Ok, so I lied when I said the 1980/81 article was the first of Chris Smith's season reviews. What can I say? We like to be unpredictable.

My first Grimsby game was at the start of the 1979/80 season when I went with a school friend, Don, at the ripe old age of 17. I had always had an interest in football and played it frequently in break times at school and afterwards down People’s Park on warm spring and summer evenings.

I can feel a warm nostalgia enveloping me as I write this because it was probably the last time that life was free of complications and the future seemed full of endless possibilities. I read all the footie comics, Roy of The Rovers, Score n Roar (if I remember correctly) and Shoot when it was worth reading. I hated playing organised sport at school, probably because I was small for my age in my teens and had all the angst after games lessons of being a late developer.

 
I had never been to watch a football game as nobody in my family was really interested in the game (although both my brothers now go to games when they are about) and not that many in the town had been for a few seasons either. I was also constrained by my paper rounds for Robinson’s newsagents on Littlefield Lane where I had the morning, evening and Sunday rounds so that I could speed up my rate of tooth decay.

 On a Saturday evening we had to do an extra round and deliver “the football” as it was called whereupon we would be approached by several folk every weekend if we had a spare to sell. The answer was invariably negative as in those days the only copies went to subscribers. I suppose this is the first time I had really focussed on Town’s scores as I would have a read of the match report and look at the statistics for that day. In the 1977/78 season, Grimsby had started to turn their fortunes around and I had noticed that we had started winning more than we lost, a fact that I stored away in the recesses of my mind.

Back to that first game and whilst I could look up the match in Rothmans and tell you who scored, all I remember is that Town went 2-0 up against Blackpool and I had that first feeling of pride in my home town. I recall that the game was exciting and that I thought Town would score every time they came forward. However, I had my first taste of reality when Blackpool not only equalised but then had the cheek to go ahead before Town eventually won 4-3. In those days, there was often a bit of side entertainment on offer, usually a scuffle amongst rival fans (which I quickly noticed got the attention and often approval from spectators of all ages) but also from a craze known as “spreading” where a miscreant would find a position of prominence and then drop their kecks and spread their buttocks for the amusement of their audience. At this game, the lad in question chose the roof of the Barretts Stand.

I was still an innocent at this football lark and was astounded back in the Sixth Form at Hereford Comprehensive School on the following Monday morning when I recounted the match experience and found that quite a few of my fellow “students” also went to the games regularly although as now, it may have been that they wanted to keep this a secret habit. As with anything else I have done in my lifetime of addiction, I was immediately obsessed with my new interest. Town had also scored 4 in their opening game against Exeter City so I was calculating that we were going to score well over a hundred that season, given that some games we might only get two or three. I had already conveniently forgotten that we had lost 3-1 at Chester in the first away game of the season.

I didn’t have that long to wait for my next game and went with the same lad to watch the home game against Huddersfield in the League Cup one Tuesday night. I was convinced that we had scored four goals but alas it was just the one in a 1-0 win in the first leg of the second round tie. There was a close knit group of us at school, myself, Don who had taken me to my first game, Steg, Doug and Joe. Don still goes to games when he can, as does Steg, and Doug picked a good one when he came to the Boxing Day game at home to Sheffield Wednesday in 1983.

In those days and during my relatively late introduction to alcohol, we used to drink at the Police Station social club in Victoria Street and monopolise the snooker table much to the chagrin of the local plod who to be fair always treated us well. My friend’s folks ran the bar there so there were no questions asked about how old we were. We went there after the Huddersfield game and I was still wondering whether I was the victim of an elaborate hoax as I was convinced that we had knocked in four but sadly had to accept that I have always had poor eyesight and it is getting worse. In fact, twenty nine years later, when the referee makes yet another poor decision my match mates point at me shouting “even he saw that!” Anyway, four bottles of Dry Blackthorn cider later and I was anybody’s if anyone would have had me.

One of the great things about the Police Station club was that it was extremely cheap so buying half pint bottles didn’t break my limited resources as it could elsewhere. Cider was very rare in draught form in those days and only a few select pubs in town offered such delights. I’m not sure that select is an appropriate term for pubs in Grimsby nearly thirty years ago where a pub meal was a box of peanuts or our personal favourite, Roast Ox crisps in the Royal Oak pub on Victoria Street.

