This weekend is the big one, the fierce Lincolnshire Derby in which form and quality often goes out of the window. Last season, despite Grimsby having a terrible time, we drew 0-0 at their place and we’ve only done the double once in 40 years over our foes.
Ahead of the game, we’ve been chatting to Grimsby Town fan Alex of the DN35 podcast, where we laid out the same seven questions we gave to Ben from Swindon Town last week. We’ve packaged them a bit differently, but it still smells a bit like a new feature. Like every new feature, I suspect I’ll get a bit bored in a week or two and drop it.
Anyway, for now, he are seven questions (which are actually eight or nine) we asked a Grimsby Town fan.
1. It’s the big one, certainly in terms of hostility and location. Are Lincoln your ‘big’ derby? Do you think these days there’s almost a shared respect after our recent struggles?
We don’t have another local rival down here, I certainly detest Franchise FC and Stevenage more. I quite like you lot I was worried you would go out of business a few years ago, attendances were in the toilet and those Town fans I know wished you well and wanted you to do well (You can stop now though).
For our younger fans who have grown up in the lower leagues or even non-league it’s probably massive to them. Those of us who grew up in a time of Buckley and good football we didn’t share a league with local rivals and as such we kind of drifted picking up adversaries as we went, for a while it was Sheffield Wednesday as we battled to avoid dropping out of Division One or anyone from Yorkshire tended to get some half-hearted grief.
In my 25 years as a Grimsby fan we have only ever played Scunthorpe twice in the League and have never met Hull at all aside from friendlies and in the once legitimate but sadly no more Football League Trophy (See what I did there?).
As we started to meet you in the League the novelty of having a proper local team to play was of great interest I remember cycling from Blundell Park to Sincil Bank together for charity but I think rivalries need to be built on teams having the upper hand on one another for a while. If I keep seeing banners banging on about Shadows and Eternity, don’t worry it might be the beginning of something new.
2. How do you feel the season has started and what are your hopes going forward.
Forest Green was a punch to the gut and the scoreline believe it or not might have even flattered us. Macclesfield was much more like it but it’s far too early to tell I believe we have the right man in charge and will probably finish mid-table and continue to build.
We seem to be bringing in the right sort of players but it will take time to challenge you or the automatic spots again. My worry is Jolley will go and the carousel of chaos will start all over again with Fenty picking a guy out of a tombola or asking the first guy he see’s at a wedding to have a go.
3. John Fenty – discuss
Even up until June last year I wasn’t totally sure, I couldn’t work out if he was either a well-intentioned idiot or a slum landlord just letting us slowly rot away. But now it’s hard to argue he is anything but a danger to the club, we’re dying slowly like a frog in a boiling pot. His list of errors runs long and those below barely scratch the surface.
Suggesting female fans were smuggling pyro’s in as tampons.
Ambushing a BBC reporter at a fan’s forum for simply doing his job.
Threatening to pull out his investment if the Supporters Trust didn’t hand over their shares.
Breaking a child’s flag in anger during a game
In a tour of the ground uttering the sentence “We even have a sink for the lady referees.”
Replacing an award-winning SLO with a club employee who doesn’t attend away games.
Personally I think John Fenty is the biggest danger to this football club and it’s survival since we had to play games at Scunthorpe after German bombers decided to drop cluster bombs on the town. But with his “benign loans” strangling the club of any resources as well as keeping investors at a distance just to limit the losses he has inflicted on himself and us, I worry he will be with us for a long time to come.
only played Scunny one season in the last 25 years! Is that true?
Yep, Grimsby spent a fair chunk of time in the second tier whilst Scunny were in the fourth tier. Scunny went up for a single year in the late 90s but Grimsby stayed in what is now the Championship until 2003, then suffered a double relegation. They met in the 2004/5 season, at the end of which Scunthorpe went up and they’ve been at least one division higher than them ever since.