Friday, 25 January 2008
Another right-back, another planet
The Mariners, it would be fair to say, have never had much to do with the Premier League. A GTFC director might have phoned them up 15 years ago to ask how big your ground has to be to get in, and the girls on reception laughed and made up a number, which is why the Fentydome is ending up expandable to 20,100 seats, but that's about it.
For a giddy week or two in late 1995, when Ivano Bonetti briefly satisfied our Grimbarian need for an instant solution to decades of neglect and apathy, Town sat in the upper reaches of the second flight and anything looked possible. But anything was possible: by the end of the season we were 16th and the goalkeeper seemed to be chucking the ball in his own net on purpose.
We've rubbed shoulders with plenty of Premier League clubs in the cups. But Town's victory over Spurs in 2005 showed how little they know of us. Tottenham fans' blogs afterwards described their experience at "Blunden Park" as "the result of a lifetime for Grimsby". Which it was, as long as you're younger than 35 and you don't count our cup wins against Everton (1979 and 1984), Newcastle (1982), Middlesbrough (1989), Aston Villa (1991), West Ham (1996), Leicester (1997), Norwich (1998) and Liverpool (2001).
True, the Mariners proudly boast a dozen or so seasons of top-flight history either side of the Second World War – which is a dozen or so more, of course, than any other club in the Lincolnshire and Humber area. Unfortunately this is not recognised in the new official version of football history, which maintains that the game was invented in 1992 by Sky TV.
But those who really know football know that the top division is very far from the be-all and end-all. And if you want to see clearly what the Premier League stands for today, then look no further than the champions Manchester United, who decided that the banner displayed at Old Trafford to commemorate next month's 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster wouldn't be complete without the logo of their corporate sponsor AIG.
If United have built themselves a parallel universe from the one Town inhabit, it's all the more pleasing to see their manager – together with two other Premier League bosses – backing this newspaper's renewed campaign to have John McDermott made an MBE. And as Shrewsbury arrive at Blundell Park tomorrow it's a timely reminder of his final game, back at Gay Meadow last May.
Macca would have been a Premier League player if he hadn't said no to Bradford, Ipswich and Sunderland. But this is exactly why he deserves the award. There are hundreds of Premier League players – and there's only one John McDermott.
For a giddy week or two in late 1995, when Ivano Bonetti briefly satisfied our Grimbarian need for an instant solution to decades of neglect and apathy, Town sat in the upper reaches of the second flight and anything looked possible. But anything was possible: by the end of the season we were 16th and the goalkeeper seemed to be chucking the ball in his own net on purpose.
We've rubbed shoulders with plenty of Premier League clubs in the cups. But Town's victory over Spurs in 2005 showed how little they know of us. Tottenham fans' blogs afterwards described their experience at "Blunden Park" as "the result of a lifetime for Grimsby". Which it was, as long as you're younger than 35 and you don't count our cup wins against Everton (1979 and 1984), Newcastle (1982), Middlesbrough (1989), Aston Villa (1991), West Ham (1996), Leicester (1997), Norwich (1998) and Liverpool (2001).
True, the Mariners proudly boast a dozen or so seasons of top-flight history either side of the Second World War – which is a dozen or so more, of course, than any other club in the Lincolnshire and Humber area. Unfortunately this is not recognised in the new official version of football history, which maintains that the game was invented in 1992 by Sky TV.
But those who really know football know that the top division is very far from the be-all and end-all. And if you want to see clearly what the Premier League stands for today, then look no further than the champions Manchester United, who decided that the banner displayed at Old Trafford to commemorate next month's 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster wouldn't be complete without the logo of their corporate sponsor AIG.
If United have built themselves a parallel universe from the one Town inhabit, it's all the more pleasing to see their manager – together with two other Premier League bosses – backing this newspaper's renewed campaign to have John McDermott made an MBE. And as Shrewsbury arrive at Blundell Park tomorrow it's a timely reminder of his final game, back at Gay Meadow last May.
Macca would have been a Premier League player if he hadn't said no to Bradford, Ipswich and Sunderland. But this is exactly why he deserves the award. There are hundreds of Premier League players – and there's only one John McDermott.
Labels: bonetti, fentydome, ferguson, manchester united, mcdermott, premiership, shrewsbury, sky, sponsorship, tottenham
Friday, 18 January 2008
Soap springs eternal
My impression of Dagenham is that everyone there seems to spend most of their time miserably yelling their heads off at each other. Admittedly, I've never actually been to Dagenham, so there's every chance that this impression has been formed solely by watching Eastenders.
