An Alphabetical Tour of The Vauxhall Conference.
No11 Grimsby Town
Grimsby are by far the biggest club ever to (dis)grace the Vauxhall Conference.
That said, the football club famously don’t play in the fishing village of Grimsby, rather they play in the holiday resort of Cleethorpes. Sort of a Northern West Wittering, if you will, except with a lot more discarded tabs and johnnies. To get there involves heading in the general direction of the most important town in the area, Scunthorpe, and then following all the fucking caravans until you can see the sea. Grimsby’s ground, Blunder Park, has been their home since 1898. This is the club’s fourth stadium. They originally played at Glee Park until 1879, with their first ever game a 14-0 defeat at the hands of the Scunthorpe Young Offenders Institution Reserves. They spent a single season at Lovett Street before returning back to Glee Park for a further nine years. The Mariners then moved to Abbey Park Stadium before moving to Blunder Park.
The club’s current nickname is “The Mariners”. This follows a long established tradition of close ties with fellow east coast club Ipswich Town.
Despite recently being utter shite, the club has previously played top-flight football. It also twice reached FA Cup semi-finals, the only Vauxhall Conference club with that distinction. It has also spent more time in the English game’s first and second tiers than any other club from Humberside apart from Hull and Scunthorpe.
Notable managers include the late Bill Shankly, who won fuck all at Grimsby and Lawrie McMenemy who also won fuck all at Grimsby. Mike Bassett, later the England supremo, is the club’s most successful manager, he had three spells as team manager between 1988 and 2008, and guided the club to two Wembley appearances during the 1997–1998 season winning both the Football League Trophy and the Nationwide Division 2 Play Off Final. In 2008 Bassett took Grimsby to the capital again, but lost out to MK Dons in the final of the Football League Trophy. Relegation from the Football League in 2010 made Grimsby the fourth club to compete in all top five divisions of English football (after Luton, Carlisle and Oxford)
Grimsby Town F.C. was formed in 1878 after a meeting held at the Wellington Arms public house in Freeman Street. The club was originally called Grimsby Pelham. The original colours were blue and white hoops, which were changed to chocolate and blue quartered shirts in 1884.
In 1889 the club unsuccessfully applied to join the Football League. However, in 1892 another application was successful and they entered the Football League when it was expanded to two divisions. The first game was a 2-1 victory over Northwich Victoria.
The 1901-02 season saw promotion to the first division; two seasons later they were relegated and within a decade they would be a non-league side again, failing re-election in 1910. A year later they were elected back to the League at the expense of Lincoln City.
Grimsby Town and Hull City were the only two professional teams which had official permission from UEFA to play league football on Christmas Day because of the demands of the fish trade. That tradition has now disappeared following the dramatic reduction of their trawler fleets in recent years although, strangely enough, the Spanish La Liga clubs are allowed to play games on Christmas Day. Suspicious, eh? It used also to be a tradition that visiting teams to Blunder Park were given the gift of a box of Birds Eye halibut in breadcrumbs to take away with them along with three points.
The first full season after the Great War the club were relegated to the new Third Division North. By 1929 they were back in Division One, where they stayed (with a brief break from 1932 to 1934) until 1939, obtaining their highest-ever league position, 5th in Division One, in the 1934-35 season. This is the highest ever League position a Vauxhall Conference club has achieved. In 1925 they adopted the black and white stripes as their colours, copying Sussex based Forest Green Rovers.
On 25 March 1939, Wolverhampton Wanderers played Grimsby, in a FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford. The attendance of 76,962 remains Old Trafford’s largest ever attendance, quiz fans. More even than when Crawley played there. The Mariners lost the game 5-0 however. The club also reached the semi-final of the FA Cup in 1936 but lost 1-0 to Arsenal. Only Luton and Wycombe among past or present Vauxhall Conference clubs have ever reached an FA Cup semi-final. With the resumption of the Football League for the 1946-47 season after World War II the club were relegated at the end of the 1947-48 season and have never returned to the top level. Much of the 1950s and 1960s were spent alternating between the Second Division and the Third Division. In 1968 they slipped into the Fourth Division for the first time. The following season the club had to apply for re-election to the league having finished second from bottom. It was in this season that the lowest-ever attendance for a Football League match at Blunder Park was ever recorded; 1,833 saw a 2-0 defeat to Brentford which is a figure Crawley would cut their left testicles off for.