We were playing snooker down at the station when we found out that Town had won the away leg 4-1. This was the start of many nights huddled close to a radio trying to catch up on the scores of away games whilst listening to the excellent Paul Hunsley Electric Wireless Show. It isn’t often that Radio Humberside and excellent go together in the same sentence in the minds of Grimsby fans but there you go. I can almost taste the high of those days now when I didn’t need too much drink to give me that warm cosy feeling and the fact that I had just started supporting a football team who it seemed would rarely let me down.

I was also learning a few good ruses such as scrunching up a pound note and raising it just above my thumb and inside finger to make it look as though I had a valid bus ticket on the bus up from the Royal Oak where we had got into the habit of a few pints (pint and a half in my case) before the game. When we got to the ground and went to the Pontoon turnstiles we would have a few mints to hide the smell of alcohol so we could blag our way in for 60p instead of the full price of £1.20. I don’t recall ever being told to pay the full whack although I’m sure they knew, despite the fact that I only needed a shave about once a week or so at that time. Just as going to football and learning how to drink was a rite of passage to adulthood, I think that the underage scam is a way of clinging on to childhood although paradoxically, I revert to childhood every time I go to a game nowadays.

I think the next game I went to was at home to Colchester and my first taste of defeat as we went down 2-1 to a team that would do the double over us. Things weren’t helped by me suffering from my first ever hangover having drunk five pints of mild the previous night at the Ross Sports Club where someone was having a birthday bash. I can’t even remember whose it was and certainly can’t remember getting home and spent the night throwing up profusely. Sadly, this wouldn’t be for the first time. This is certainly a rite of passage to be avoided. I can’t speak for other teenagers but even this early on in a drinking career, I felt utterly ashamed of the state I would get into, let alone the humbling thought that I couldn’t hold it as well as my peers. I did learn a lesson though and I haven’t touched mild to this day. I kept on the cider instead which, in retrospect, wasn’t one of my better life decisions.

I can’t quite recall the next game I went to. Given my limited funds and that overdrafts, credit cards and loans would all come later, I couldn’t afford to go out for even a few drinks and go to a game in the same week. I had taken on a store job but resented working, something that hasn’t always left me, and hated being told what to do (which has never left me) so I jacked that in and began nearly three decades of penury caused by overindulgence in the mad apples and GTFC.

Whilst on an absence of duty at Blundell Park, Town managed to beat second division Notts County 3-1 and first division Everton 2-1 in the League Cup to set up a quarter final tie against Wolves who were also in the top flight. I’d been to a home game against Wimbledon in the league and we beat them 1-0 in a game I took my youngest brother to. He was so impressed that the next game he turned up for was in the 1989/90 season, although I am happy or sad to report he has the bug as well albeit safely ensconced in Qatar.

I went to the Wolves game and experienced my first full house of over 23, 000 to see Town hit the woodwork on several occasions to earn a 0-0 draw against their top flight opponents. It was also my first experience of a big match atmosphere and the noise had to be heard to be believed. When I saw Town win at Everton in the 1984/85 as something of a veteran, Andy Gray who was in the Wolves team at Blundell Park and then plying his trade at Goodison Park, wrote in the programme notes that Everton would not want a replay at Grimsby because our fans made such a noise. For the record, they didn’t get a replay because we beat them there. But more of that later.

Town had been indifferent in the league and after a 1-0 defeat at Southend in November, had a record of won eight, drawn three, lost eight from nineteen games. We received the score from a friend’s mum as it was a Friday night and we were in the Haven. I was numb already from two pints of Blackthorn.

I couldn’t afford either of the replay games against Wolves who finally got past us at the third attempt and went on to win the League Cup that year. They were to meet Swindon Town in the semi finals and were extremely fortunate to get past them. I had mixed feelings about Swindon. They were upstaging our own tremendous cup form and were above us in the table to boot. I followed their results as well for a while as I admired their strike force of Alan Mayes and Andy Rowlands who were scoring goals for fun. I’d seen their prowess against Arsenal who they had beaten in the quarter finals when becoming a midweek devotee of Midweek Sports Special, even though you generally had to sit through a sport that bored you rigid to see the promised football highlights at the end of the programme. After all, who needed to watch boxing when you went to see Town play away in Yorkshire?

