MARINERS SINKING?

Grimsby Town FC are battling to stay in the Football League, with another vital match (at home to Aldershot) this afternoon.
There's a surprising number of Mariners' supporters in Brigg, given that we are about 25 miles from Blundell Park, Cleethorpes.
Partly that's historic - fathers following sons. But much is due to the fact that, for many years, there was a Brigg Branch of the Grimsby Town Supporters' Club, which ran buses to every home game.
Some of the older fans who used this bus, like Sam Briggs, from Almond Grove, could remember watching Grimsby in the old First Division, in the 1930s, when they could boast England internationals George Tweedy and Jackie Bestall, among others.
The buses to matches were operated by Daisy (the well-known Broughton company) and picked up in Brigg at the Brocklesby Ox, Cary Lane, on Wrawby Road near Crosslands (now Rosecroft), and outside the cemetery.
Further supporters were taken onboard in Wrawby, Barnetby, Searby, Grasby and even Keelby.
Grimsby had a dire season about 40 years ago and had to apply (successfully) for re-election, in the days before what is now the Blue Square competition was linked into the footballing pyramid.
The fortunes of the club then picked up in the 1970s and 1980s, and for some years they held their own in the second tier of English football, even being featured on Match of the Day.
The commercial side of the operation was run very successfully by Alec King, who at one time had a bookies in Wrawby Street, Brigg.
During the early 1980s, with George Kerr as manager, Grimsby could boast a very good squad, which included striker Pete Wainwright, raised in Silversides, just outside Brigg, and educated at Glebe Road School and Brigg Grammar.
In his recently produced book on growing up in Central Square, Brigg, between 1930 and 1950, John Rhodes makes reference to going to watch the Mariners, as a boy, when it was easy to get a train to New Clee (a halt right near the ground). Now, of course, we are down to three journeys each way - only on a Saturday.
John was at the Briggensians' Association annual dinner last Saturday and sold a copy of his book to Neil Marland, a keen Mariners' fan, who left BGS in the mid-1970s and went on to become a local government officer in Yorkshire. Whenever I meet up with Neil, his opening remarks usually relate to the fortunes of the Mariners. And so it was last Saturday.
There are quite a few Town followers in Brigg today who used the old Daisy Bus to get to matches and who can remember good seasons and equally some Grim times.
For the fortunes of the Mariners seem to ebb and flow like the tide just behind the ground.