Eastenders is infamous for its spectacularly angry and depressing Christmas episodes, in which someone always dies horribly and a formal public announcement is made in the Queen Vic that they were carrying on a torrid affair with three of their grandparents. Everyone gets a massive benny on and someone wrestles emotionally with a Christmas tree.
Dagenham & Redbridge FC have followed the festive form of their local soap, with a recent slump dragging the side to the brink of relegation. There wasn't actually a creepy affair or a tearful pine-flinging exhibition, but a 4-0 defeat at Shrewsbury must be football's closest equivalent.
Despite the furious rages Eastenders characters are given to, none of them ever swear. This is because people who watch Eastenders are irredeemably delicate souls who would expire in a faint if they ever hear an oath more forceful than "you bleedin' toerag".
It is uncertain whether Town fans visiting Victoria Road tomorrow will be spared the horrors of foul language, but we should at least forewarn ourselves with the knowledge that Bamass Lettejallow is not an Essex expletive but the name of a Dagenham & Redbridge centre-forward.
In Eastenders, being northern is a kind of shorthand for criminality. Every northern character turns out to be some kind of thug, thief, rapist or drug dealer. This may be the reason why London football fans sing songs about their opponents being dirty northerners. Although, bizarrely, they still seem to sing them when their team is playing Coventry or Leicester.
Every so often the writers of Eastenders decide to make one of their characters into a big football fan. With no real knowledge of the culture they're writing about, they presumably type "football" and "east London" into Google and come up with West Ham, with the result that Albert Square is populated by people who are passionate Hammers fans for about two weeks of every year.
Given that Dagenham are struggling to attract 2,000 fans this season, you can't help suspecting that most of the population supports its local club on a similar basis.
It would be unfair, of course, to dismiss an entire football club as dodgy Cockney barrowboys on the basis of one ropey TV soap. At the same time, though, I have it on good authority that when a Dagenham manager resigns, rather than present the assistant with a formal written invitation to act as caretaker, the chairman simply asks him: "'Ere, can yer look awfter me stall fer a minute?"
Eastenders is infamous for its spectacularly angry and depressing Christmas episodes, in which someone always dies horribly and a formal public announcement is made in the Queen Vic that they were carrying on a torrid affair with three of their grandparents. Everyone gets a massive benny on and someone wrestles emotionally with a Christmas tree.
Dagenham & Redbridge FC have followed the festive form of their local soap, with a recent slump dragging the side to the brink of relegation. There wasn't actually a creepy affair or a tearful pine-flinging exhibition, but a 4-0 defeat at Shrewsbury must be football's closest equivalent.
Despite the furious rages Eastenders characters are given to, none of them ever swear. This is because people who watch Eastenders are irredeemably delicate souls who would expire in a faint if they ever hear an oath more forceful than "you bleedin' toerag".
It is uncertain whether Town fans visiting Victoria Road tomorrow will be spared the horrors of foul language, but we should at least forewarn ourselves with the knowledge that Bamass Lettejallow is not an Essex expletive but the name of a Dagenham & Redbridge centre-forward.
In Eastenders, being northern is a kind of shorthand for criminality. Every northern character turns out to be some kind of thug, thief, rapist or drug dealer. This may be the reason why London football fans sing songs about their opponents being dirty northerners. Although, bizarrely, they still seem to sing them when their team is playing Coventry or Leicester.
Every so often the writers of Eastenders decide to make one of their characters into a big football fan. With no real knowledge of the culture they're writing about, they presumably type "football" and "east London" into Google and come up with West Ham, with the result that Albert Square is populated by people who are passionate Hammers fans for about two weeks of every year.
Given that Dagenham are struggling to attract 2,000 fans this season, you can't help suspecting that most of the population supports its local club on a similar basis.
It would be unfair, of course, to dismiss an entire football club as dodgy Cockney barrowboys on the basis of one ropey TV soap. At the same time, though, I have it on good authority that when a Dagenham manager resigns, rather than present the assistant with a formal written invitation to act as caretaker, the chairman simply asks him: "'Ere, can yer look awfter me stall fer a minute?"