The next real highlight of my Town supporting career was getting a Grimsby scarf for Christmas and in current parlance, I was really made up. My parents had obviously got the message that I had found an all consuming new interest and for many years I was to wear those colours at any opportunity much to the amusement of so called more sophisticated followers of top division teams. The scarf got an outing the next day at home to Barnsley, a game we easily won 3-0 with Norman Hunter sent off for the visitors. We also had a five figure crowd which would be the norm for the remainder of the season. I couldn’t afford the trip to Liverpool in the FA Cup but saw Blackburn Rovers beat us 2-1 at home the following week, which would prove to be our last home defeat of the season and against a team who were about to hit the form that would see them promoted with us at the end of the season.

I missed the narrow win over Reading a few days later but was becoming an avid follower of away fixtures on the radio and also by watching the bottom of the screen when the wrestling was on ITV’s World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon. Not only was I becoming a bit of an expert on other team’s form and records but I was also finding out that Big Daddy and The Mighty Quinn were the good guys and Cyanide Sid and Giant Haystacks were cheating bastards. Everything was black and white in more ways than one.

Not for the first time, I was perfecting the art of getting updates off several media simultaneously, Radio 2 one minute, then Humberside and then a look at the telly. At the end of January, Town won 3-0 at Blackpool, which took us to the top of the table for the first time that season despite a fairly modest league record. Other teams such as Swindon had loads of games in hand over us but then, as ever, it was points in the bag that counted.

The next weekend, we played at home to Brentford and fans had to help clear the pitch of snow before the game could go ahead. I was so glad they did. We went into a fairly undeserved 3-0 lead before they pulled a goal back but despite a few nervy moments we made it 5-1 by the end and I had seen my biggest ever Town win. I got a lift back from the game as far as Westward Ho and then ran to Littlefield Lane so that I could tell anyone who would listen how great we were.

It amazes me now that I can remember that little fact when I would struggle to remember results in latter seasons but my brain cells were relatively unharmed at this point and I was full of the exuberance that having only known supporting a winning team engenders. Come to think of it, I’d struggle to run to my folk’s house form Westward Ho nowadays. If I could it would certainly be worth remembering. What I do know was that I had become a fanatic already and it was just fortunate that I became a fan in what for me would always be my favourite season. I’m sure I would have stuck with them whatever even at this early stage.

Things were going well with my A levels at this time. Having dumped a subject I had struggled with the previous year, I was concentrating on my two remaining subjects and filling in with a few more O levels. Our extra curricular activities had brought us to the adverse attention of the school authorities however, with our Alternative Views anarchist newsletter causing alarm amongst parents. Our ‘legalise cannabis’ campaign article was particularly unpopular with outraged of Bargate, especially as we had been using school typewriters to produce it.

I eventually left the Grimsby Anarchist Party (a contradiction of terms in itself), which had consisted of me and four or five other schoolmates, and formed the breakaway Grimsby Anarcho-Syndicalist Party, which consisted of myself.  The extra aggravation caused by this was that we were on report despite pulling some of the best grades in the sixth form.

Another sticky issue was that we had been following the sixth form football team and used it as an opportunity to use all the songs that we had picked up on Saturday afternoons, plus some old favourites going back decades. This led to another awkward interview with the senior master of the sixth form who, not unreasonably, informed us that he did not want the antics of the Pontoon Stand visited upon schools football and that one of the referees who had made a formal complaint had never heard such abuse in his life. I would say that I felt utter shame at this, except that I wasn’t at the game in question. 

My protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears (although I was as guilty as sin on other occasions) and I can only think the injustice was on a par with those meted out by West Midlands Police on later occasions. The upshot was that we were served with our first football banning order. No more going to school football games on pain of expulsion. I didn’t fancy explaining this to my parents so we complied apart from one game where we behaved ourselves and got away with it.

Back to Town. When we lost at Colchester in February, they were level on points with us with 37 from 31. This result, on a Friday night, negated the three pints I could now stick away down The Haven and doubts set in for the first time. I didn’t know then that it would be our last defeat of the season and that we would win ten and draw five of the remaining fifteen games.

Next in line was Swindon Town who weren’t far behind with plenty of games in hand. They were having a useful FA Cup run, which was ultimately to their detriment, and had hammered us 3-0 at their ground the previous autumn which proved to be our record defeat that season. We triumphed 2-0 and I dared to believe again.

I wasn’t part of the exodus that went to Chesterfield the following week and who saw the 3-2 win against another close challenger. I did follow it loyally on the radio however and in scenes to become familiar went from disbelieving delight at going 3-0 up to relief at just hanging on for a 3-2 win. Oddly enough, my outstanding memory from that game is a picture in a subsequent programme of a Town player (I think it was Kev Moore) wheeling away after scoring a goal with a full toilet roll flying over his head.

