Wembley Blues

I have been lying in a darkened room since late on Sunday night, the effects of the alcohol have now warn off and the painful realisation of a sixth year in non-league football is beginning to sink in! I feel emotionally ripped apart and have no desire to leave Garibaldi House and venture into the real world - what happened on Sunday was worse than any defeat I've known. When we lost our league status that sad day at Burton, it had some inevitability about it but Sunday was despair snatched from the jaws of hope!

However bad Sunday was, there have been some huge positives this season and we have become a proper football team again, playing some excellent football peppered with the odd disaster - who wants to remember losing at home on a Tuesday evening 1 - nil to Southport and he had to score didn't he! There were the two local derbies against Lincoln, losing at Sincil Bank was bad enough but how we capitulated at home to them after going into the lead was a true horror show. It took us a few weeks to recover but it shows the players mental strength because they did recover and if there had been another fives games would surely have gained automatic promotion. Even though Barnet were champions I think the best two teams in the league were Bristol Rovers and the Mariners, in fact the best team to visit Blundell Park all season were Bristol Rovers. Barnet had an excellent goal scorer in John Akinde, but the Mariners did do the double over them, after they got off to a flying start to the season. I think one clear advantage this season was getting knocked out of the FA Trophy relatively early so it didn't become a distraction and lead to a fixture congestion in March/April.

The emotional impact of Sunday's defeat will be difficult to get over for the management, players and supporters. I know we lost to Wrexham on penalties in the FA Trophy final in 2013, but that was nothing compared to Sunday and many of us were more worried about losing fingers and toes to frost bite. I think it would have been easier if we had lost 2 - nil, it was the fact that we took it all the way and were clearly the better side. I have no idea why their goalkeeper was not sent off for handball, even though that apart he actually looked a good player, and their striker Taylor could easily have been sent off. The Grimsby support as usual were immense and even though Bristol Rovers (population of Bristol - 437,500) had twice as many supporters as Town (population of N.E. Lincolnshire - 159,800) we still drowned them out! Darrell Clarke their manager said all the right things about Grimsby Town (even with his shenanigans over the Grimsby Telegraph! I think its a right wing piece of shite), but it will be interesting to see how long he stays at Rovers.

Anyway, there's no point dwelling on it and we must move forward, so let us make 2016 our promotion season and get off to a flying start. This means that we need to get the vast majority of the players signed up as soon as possible (good luck to all those released, especially Ross Hannah). We need to build on both the excellent team spirit and support into an automatic promotion push. If we compare the squad as it is to all the other teams in the Conference then we are clearly better than the rest, obviously the two teams relegated have the advantage of parachute payments (we wasted our's years ago!) but I see Tranmere Rovers being the more dangerous of the two. However, it is likely that it will take time for them to adjust (as it did with Bristol Rovers) and we need to build up a good points gap (like Barnet this season) before they get used to the Conference. We also need to treat the FA Trophy with the contempt that the Conference administrators treat Grimsby. We should play a mixture of reserves and juniors, and play the first team only in league matches and the FA Cup. If they do well in the FA Trophy good luck to them and it will give them more experience.

We need to get the whole community behind the team so youngsters would rather watch the Mariners rather than Man United or Liverpool on television (I can't believe that there will be school children now who have never experienced Town as a league club). Those plastic supporters that you see in the precinct with their premier league team's shirt on need to remember football is more than Man United and Chelsea. It's clubs like Grimsby Town that make football what it is - it's not that long ago that the Mariners beat Liverpool at Anfield, or Manchester City and Chelsea at Blundell Park.

Come on people of North East Lincolnshire get down to Blundell Park, and make it into a fortress - let's make 2016 Grimsby Town's promotion season and build on what we did on Sunday!!

UTM
Captain Haddock.