Labels: christmas, dagenham, eastenders, london, north, soap, south, swearing
Friday, 11 January 2008
Fish out of water
We do things our own way in Grimsby. We have our own cuisine, which steadfastly excludes garlic, spices and other "foreign muck". We have our own language, as any visitor will know who has been told "giz a pag – I'm playing togger down the Ploggers". We have our own system of government, in which nimbyocracy has been replaced by Fentyism.
And just as our communication becomes suddenly less effective when we go to another town and ask at the bar for a pint of diesel, so some of the finest footballers in Mariners shirts have failed spectacularly to fit in when they have moved on to other clubs.
Tomorrow's visitors to Blundell Park are Wrexham, who supplied one of Alan Buckley's best signings when Shaun Cunnington arrived from the Racecourse Ground in 1988. Cunnington formed a powerful midfield partnership with John Cockerill, and after five years with Town was prized away by Sunderland for £650,000 – where he managed 60-odd games in three seasons and was voted by readers of A Love Supreme fanzine into the club's "all-time misfits XI".
Much of Cunnington's career post-GTFC was spoiled by injury – but the same can't be said of another his replacement in Town's midfield, Paul Groves. Despite scoring five times in only 30 starts for West Brom, Groves was never accepted at the Hawthorns, and his signing seemed a key factor in Buckley's sacking a few months later.
Groves was a huge success back at BP, but struggled again after leaving for a second time. "Weird how the names Donovan and Groves can evoke wistful longing for better times in some fans," a York fan told me recently, "whereas they strike fear into the heart of me in recalling probably the worst City team I've seen."
Kevin Donovan had a hard time at Barnsley too, where fans rated him one of the club's worst ever signings. Speaking of players who did a turn at Oakwell, Peter Handyside looked a Scottish international in waiting while a Mariner; three years after leaving us he was playing – while still aged only 30 – for Northwich Victoria.
At this point I would mention Darren Barnard, who left the Mariners on a Bosman when we were relegated in 2004 because he didn't want to play in the fourth division – and ended up having to join Aldershot in the Conference. But he wasn't much cop when he played for us.
So if non-Grimbarians look at us blankly when we tell them we're taking our grufty cloves to the bagwash, it's clearly their fault for not speaking English properly. And if Everton think they were robbed blind when they paid us £1.75m for John Oster, well, it's not our fault if other teams don't know the right way to play football.
And just as our communication becomes suddenly less effective when we go to another town and ask at the bar for a pint of diesel, so some of the finest footballers in Mariners shirts have failed spectacularly to fit in when they have moved on to other clubs.
Tomorrow's visitors to Blundell Park are Wrexham, who supplied one of Alan Buckley's best signings when Shaun Cunnington arrived from the Racecourse Ground in 1988. Cunnington formed a powerful midfield partnership with John Cockerill, and after five years with Town was prized away by Sunderland for £650,000 – where he managed 60-odd games in three seasons and was voted by readers of A Love Supreme fanzine into the club's "all-time misfits XI".
Much of Cunnington's career post-GTFC was spoiled by injury – but the same can't be said of another his replacement in Town's midfield, Paul Groves. Despite scoring five times in only 30 starts for West Brom, Groves was never accepted at the Hawthorns, and his signing seemed a key factor in Buckley's sacking a few months later.
Groves was a huge success back at BP, but struggled again after leaving for a second time. "Weird how the names Donovan and Groves can evoke wistful longing for better times in some fans," a York fan told me recently, "whereas they strike fear into the heart of me in recalling probably the worst City team I've seen."
Kevin Donovan had a hard time at Barnsley too, where fans rated him one of the club's worst ever signings. Speaking of players who did a turn at Oakwell, Peter Handyside looked a Scottish international in waiting while a Mariner; three years after leaving us he was playing – while still aged only 30 – for Northwich Victoria.
At this point I would mention Darren Barnard, who left the Mariners on a Bosman when we were relegated in 2004 because he didn't want to play in the fourth division – and ended up having to join Aldershot in the Conference. But he wasn't much cop when he played for us.
So if non-Grimbarians look at us blankly when we tell them we're taking our grufty cloves to the bagwash, it's clearly their fault for not speaking English properly. And if Everton think they were robbed blind when they paid us £1.75m for John Oster, well, it's not our fault if other teams don't know the right way to play football.
Labels: aldershot, barnard, barnsley, buckley, cockerill, cunnington, donovan, everton, groves, handyside, northwich, oster, parochialism, smalltown, sunderland, transfers, west brom, wrexham
Friday, 4 January 2008
All Saints, but no angels
Cheating in football takes place both on and off the field. On the field, of course, a player can take a dive to deceive the referee into awarding a penalty. And far from being frowned upon, this is now almost officially approved of.