Gillingham at home was a tense game. I recall us scoring in about the seventh minute when it wasn’t actually certain the ball had crossed the line but the goal stood. Gillingham actually got the ball in the net late on but it was disallowed and we rode our luck. My first away game was yet to come but we drew 0-0 at Rotherham and then played Millwall at home which was televised on Match of The Day.

In these days of football every day on the telly, it is hard to imagine how much of an honour it was to be chosen to be shown as a lower division team on the main weekly football programme. I never counted ITV as a rival to this and Grimsby fans often sang “Martin Tyler is a w*****” when they came. I joined in the singing but didn’t have a clue whether or who he was. I was prepared to take their word for it. If our fans sang it, then it must be true. I don’t even think I’d used the word outside Blundell Park.

Watching the Millwall game later that Saturday night took precedence over any drinking in the Royal Oak or the police station. Me and Don were blocked from seeing ourselves by some fat bastard with a pie in his hand, who stood in front of us in the Pontoon and had I known the words to that song at the time, I might well have sung them. I don’ think he was a regular either, which caused a bit of resentment.

In those days, new fan that I was, I made sure that I was in the Ponny at half past two to get my regular space halfway up behind the goal. Arrogant little so-and-so that I was (though growing now), I could look sternly at any interloper. After all, I was now an old hand, an established regular, and just who were these part timers who had jumped on the bandwagon just because we were doing well?

Next at home was Southend who we despatched and then followed the most amazing scoring I have ever seen on a wrestling programme. Town played at Wimbledon the next Saturday and I was dismayed to hear on the radio that we were one nil down after about twenty minutes or so. Four minutes later and the announcement came that there had been another goal at Plough Lane (Ploughed Up Lane might be more accurate). I always hated this introduction to the latest action. Would it be despair that we had gone two nil down or joy of joys had we equalised? One all it was and a terrace style boogie followed in the living room.

It stayed that way until half time and then it was over to the World of Sport to see the text at the bottom of the screen. I had now sussed out that the scores came through a bit quicker here than on Humberside. One minute after half time amidst the grunting on stage and up came… Wimbledon 1 Grimsby Town 2, then a minute later 3 and two minutes later, 4. **** me, I thought naughtily, it doesn’t get better than this, but it actually did and a quarter of an hour later, the unbelievable score of 1-6 came on the screen although I had to settle for a mere 3-6 scoreline in the end.

The next weekend saw three games in four days at Easter. On Good Friday we beat Carlisle 2-0 in front of 16,000 or so fans and the next day saw my coming of age as an away fan. Barnsley away. We went in Joe’s brother’s car which had the capacity of a coach (I couldn’t tell you the model). There were thousands of Town fans there and I wasn’t so unstreetwise to notice that there was a certain friction in the air. In fact trouble was breaking out all over the place and continued in the ground where Town fans were in the home end and missiles were being thrown by all and sundry.

I would like to say that I was appalled at the violence but there was something appealing about the sheer ferocity of it. It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried. After all, weren’t we some of the hardest fans going from what I’d heard? That would certainly be borne out by the Grimsby programme notes which were increasingly commenting on incidents at our away games.

Mike Brolly scored a cracking free kick after about a quarter of an hour which sent us all demented with joy before the trouble kicked off again and even our manager, George Kerr, was pelted when he appealed for calm. On the journey back, every vehicle on the road seemed to have Town fans including a furniture truck filled with them with the back open. To this day I have always wanted to travel in that sort of style, albeit surrounded by a few cases of cider, so I doubt that particular ambition will be fulfilled now I’ve taken the pledge (and I don’t mean a commitment to polishing furniture).

When I got back from Barnsley, my Dad asked whether there had been any trouble and I said with a straight face that I hadn’t seen any. Unfortunately, he read the Daily Telegraph which made the aggro its lead story on the Monday morning. At least the lying put me in good stead for later years.

Easter Monday saw the return fixture against Hull City. We had drawn 2-2 there a few weeks earlier in a midweek game that I couldn’t get a lift to. This was before the Humber Bridge had been built so it wasn’t the best away game to get to. Suitably discouraged, I went to see Stiff Little Fingers at the Winter Gardens where Jake Burns kindly gave updates of events at Boothferry Park to the grateful audience.

