League Two Form Guide

		P	GD	Pts
1	MK Dons	6	+7	15
2	Port Vale	6	+5	15
3	Crewe	6	+5	12
4	Grimsby	6	-2	10
5	Accrington Stanley	6	+3	9
6	Walsall	6	+1	9
7	Salford	6	+1	9
8	Doncaster	6	+1	9
9	Notts County	6	0	9
10	Chesterfield	6	+2	8
11	Bradford	6	+1	8
12	Cheltenham	6	0	8
13	AFC Wimbledon	6	+2	7
14	Bromley	6	0	7
15	Harrogate Town	6	-1	7
16	Tranmere	6	-3	7
17	Fleetwood Town	6	-2	6
18	Morecambe	6	-7	6
19	Swindon	6	-3	5
20	Newport County	6	-3	5
21	Carlisle	6	-6	5
22	Colchester	6	-2	4
23	Gillingham	6	-5	4
24	Barrow	6	-4	3

Full Form Table
Prem|Champ|L1|NL|VN|VS
SPL|SC|S1|S2

Question of the Week

Is football a business or a sport?

Mentioned Part 69

By: Rob Sedgwick
Date: 01/10/2006

Home > Features > Mentioned > Mentioned #69

"No disrespect to the likes of Grimsby..."

sunday 10th october

Chris Waddle

From The Sun

"No disrespect to Grimsby, but I think Martin Jol has a point if he’s given them a roasting.

"It was a full-strength side, one that could easily play in the Premier League, and if Arsenal had sent the same you couldn’t see them slipping up.

"There’s no excuse for going to a League Two side, even one on top of the table, and not getting a result."

Spotted by Grim Rob.

Shearer

From the Sunday Telegraph

Matthew Norman: "A delight to hear Alan Shearer whining about being elbowed in the face by a Grimsby player last week. It was Shearer, you will recall, who cost England a place in the quarter finals of the World Cup by elbowing a goalkeeper in the face for no apparent reason."

Spotted by Devon Mariner.

The Fishy

From Sky Sports News

In a quiz show the contestents were asked which team's fans used the phrase "In Cod We Trust" to which the team answered Grimsby Town, and then the question master also said Grimsby Town fans had a site called The Fishy.

Spotted by Tony Hamilton.

The World

From The Guardian

The Best Misuse of the Word "World" by an American Award was bitterly contested.

But the award goes to ... the Dallas cheerleader who said (and I quote): "The Dallas cheerleaders truly are role models, not just for Texas but for the whole world!" Aye, lass. In the fish-gutting sheds of Grimsby, they speak of little else.

Spotted by Billo.

Michael Ingham

From IC Wales

"I've got no regrets about the move, definitely not," said Ingham, who chose Wrexham above Grimsby and several other clubs after leaving Sunderland in the summer.

"I came here for three reasons - because I wanted to work with the manager, I like the area and Wrexham are a big club.

"No disrespect to Grimsby, but I think Wrexham are a bigger club. I wouldn't be surprised if we finish above them this season."

Spotted by Billo.

Lincoln

From the Daily Telegraph

The final whistle sounded just before 2pm on Saturday and that was the signal for what seemed like the four horsemen of the apocalypse to come charging on to the field of play, and for well over 100 police to encircle the travelling supporters. Welcome to life in League Two and the first leg play-off between The Imps and the Mariners - aka Lincoln City and Grimsby Town.

Now this was a bit of an eye-opener for those of us who spend most of our football-watching time in the fur-lined world of the Premiership. It felt like a return to the 1980s, when the bad old days of hooliganism were punctuated by seismic incidents like the Bradford fire - almost 21 years to the day and which many people forget also involved Lincoln City.

Seasoned supporters in the main stand said that such a show of force only served to escalate the situation (whatever that situation was) and grumbled about a ludicrous waste of public and football club resources. And certainly the Grimsby fans' witty chant that they only 'sing when we're fishing' hardly qualifies as inflammatory.

But dig a little deeper below the surface of this local Lincolnshire rivalry and you find what's really going on in the world of policing the lower leagues. Supt Lee Freeman was the man charged with overseeing Saturday's security operation. He's been a West Ham fan for 26 years and had a ticket for the FA Cup final. He gave it up, because there were bigger professional fish to fry as the Mariners came to town.

"What we're seeing now is that with the Premiership clubs being so global in their support, and the cost of going to the big clubs increasing so astronomically, the really tribal element of football has moved into the Championship and lower leagues. There you're dealing with genuinely local support, where the old bitter rivalries still exist, and that's where you get the problems that are always there, lurking just below the surface."

Last weekend, Lincolnshire Police called in colleagues from the Nottinghamshire, Humberside and British Transport forces, because the word was out that there could be trouble. Revenge was in the air. A Lincoln fan was stabbed last year when the two sides met at Grimsby. In the league match at Sincil Bank this season, two city centre pubs were ransacked. It may stagger you to read this, but approximately one per cent of both clubs' regular support are subject to police banning orders.

Supt Freeman felt he had no choice but to organise the biggest police operation undertaken for many years, because "the risks of not doing it were too great".

Lincoln City Football Club only paid for four of the police who were on duty on Saturday. You and I, as taxpayers, paid for the rest, but as he points out: "What would the potential cost have been if we hadn't acted as we did. Our main duty is to protect the public at large, and with the ground being in such a congested, residential part of the city, we couldn't countenance any trouble, and believe me, we knew from sources that there was a genuine risk of that."

The charge of the Light Brigade at the end was, he said "a clear message to the Grimsby fans not to go on to the pitch" and to let them know that the security forces were in complete control of the situation. There were no arrests, the Grimsby fans went home, calm and victorious, and the rest of the Lincoln public going about their business on a Saturday lunchtime, did so unafraid and unthreatened.

Never mind this year's loss to Liverpool on penalties, West Ham's most famous cup final is unquestionably that of 1923, when, so those old Pathe newsreels would have us believe, one single white horse managed to control well over 150,000 exuberant fans who had spilled on to the Wembley pitch. Eighty-three years on, the descendants of that white horse were on duty at Lincoln City. Because, in a sign of the times, they had to be.