Only this week on Match of the Day – the flagship football programme of the national public service broadcaster – a Middlesbrough forward was criticised for not cheating a penalty when the chance presented itself. "He could have been a bit clever there," said Alan Hansen, prompting an alarmed Gary Lineker to hurriedly praise the player's honesty and head off a BBC scandal that would have pushed Queenie-huff-gate and Phone-in-rip-off-gate firmly into the shade.
And if the powers that be are too weak to punish cheating on the field of play, they seem similarly unwilling or unable to deal properly with dishonesty off the pitch. Whoever said cheats never prosper reckoned without the football authorities' cowardice in declining to take firm measures against clubs who have blown on the windy side of the law – or whose approach to accountancy has been a little too creative.
Just as some Chesterfield fans refer lamely to a nearby rival as "Mans-failed", some other supporters have rechristened the Derbyshire side "Cheaterfield". This refers to the 2001 inquiry into irregularities at Saltergate surrounding transfer fees, payments to players and the reporting of attendance figures. (It's just a coincidence that Nicky Law was in charge at the time; by the time he arrived at Grimsby there were hardly any transfer fees, payments to players and attendances left to misreport.)
The Football League fined Chesterfield a crippling £20,000 and docked them a whole nine points – just enough to make sure they still got promoted. A year later Boston United's points deduction for similar misdemeanours was carried over to the following season – which made sure they still got promoted. And by the time the FA got round to punishing West Ham for the Tevez thing last season, they said it was too late to deduct points (it would have been "unfair on their fans", apparently: never mind about Watford's, Charlton's and Sheffield United's). So they stayed in the Premier League and will receive around £45m in TV money this season alone. I'd say that's fairly prosperous, wouldn't you?
And the last time Town visited Saltergate, in March 2004, Chesterfield won two penalties by "being a bit clever" and stole a 4-4 draw. At the end of the season they finished one point ahead of Town – staying up in the third division at our expense.
Many a Grimbarian, then, has already concluded that the spire at St Mary's and All Saints church isn't the only thing that's crooked around those parts. Still, at least Alan Hansen would approve.
Only this week on Match of the Day – the flagship football programme of the national public service broadcaster – a Middlesbrough forward was criticised for not cheating a penalty when the chance presented itself. "He could have been a bit clever there," said Alan Hansen, prompting an alarmed Gary Lineker to hurriedly praise the player's honesty and head off a BBC scandal that would have pushed Queenie-huff-gate and Phone-in-rip-off-gate firmly into the shade.
And if the powers that be are too weak to punish cheating on the field of play, they seem similarly unwilling or unable to deal properly with dishonesty off the pitch. Whoever said cheats never prosper reckoned without the football authorities' cowardice in declining to take firm measures against clubs who have blown on the windy side of the law – or whose approach to accountancy has been a little too creative.
Just as some Chesterfield fans refer lamely to a nearby rival as "Mans-failed", some other supporters have rechristened the Derbyshire side "Cheaterfield". This refers to the 2001 inquiry into irregularities at Saltergate surrounding transfer fees, payments to players and the reporting of attendance figures. (It's just a coincidence that Nicky Law was in charge at the time; by the time he arrived at Grimsby there were hardly any transfer fees, payments to players and attendances left to misreport.)
The Football League fined Chesterfield a crippling £20,000 and docked them a whole nine points – just enough to make sure they still got promoted. A year later Boston United's points deduction for similar misdemeanours was carried over to the following season – which made sure they still got promoted. And by the time the FA got round to punishing West Ham for the Tevez thing last season, they said it was too late to deduct points (it would have been "unfair on their fans", apparently: never mind about Watford's, Charlton's and Sheffield United's). So they stayed in the Premier League and will receive around £45m in TV money this season alone. I'd say that's fairly prosperous, wouldn't you?
And the last time Town visited Saltergate, in March 2004, Chesterfield won two penalties by "being a bit clever" and stole a 4-4 draw. At the end of the season they finished one point ahead of Town – staying up in the third division at our expense.
Many a Grimbarian, then, has already concluded that the spire at St Mary's and All Saints church isn't the only thing that's crooked around those parts. Still, at least Alan Hansen would approve.
Labels: bbc, boston, cheating, chesterfield, corruption, diving, hansen, law, lineker, match of the day, west ham
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