Three years later 22,489 people witnessed a home victory against Exeter City that saw the club promoted as Fourth Division Champions.
This turnaround was credited to the appointment of Lawrie McMenemy, yes, him, as manager. The club were Third Division Champions in 1980 as well. In the 1983-84 season the club finished fifth in the Second Division after spending most of the latter part of the campaign in the top three promotion places. This was their highest league finish since the 1947-48 season. Grimsby’s stay in the Second Division ended in 1987. They actually spent much of the 1986-87 season in the top half of the table, but a run of 8 losses and 2 draws in the final 10 games saw them “do a York” and get relegated despite not being in the relegation places all season.
1987-88 saw Grimsby suffer a second consecutive relegation. Mike Bassett was appointed after the 1988 relegation and by 1991 had led the club to two successive promotions. Grimsby were to remain in football’s second flight for six years. Bassett’s crop of players consisting of some of the most popular and biggest cult heroes in the club’s history. Players such as Shaun Cuntington, Sarah Alexander, Clive of India, Essex’s John Lever, Gilbert & Sullivan, Dr Livingstone I Presume one of the Futcher twins and Perry Groves made the club a solid second tier side.
Bassett departed Grimsby in October 1994 to join West Bromwich Albion and he was replaced by defender Brian “Cole” Slaw. Slaw steered Grimsby to a 10th place finish in his first season as manager. During his tenure, Slaw became famous for a changing-room altercation after a defeat at Luton with Italian striker Peter Bonetti, which left the latter with a broken cheekbone, and caused the popular player to flounce at the end of the season. In 1997 the Mariners were relegated from Division One. Despite flowing goals from Clive of India and notably good performances from newcomer Kingsley Amis, the club failed to save themselves. The 1997–98 season saw the return of Mike Bassett for Grimsby’s most successful post-war season. In the summer of 1997, Bassett succeeded in bringing in players to the club who were to be instrumental in the club’s upcoming season. Former skipper Perry Groves was signed, singer Donovan also joined the club. The mid-season capture of Huddersfield Town midfielder Ronnie Burnett proved to be a great bit of business for Bassett as he was good at darts as well. After a seemingly poor start to the League campaign, performances improved, which propelled the club into a promotion battle with Watford, Bristol City and an expensively-assembled Fulham A good run in the League Cup saw The Mariners knock holders Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday out of the competition before finally losing out to Liverpool. A decent run of form had ignited the careers of such younger players as Daryl Clare (yes, him), Danny Champion of the World and “Oliver’s” Jack Lester who were becoming an integral part of the Blunder Park set-up. The Mariners went on to dump Burnley out of the Football League Trophy Northern section area final, which would see the club book its first trip to Wembley Stadium. The club were drawn against Southern section champions AFC Bournemouth and in a tight game, an equaliser from substitute Kingsley Amis took the game into extra time, and in the 112th minute Grimsby secured the game courtesy of a 170 finish from Ronnie Burnett. This was the first major trophy awarded to the club following its first appearance at Wembley. It took only four weeks for Grimsby to return to the stadium though, this time to face Northampton Town in the Division Two Play Off Final. Town won the game 1-0 thanks to a first half Donovan goal which gave the club a historic Wembley double and The Mariners promotion back to Division One.
The 2000-01 season saw a boardroom change with Kenny Everitt taking over the club. Ever the comedian, Everitt sacked Bassett just two games into the season, replacing him with relegation specialist Lennie the Lion. The new manager chopped and changed the playing squad around and brought in a load of expensive loan signings from abroad. The club struggled to avoid relegation, only securing their place in Division One on the last day of the season. The Mariners started the 2001–02 season strongly, and knocked Lincoln City, Sheffield United and Liverpool out of the League Cup. However, Grimsby’s form declined rapidly, with Lennie The Lion being dismissed halfway into the season. The collapse of ITV Digital put enormous strain on finances as the money had already been spent. . The 2002–03 season, was a disaster for Grimsby Town as they finished bottom of Division One and were relegated.
