I go whenever I can and have visited Blundell Park on about 10 occasions this year. I'm not going to write this and say I'm the all seeing knowledge on Grimsby because I'm not, but I am as passionate as every fan reading this article about the club I love and take just as much joy and happiness from our current league position. This brings me to my point; we are top of the league! Time for every Mariner to rejoice and be happy, to ring all their friends who support other teams and boast about our lofty position and time for our manager to reap the rewards sign a new contract and take the mariners happily off into the sunset and into league 1. Well so you might think!
Everybody seems so unhappy with everything and seems intent on moaning and whinging about one very important thing. Apparently we play rubbish football you see. We lump long balls forward for most of the game and ask the ever willing runner Michael Reddy to chase them for 90 minutes, oh and when he's run himself into the ground we expect him to pop up and score the winner. Gone are the days when we used to use the decent playing surface at Blundell Park or when players used to join us because they like our style of play in fact just the opposite has occurred with Ramsden and Gritton both blaming the managers ‘lump it' tactics for their departures. All this of course asks the ultimate question……. What do we prefer, Table topping long ball specialists or mid tables passers?
The other weekend I made my first venture to Blundell Park for a few weeks to see the Mariners play Steve ‘the tosser' Evans' Boston united. I was really up for the local derby expecting a good performance and plenty of action. After 10 minutes I was slumped in my seat witnessing absolute rubbish, two teams hoofing the ball from one end to the other. Our midfield looked devoid of ideas, when the poor buggers at least got a chance to touch it, with Woodhouse the only person looking capable of putting his foot on the bal and passing it about. Mildenhall produced a good save to keep the scores level as I sat in disbelief that a team as bad as Boston were playing better than us, although that in it self wasn't a great achievement. I found myself laughing as Junior Mendes nearly hit the corner flag from in front of the goal on the stroke of half time and that was it the whistle blew and I could get my pie. The kid's half-time game brought the first goal of the afternoon and to be honest the first glimpse of decent football.
The players returned for the second half without Slade making any changes, rather surprisingly Barwick had avoided the chop and JPKK sat on the bench still. The second half did bring an improvement from Grimsby, but skill, good football and more importantly chances were still at a premium. Slade Finally brought JPKK on and changed things around a bit and we improved slightly. In true Michael Reddy form for the season he popped up with a neat finish on the turn giving the lacklustre Mariners the lead. Gary Jones was brought on and to be honest our performance improved again and we looked to close out the game only to give Joachim a glorious opportunity to score in the dieing seconds. The final whistle went, we all trundled home and Town were top of the league.
As I left the ground the atmosphere was a strange one, people seemed happy, but annoyed. We were top of the league and just beaten our local rivals and people were unhappy because we were rubbish, because we lumped long balls from back to front and because we weren't good to watch. So maybe the answer is that we do care, it does bother us, well most of us at least. We are a rare breed of fans that would rather have performance than result, but I for one won't be moaning come May if we still sit in the top 3 and are heading for League 1.
Written by Sean Fieldsend