The Supporters’ Trust has pleasure in bringing you ‘SWWF Gold’, a selection of articles from past editions of Sing When We’re Fishing. Over the coming weeks, we will be giving you a fantastic opportunity to take a nostalgic walk down Memory Lane. Remember the good old days… maybe even the not so good ones too!

SWWF Gold this week comes from Issue 9 of the fanzine and features an article about Joe Waters and how the fans of Grimsby Town raised £2000 to help bring him to the club.

HOLY WATERS

by Ron Counte

How much would a piece of gold 5ft 5ins tall cost?  In February 1976 the answer to this question was “no more than £8,000.”  That’s how much Grimsby Town grudgingly paid for Joe Waters, without doubt the best player to put on a black and white shirt in the last twenty years.

The circumstances behind his signing were rather bizarre.  He first came to the club in early 1976 on a month’s loan and totally endeared himself to the fans with tremendous displays of skill and determination.  That this man was clearly an outstanding player was evident to everyone that knew anything about football.  That of course rules out the average football director who, though very skilled at selling used cars, has a knowledge of the game roughly equivalent to Frank Bruno’s understanding of quantum physics. 

The directors would not sign Waters because he was too expensive at £10,000 (don’t forget this was a year after they had paid £20,000 for Ron Wigg).  The fans were incensed and a letter writing campaign to the Evening Telegraph culminated in supporters raising £2,000 towards the fee.  Eventually the club had to bow to fan pressure and agreed to put in the balance of £8,000 and sign him.  It was the wisest decision I can recall being made at the club.

This magazine only runs to twenty pages so there is not enough room to detail the great man’s career.  Instead I would like to say just a little about one or two of the qualities that made him such an exceptional player.

He was truly an inspirational captain.  I always thought that you could pick ten members of the Marching Mariners Show Band at random, send them out with Joe at the helm and they would come back with a result.  He was a cunning strategist.  The term midfield general could have been invented for our Joe.  Gary Kasparov is lucky that Joe didn’t fancy a career in chess.  He was a very competitive player, totally fearless and seemingly never intimidated by his opposite number despite giving away a foot in height and two stone in weight on most occasions.  It would take a second Messiah to walk over Waters.

Of his 5ft 5ins, about 5ft 4ins must have been heart because he would simply never give in.  In one game against Barnsley with Town five points adrift at the bottom of the Second Division and Barnsley leading two-nil at half-time, even the manager and the substitute had left the ground early to get home in time for the football results.  Waters refused to concede defeat and drove the team magnificently and tirelessly on, finally clinching a dramatic three-two victory with a goal of characteristic nerve and determination, beating four players inside the penalty area before coolly placing the ball past an advancing keeper.

It was his skill above all that really shone.  Given his other qualities Joe would hardly have to know what a ball looked like to be worth his place in the team, but on the ball he possessed all the playing skills in classic proportions.  He would quite often beat two men, stop for a cigarette, beat a third man and spread out an immaculate fifty yard pass and still have time to sign a couple of autographs on the touchline before the ball landed.  His displays even had the local sports press frantically leafing through the thesaurus in search of words like ‘mercurial’, ‘exquisite’ and ‘really good’.

Of course no one is perfect, and in his illustrious career with the Mariners there is one black spot.  One day at Chesterfield a defender was foolish enough to tackle Bob Cumming rather heavily from behind.  The equally legendary Bob was not noted for his restraint in physical combat situations.  A few minutes after the tackle, the unfortunate Chesterfield defender was seen to be lying unconscious on the touchline.  Neither the referee, nor the linesmen, nor apparently anyone in the crowd had actually seen what happened and the defender himself was in no fit state to talk.  The referee approached both captains and Joe solemnly pointed towards our Bob standing sheepishly on the edge of the penalty area.  The referee then gave Bob an early opportunity to test the shower facilities.  In a lesser player this act of treachery would have resulted in sustained hostility from the Town faithful and a free transfer to Scunthorpe would have been on the cards.  Joe, however, could be forgiven for anything.

He was also appreciated by a wider audience.  In consecutive years he was chosen in the divisional Third and Fourth Division select teams.  Why he only obtained two caps for the Republic of Ireland must remain one of the great mysteries of the western world.  Normally players of great skill are only overlooked by the likes of England.

It was a sad day when Joe left Town.  For eight years he had been the driving force behind the team.  He was an ever present for a number of seasons, and at one stage made 226 consecutive appearances.  At the time it was heartbreaking to see him go because at 31 he clearly had a couple of good years left in him.  Perhaps it was for the best though.  We never saw a declining Waters in a Town shirt and all our memories of him remain glorious.

There is little doubt that without his ability as a player and an influence on the rest of the team, Town would not have become the Third Division champions in 1980, and it is unlikely that they would have been able to establish themselves as a solid Second Division outfit for so long. I hope the directors sitting in executive boxes in the Findus Stand realise that without Waters it is unlikely that the stand would ever have been built.

It is further to be hoped that they never forget that without the pressure and wisdom of the fans, Waters would never have played more than four games in a Grimsby Town shirt.  A lesson they could do well to heed in the future.

The last time I saw Joe Waters was in the “Joe Waters Video Shop” in Freeman Street.  He was the only person in the shop too small to reach the adult videos on the top shelves.  He may have lacked height, but on the football field he was far, far above the opposition.  Enjoy the memories, for we shall not be privileged to see his like again in a very long time.