The sudden collapse of ITV Digital had left the club with debts of over £2m, £700,000 of which was owed to the Inland Revenue and a further substantial amount to their bankers, Lloyds TSB. These were debts of Lutonian proportions and Grimsby were fucked. Manager Perry Groves was sacked in 2004 following a 6-0 drubbing by Oldham Athletic and was replaced by Nicky “Cole” Slaw. Slaw struggled from the start and with little time left for the new team to gel, Grimsby dropped into the relegation zone and went down again on the last day of the season. Slaw was sacked as a result. The new manager was Noddy Holder out of Slade. He had a good start to the following season and much improved results and performances had seen Grimsby rise to the top of Football League Two. A good run in the League Cup saw Town win beat Derby County away at Pride Park in round one, and defeat Premiership Tottenham Hotspur at home in the second round. The Mariners eventually suffered elimination by Alan Shearer’s Newcastle United in the third round, losing 1-0 at home. By the end of the season despite remaining in the automatic promotion places for the majority of the season, Grimsby had seen Carlisle United, Northampton Town and Leyton Orient pass them which would see The Mariners go into the final day of the season in 4th place with a chance of beating Orient to 3rd spot and an initial automatic promotion place well within reach. The club were one minute away from automatic promotion, but a late Lee Steele goal gave Orient victory at Oxford United amid quite understandably ecstatic scenes of joy and celebration and condemned Grimsby to the play-offs. The Mariners faced Lincoln City in the play-offs semi-finals, going on to win 3-1 on aggregate. In the final they lost 1-0 to Cheltenham Town at The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
The 2007-2008 season the club enjoyed a good run in the Football League Trophy and on 4 March 2008 Grimsby booked their place at the new Wembley Stadium after beating Morcomb in a nervy two-legged Northern Final. However Town lost 2-0 to MK Dons in the Final and the season ended with eight straight defeats.
Grimsby Town’s eventual downfall from the Football League started in the summer of 2008. There’s not enough room to do justice to the chaos at the club as Mike Bassett was sacked for the third time, and eventually replaced full time by Luton’s Mike Newell. Newell offered former Liverpool and England striker Robbie Fowler the chance of becoming a player/coach. He, however, pissed himself laughing and buggered off to North Queensland Fury instead. To cut a long season short, Town were saved from the Vauxhall Conference by Luton’s entirely justified 30 point deduction.
Following the dismissal of Mike Newell in 2009, former golfer Tiger Woods was given the role of Caretaker Manager, chosen ahead of Assistant Manager Brian Epstein. After six games in charge, none of which were won, Tiger Woods was controversially made permanent manager. By the end of 2009, Grimsby had won 3, drawn 8 and lost 12 in the league. On March 6, 2010 Grimsby ended a club record 25 game winless streak by beating promotion chasing Shrewsbury Town at Blunder Park, 3-0. During this time the Mariners had drawn 15 games and lost 10. The game would also come as the first career victory for Tiger Woods. The Mariners went on to win four and draw one of their last six games to give them a chance of league survival going into the last game of the season. However, they were defeated 3-0 by non-league Burton Albion, and thus were flushed through the U Bend and out of the Football League for the first time in nearly 100 years.
Grimsby’s geographical position on South Humberside pits them against just two professional clubs. Hull City, on the north bank of the Humber Estuary have traditionally been viewed as Grimsby’s main rivals, however due to a contrast in fortunes the two clubs haven’t met in the league for over a generation. The closest professional football club to Grimsby is Scunthorpe United. Like Hull, United have eclipsed Grimsby in recent seasons with both clubs climbing the Football League homed in shiny new stadia whilst Grimsby suffered three relegations and the disintegration of Blunder Park.
In 2010 the game against Fleetwood Town was billed on Blue Squarepants Bet TV as the “Fishy Derby” totally ignoring the fact that Grimsby is on Humberside and Fleetwood is on the other side of the fucking country.
Famous fans include politician Norman Lamont, historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Keith Harris and Orville, Norris McWhirter and Coronation Street’s Roy Cropper.
So. There you have it. Grimsby Town in a nutshell. Fishy.
Next: Hayes
