Cod Almighty | Diary

"Yes, I'm on a train!"

22 April 2025

I may be repeating myself, but since Newbegin Diary moved close enough to the area to become a Blundell Park regular, I have learnt that everything is more bearable if you see it for yourself.

Waiting for news from afar on Good Friday, each Swindon goal would have seemed calamitous, and indeed apart from the first they all were. But at least I could see that they were the inevitable outcome of a Mariners team having an off-day, against a team set up to exploit it.

We were forced to acknowledge that Ian Holloway can be a decent manager, whatever sly practice John Fenty brought him into, however disreputable his flight from Lincolnshire. Our man of the match was the chair, Andrew Pettit, who used his programme notes to gently remind us that Holloway is still a Grimsby shareholder.

Yesterday was a throwback for me. Back to a matchday afternoon with the vidiprinter scrolling on my laptop, browsing the league tables to check the implication of every goal. At one point, the prospect of a league season with four bona fide local derbies was tantalisingly close, but Hull recovered to win, and we conceded a last minute goal to draw.

From afar, that did feel like a calamity. Social media was a reminder that there are always football fans rushing to judgement. One was proud to say that his view hadn't changed that Dave Artell should be sacked; this after taking a point from the side who had started the day as divisional leaders.

They are a noisy minority. The one thing I took from Friday's thrashing was the almost complete absence of boos. Mainly, we accept that we are far better placed than we ought to be with our wafer-thin squad and its one fit striker. We'd have taken a point at 3pm yesterday, and in August we'd certainly have taken seventh with two games to play.