24 hours from Pyewipe

Seismologists are hard at work investigating the cause of this week's Market Rasen earthquake, which is pretty much the first time anything has ever had an epicentre in northern Lincolnshire apart from the explosion in teenage pregnancy.

During this inquiry one crucial piece of evidence must not be overlooked: an important seismic event which took place just four hours earlier in an adjacent region of the Earth's crust. I refer, of course, to Grimsby Town winning away at Morecambe in the first leg of the northern area final of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.

After all, it is surely no coincidence that Cleethorpes people could be heard shortly afterwards reeling off shouts such as "Only 5.2 on the Richter scale? We should be beating these 8.6", "Booooooo, no ambition, sack the quake", and "You're not fit to move the earth".

And Britain's last major tremor was the Dudley earthquake of 2002. Its epicentre in the West Midlands prompted researchers to conclude that it resulted from a clash between the vastly oversized expectations of Wolves fans and the immense mass of Aston Villa's historical baggage.

Not that earthquakes are the only so-called natural disaster that is really attributable to football. We are told that climate change is responsible for events such as the flooding of Hull last summer, but they never mention that this particular climate change event was precipitated by the second most popular local sport, as the mere prospect of relegation prompted Hull City's 90 per cent glory-seeking fan contingent to bawl their eyes out for weeks on end.

(Incidentally, the Yorkshire floods were remarkable for another reason. After the plight of the victims was ignored by the national media, one local MP dubbed Hull "the forgotten city". This was a tremendous coincidence, as many Grimbarians had already been calling it that for years.)

So two more matches with Morecambe stand in the way of Town's great surge upward from the depths. The Earth's tectonic plates, as we have seen, can make great lurching movements from one position to another, without warning and with potentially destructive consequences – much like the Mariners' form and confidence since the return of Alan Buckley.

One expert has suggested that this week's tremor resulted from "the reactivation of an old fault zone which has lain dormant for tens or hundreds of millions of years".

This is close to the truth, as the fault zone has indeed lain dormant, but only for ten years – and it runs straight through Grimsby. On one side of it is a very recently created upward motion caused by the powerful resurgence of the local football club. On the other are billions of tonnes of overwhelming downward pressure exerted by the irresistible natural force of local pessimism.

Labels: buckley, earthquakes, flooding, football league trophy, hull, morecambe, optimism, pessimism, science, west midlands, yorkshire

The laws of football, you would expect, are the chief set of principles that guide events at Blundell Park – closely followed these days by the laws of finance and of economics. But all these systems are overwhelmed by the most powerful laws of all: the laws of physics.

If you break a law of physics the results can be catastrophic. You might turn everything to grey goo. You might unleash a devastating wave of destruction as the fabric of the Universe collapses in on itself. Or, worst of all, you might stuff up your bid for promotion out of the fourth division.

One of the best-known laws of physics concerns momentum. Momentum is defined as the product of mass and velocity. This means the heavier something is, the longer it will keep moving. But Town's 2006 play-off campaign ended in disaster at Cardiff as this law of physics was flagrantly contravened every week by Tony Crane.

Momentum also means that large objects need more of a push to get going, but once they've started there's no stopping them. Gary Jones, you may have noticed, doesn't tend to score many goals in the first two or three months of the season, while his form from about December onwards is invariably fantastic.

Earlier in this decade, and for much of the 1990s, it was the momentum created by previous upward motion through the Football League that sustained the Mariners as a second division club. In 2003 and 2004, as Town plummeted two divisions to a level more suited to our modest degree of support, we discovered the dangerous consequences of attempting to defy gravity.

Another important concept in physics is Brownian motion. This is the principle whereby a group of particles move at high speeds in random directions and frequently collide, resulting in chaos. Real-life examples include specks of pollen on the surface of a liquid, traders on the stock market, and Town's back four in the first three months of this season.

And while some have accused Jason Crowe, Martin Gritton and Stuart Campbell of being lazy players, they were simply following the laws of physics: in their case, the law of the conservation of energy.

Finally, there is quantum physics – the study of all those really tiny little things and how they act really weirdly (do stop me if I'm getting too technical). Quantum scientists have recently discovered that the form of some bodies actually changes if you study them too closely.

So you feel the urge for a 'P' word in the weeks ahead, don't think about play-offs and don't think about promotion, because the form of the bodies on Blundell Park will change if you study it too closely. Think about physics instead.

Labels: campbell, crane, crowe, failure, gritton, jones, laws, physics, play-offs, promotion, relegation, rules, science