Grimsby’s rollercoaster ride an entertaining watch
“It’s somewhere up north – and it stinks of fish.”
Yes, the Lincolnshire town (the UK’s answer to Palmerston North – population wise) of Grimsby was a punchline long before Sacha Baron Cohen performed his hatchet job on it in 2016.
If his movie’s depiction of it as the epicentre of British football hooliganism wasn’t enough, the comedian decided to help “promote” his Grimsby by claiming that the town was twinned with Chernobyl (and not Bremerhaven), was No. 3 in Europe for childhood obesity and had just become the first English town to achieve 100% unemployment.
While there’s no mention of the film, or Nobby Butcher, in the three-part docuseries All Town Aren’t We (which begins streaming on DocPlay on Thursday), it’s clear that, amongst the celebrity (This is England actor Thomas Turgoose, comedian Lloyd Griffith) and long-term supporters of Grimsby Town FC, the jokes at their 120-year-old club (1948 was the last time they graced the top flight) and hometown’s expense sting.
But, as this season-in-the-life-of show – obviously inspired by the success of Sunderland ’Til I Die and Welcome to Wrexham – opens, it’s the team’s on-field lack of success that has really left a mark.
Just over 20 years after they were last a Championship club (the second-tier of English football), the “Mighty Mariners” have been relegated to the fifth-tier National League for the second time in their history. Worse still, Covid had meant fans hadn’t even been able to watch the team in person for more than a year.
So although the club has been bought by two local lads – Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit – and the gates have finally been thrown open for the 2021-22 season, hopes are not high for an immediate return to League 2. Only one team can be automatically promoted (a second found after a six-team play-off) and, last time, it took the club six seasons to escape, a period that included four play-off defeats.
If that wasn’t enough, significant investment in rivals Stockport County and Wrexham meant the division wasn’t necessarily a level playing field.
However, a team built around the talented John McAtee made a flying start to the season, winning eight of its opening 10 games. Sustaining that momentum and keeping its star striker fit, though, would prove no easy task.
While director Jack Spring’s tale occasionally has the feel of the club season video – most of the interviews appear conducted in retrospect – it’s elevated by the insight provided by his subjects (even Wrexham’s dynamic ownership duo of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney turn up for a cameo) and the truly nerve-testing rollercoaster ride the team (including their Kiwi goalkeeper Max Crocombe, now at League 1’s Burton Albion) put their supporters through.
It is hard not to be swept up by the passion and dramatic action as the season reaches a truly chaotic conclusion.
As Stockwood notes at one point, “it’s more than about football, it’s about pride”. That’s a sentiment the club’s most famous former manager, Bill Shankly, would most definitely have shared.
All Town Aren’t We arrives on DocPlay on March 21.