Cod Almighty | Diary

Throw caution to the winds and get ready to hail the League Two champions of 2026

31 July 2025

The career of Grimsby's latest recruit, central defender Sam Lavalle, is a reminder of what is at stake. Captain of the Morecambe side promoted to the third-flight in 2021, his Wikipedia page has him down as one of their greats. This week, the Shrimps stopped all first-team activities, the club stuck with a stalled takeover after their relegation out of the League.

Lavalle went down not with Morecambe but with Carlisle. He's implied that he was told that he would be retained, but the club changed their mind when they realised that with other players they had forgotten to write relegation clauses into their contracts. Such are the perils of life in the basement of the Football League.

Accrington's owner once said that the main benefit of winning promotion was that it put them two relegations away from the Conference. Wise words...

But don't believe him.

There is no longer a Barrett Stand roof we can clamber onto, or open terraces crammed in the ecstasy of a Kevin Drinkell hat-trick, but we all of us understand how it should look and feel, at least once in a generation. There should be fans on the pitch, and they should know it is all over: for a week or ten days, football will be over, and we will have won. Then we might start looking ahead once again.

If it comes to it, of course, if it all goes badly wrong, we will celebrate just as much a last-day escape from the drop against clubs who somehow have smaller gates and yet bigger budgets than us. That will be fine, just as realism is fine, but is not what gets us through the gates. We don't want fine, we want wonderful. This is a week for pinning our ambitions to the top of the Dock Tower.

Grimsby Town for the title.