Back to the home game and Hull equalised with a few minutes to go so it ended a one all draw. Five points from three games and we had started to draw well clear of the chasing pack but all I could think of was how those cheating Hull (insert a word of your choice) had done us out of a win. I had noticed a few of my big time Charlie school mates turning up, although it didn’t occur to me that they might well have seen more games than me during their lifetimes. I treated them politely but with an inner disdain that I was to perfect over the coming seasons.

I missed Reading away. My pocket money didn’t stretch to going by plane as some fans did but I was all present and correct for the game against Oxford. Aside from the obligatory 2-0 win for Town, the match was memorable for the lack of sartorial elegance displayed by the Oxford keeper whose shorts dragged down further and further as he took goal kicks so that most of his cleft was showing by the end. What passed for ribaldry amongst Town fans was completely ignored. Perhaps he was trying to tell us something.

I was on tenterhooks the following Saturday as Town got a 0-0 draw and the point they needed to seal promotion with further scenes of crowd disorder. From the radio commentary, we were hanging on most of the time as Mansfield fought to avoid relegation.

The next game was to provide the ultimate climax to my first season and, sadly, I have to say that the excitement hasn’t been surpassed for this particular fan. All thoughts of the impending A levels and revision were put to one side as we prepared for the home game against Sheffield United, who had been the pre season favourites for promotion. We raided every toilet in the school and relieved them of all the rolls contained within. Then it was time to tear up the newspapers and cart them to the ground for the confetti reception as the teams came out.

My friend, Big Jim, who I was to meet when based down south during the next few years, says he was so pissed that he can’t remember the game, which is a shame. I can certainly remember Kevin Drinkell’s hat trick and the best Town goal of all time for my money where Joe Waters ran all the way up the wing before dodging what seemed to be the entire United team and slotting home.

Could it get any better? For me, no. I had just completed my first season as a Mariner and for the last time in my life, I would be free of alcoholism. The descent into this was but a few months away.

We had a farewell do for the sixth form at St James’ House in June that year where I discovered the potency of piriton tablets (for hay fever) and alcohol. I could now comfortably do about 5 pints as well, which seemed awesome to me. The last time I had managed this was on my birthday at the end of May when I managed to fall down the roadworks in Littlefield Lane on the way home.

I had indulged a little in the Tivoli on May 3^rd, a day that will be forever etched in my memory as the day we beat Sheffield United 4-0. What was notable about that little drink was that I had decided not to have more than three pints as I didn’t want to spoil the evening and euphoria in any way. I now realise that anyone who has to ration their drinking for fear of the consequences of over indulgence has a problem already, irrespective of their capacity. So, less than a year after starting my boozing career, I was mindful of its ability to spoil what could be a good time and having to limit myself as my natural inclination was to drink as much as I could, limited as that may be.

I learned one other lesson at that time and it was the bias of Yorkshire TV against Town. Instead of going to Town Hall Square for the civic reception the day after the Championship win, me and Don watched highlights of the football on ITV that afternoon. We warranted about a sentence congratulating us on our piece of silverware against far better resourced teams and had to sit through a programme devoted to the so-called highlights of Wednesday v Carlisle United in a 0-0 draw before this accolade. As the tedium increased we had begun to fret about how little time would be left to show something of our game. Surely twenty minutes, fifteen, ten, they must have extended the programme. No, one sentence, whilst the production team had eulogised about Wednesday’s achievement in scraping home third just ahead of Chesterfield whose crowds were a percentage of theirs. “Oh the injustice!” we cried. And not for the first time.

 In August 1980, I received my A level results and good grades in Economics and History meant that I could go to University rather than Middlesex Polytechnic where I had been accepted for a degree course in Economics. After a late application, the local careers service helped in securing a place at Essex University for me.

The only thing was that I was torn. In 1980, going to University was seen as a good move for a future career. The reality was that many of us left in 1983 and encountered a job market that was almost hostile to the graduate. No experience and over qualified. Thatcher’s bloody Britain, as they said on the Young Ones. I have to admit that if I had applied myself a bit more when I was studying, I might have got the higher grade that could have given me the edge in the job market, but it’s easier to blame Thatcher so I will.

University had been sort of expected of me. I had been academically gifted, although I had gone backwards somewhat when I went to secondary school and started to rebel against the authority that wanted me to respect it without actually demonstrating why I should.

Of course, my big problem was that I had been following the Mariners for less than a year and was thoroughly hooked. I was now going to be studying, in the loosest sense of the word, in a town that couldn’t be harder to get to if I wanted to watch home games. More importantly, how was I going to afford it? And would the club survive without me?