters of Harrogate. An occasional former bolt hole for old Townites and home of Simon Weaver's eager beavers. The football club has been around on and off since 1919 but their Town existed in separate worlds to our Town for most of that time. A recent Rich Lord diary establishes who and what we’re up against.

"No one really knows why Harrogate is called Harrogate. When those pesky Vikings started coming over here in the late eighth century, they liked to wear silly horned hats and call streets 'gates'. What's not clear is the explanation of the 'Harro' bit.
It could be derived from the Old Norse word horgr, which means 'a heap of stones'. Maybe the stones they're referring to are Brimham Rocks, just up the so-called street. Bizarre, oddly formed, and imbued with a sense of mystery, the rocks seem to have more in common with some of our 2023-24 squad at times than they do with Harrogate."

As for the football club they've been known as Town since a rather disappointing rename from the alliteratively ace 'Harrogate Hotspurs' in 1948. Non-league stalwarts for most of their history, Simon Weaver took the managerial reins in 2009 and has been in charge ever since, with the Dreamweaver Dynasty propelling Town into the football league.

Friendlies aside, our first meeting was a visit to Wetherby Road for a 2015 FA Cup tie during His Maccaness John McDermott's spell as Sensible Simon's Assistant. Tony's Some Maccas's Do 'Ave Em match report takes up the story:

"Harrogate. The sort of place where they buy soup in cartons, not in tins. And keep a torch in the back of the car. The one and true Macca wandered towards the dug-outs, ambled towards the hordes of happy-clappy nostalgists. Duty called, duty performed. Right, let's get into character…

…A triangulated throw-in deep down on the left burned them Yorkshire puddings. Townsend tickled, Townsend teased and Amond eased open his body and placed a precision pass across the keeper into the bottom right corner. Ah that's better, some cool calm Celtic caressing always provides a soothing balm; you know you're safe with the Val Doonican of the Vanarama."

A 4-1 Mariners romp, but since then it's been pain. Six league games. Four goals. Five losses, one draw. Theories abound for our not very good-ness but we're clinging to the Papa Shango Wrestling Curse as most plausible. The Harrogate programme folk didn't receive any information from GTFC for that 2015 cup tie. To meet print deadlines, they copied and pasted our Wikipedia entry, which some scoundrel had edited to make WWE star Brock Lesnar our chairman. Despite the improvement that may have brought at the time, it wasn't true and we've been cursed against Harrogate since.

Our first league meetings were during the 2020-21 season, or the COVID Relegation Maximum Misery Season to use its official name. The vibe at those games was light years removed from that 2015 cup jollier as Sue's November 2020 diary recounts:

"To come here and share my thoughts about Town at a time when the world seems to be going to Hell in a handcart can feel self-indulgent and more than a little pointless. Never more so than during lockdown when Town haven't even played a game, as happened this week following the postponement of the match against Newport.

Although reluctant at first, I have got into the Saturday afternoon iFollow routine and in its absence this week I came across the documentary ‘Proud To Be Town’, about Harrogate Town's promotion to the Football League.

It is a great insight into what it was like for lower division footballers during the first lockdown. The agonies which Harrogate's players and staff went through waiting to hear whether their season would be cancelled, they would get automatic promotion or have to go through a play off were also gripping.

…their set-up has a coherence on and off the pitch. They've had the same manager for 11 years, with an assistant who was recruited from the playing staff in 2016. Their backroom staff all seem committed and sensible, as exemplified by their competent handling of the logistical challenges of training and mounting the play-off game in the midst of the lockdown. They deserved their day at Wembley and made the most of it."

Having only become a professional team in 2017, to make it from the Conference North into the League in only three seasons seems a remarkable achievement. Especially when remembering that it took us six years to get back into the League…

A 2-1 defeat at Blundell Park witnessed by the cardboard cut-outs in the Pontoon (was all that just a bad dream?) was followed by a 1-0 reverse in February:

"The Lemonheads kicked off towards the tea rooms and wealth spas with an irony even Alanis Morrisette would blanche at. Boom, boom, shake the room, all around there's blue gloom and doom in the sunshine. No red kites today, just red flags fluttering.

The fire and cracks of sulphurous roaring the most-mighty Harrogate team to besiege us, and yea, our dreaded defensive trident did shake as mortars lobbed and heads bobbed under a barrage and big-balling boomery."

Fast forward to December 2023 and another defeat, this time at Blundell Park:

"It's Christmas time, we're heading for mid-table, there's no need to be afraid.
A blustery but dry day by the seaside, the dropping sun casting glances upon faraway clouds, long shadows creeping across the pitch towards the dentists in their dens by the dug outs, the corner flags occasionally kissing the turf as burger boxes skittled towards the FanZone. Ah, nothing says Cleethorpes like a mighty wind."

With Harrogate two up through Gibson and Odoh, Town grabbed a late consolation. How come they never actual console?

"A corner, dropped and plopped and Green's volley was blocked. Another corner, flicked on, Holohan's volley smothered by blue and snorkelling outward and back to Ringo. A cha-cha-cha and Green twizzled lowly through the leggery and into the bottom right corner for a late booby prize.

The dreaming Weaver closed his eyes and climbed aboard a promotion train. Like a particularly pleased pigeon having stolen some chips he cooed at his latest trip to the seaside. Oh he does like to be beside the seaside. Pace in place, brains in space and winning every race when there was a chase, we have facts to face: Harrogate were far superior individually and collectively. You reap just what you sow."

There it is. No curses or voodoo, success built on a sensible man with a sensible plan.

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 26 December 2024