Season 1998-9

The mighty Mariners were a division above Man City. We were in what is the now Championship they were in now Division 1.

Joe Royle took over Man City towards the end of the 1997/98 season and famously ranted at his players that if they "continue like this you'll be playing Grimsby next season."

Most cornflakes come from the USA

Easy to forget how close we came to the making the play-offs that year.

https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-1/16-january-1999/

We were sixth, and five points clear of eighth placed West Brom when we played the Baggies at their place, 1-0 with (I think) about 20 minutes to go when Kingsley Black got scythed down on the half-way line; one of the most clear and obvious fouls you'll ever see. No free-kick given and up the pitch they went for the murdering ginger pig Lee Hughes to slot home.

It was pretty much downhill from there. From memory, there were quite a few rumours of shenanigans between Wayne Burnett and Aidan Davison's good lady, with Davo sitting out the rest of the season and leaving a young and slightly inadequete Andy Love between the sticks.

Really enjoyable season right the way up to mid-January.

Quoted from Abdul19

Most cornflakes come from the USA

Another one of those same time tomorrow.

Quoted from Poojah

Easy to forget how close we came to the making the play-offs that year.

https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-1/16-january-1999/

We were sixth, and five points clear of eighth placed West Brom when we played the Baggies at their place, 1-0 with (I think) about 20 minutes to go when Kingsley Black got scythed down on the half-way line; one of the most clear and obvious fouls you'll ever see. No free-kick given and up the pitch they went for the murdering ginger pig Lee Hughes to slot home.

It was pretty much downhill from there. From memory, there were quite a few rumours of shenanigans between Wayne Burnett and Aidan Davison's good lady, with Davo sitting out the rest of the season and leaving a young and slightly inadequete Andy Love between the sticks.

Really enjoyable season right the way up to mid-January.

We were well placed going to February. I seem to remember we had 3 tough home games (Sunderland, Birmingham & Bolton- probably not in that order) and we lost all 3 matches to nil.

Just checked and those 3 teams we played at home in February were all in the top 4 on 1st February. We were 7th 1 point behind Watford (6th) with a game in hand.

It was a cracking season. We were safe before the end of January. Didn’t the muppets in charge sack Buckley after a 0-0 draw at Portsmouth the following season?

Quoted from KingstonMariner

It was a cracking season. We were safe before the end of January. Didn’t the muppets in charge sack Buckley after a 0-0 draw at Portsmouth the following season?

That happened a year later I think. We’d lost at home to a Jon Macken inspired Preston on opening day then drew 1-1 at Pompey. No one saw it coming at the time. At least I didn’t.

Quoted from Poojah

That happened a year later I think. We’d lost at home to a Jon Macken inspired Preston on opening day then drew 1-1 at Pompey. No one saw it coming at the time. At least I didn’t.

Yes but he had signed a couple of right useless players in the summer (think it inc, Van teuval and Jeffrey) though in his book he blames the board for not giving him any money to sign anyone

Andy Love played some games but I'm pretty sure Steve Croudson played a blinder in an end of season night game at home to Wolves who were after promotion (0-0 draw) He kept his place for the last match at Watford...

Quoted from Madeleymariner

Yes but he had signed a couple of right useless players in the summer (think it inc, Van teuval and Jeffrey) though in his book he blames the board for not giving him any money to sign anyone

Ten Heuvel was a Groves signing, three or four years later. But yes, we had a dire summer that year, only signing Michael Jeffrey and Paul Raven, neither of whom were anywhere close to to the required standard.

Quoted from barralad

Andy Love played some games but I'm pretty sure Steve Croudson played a blinder in an end of season night game at home to Wolves who were after promotion (0-0 draw) He kept his place for the last match at Watford...

I remember Andy Love playing at Watford in a midweek game in the mid-90s. He must have been about 17 at the time. But the limelight was taken by Craig Shakespeare scoring in a 3 goal win.

Quoted from barralad

Andy Love played some games but I'm pretty sure Steve Croudson played a blinder in an end of season night game at home to Wolves who were after promotion (0-0 draw) He kept his place for the last match at Watford...

That Croudson Wolves game is the stuff of legend. Wolves needed a win in their quest for automatic promotion, peppered our goal with shots all night, and Croudson single handedly repelled everything they threw at us.

Quoted from Poojah

That happened a year later I think. We’d lost at home to a Jon Macken inspired Preston on opening day then drew 1-1 at Pompey. No one saw it coming at the time. At least I didn’t.

Ah yeah, you're right. It was at the beginning of 2000-2001 season.

Quoted from blundellpork

That Croudson Wolves game is the stuff of legend. Wolves needed a win in their quest for automatic promotion, peppered our goal with shots all night, and Croudson single handedly repelled everything they threw at us.

They were trying to make the playoffs, but yeah, he was amazing. Made me wonder why we'd been playing Andy Love!

Quoted from Poojah

Ten Heuvel was a Groves signing, three or four years later. But yes, we had a dire summer that year, only signing Michael Jeffrey and Paul Raven, neither of whom were anywhere close to to the required standard.

We'd finished the previous season with a bad run too, playing some really turgid stuff, but 2 games in did seem to come from nowhere, aye. I remember being very shocked when I saw it on ceefax page 308*

*page number guessed

Quoted from Abdul19

We'd finished the previous season with a bad run too, playing some really turgid stuff, but 2 games in did seem to come from nowhere, aye. I remember being very shocked when I saw it on ceefax page 308*

*page number guessed

312 😂🤓

Quoted from blundellpork

312 😂🤓

AB getting the boot surely deserved a full page! 😀

Always thought Andy Love often misjudged the trajectory of the ball and flapped a bit.

Quoted from 140067

Always thought Andy Love often misjudged the trajectory of the ball and flapped a bit.

Met him when he was a security guard at Boyes, a really nice friendly lad, hard to believe he got into trouble down Meggies.

Problem in that 1998/99 season was that we had no goals in us at a all.

Groves got double figures, I think around 15, but other than that we had nothing at all.Just checked and we scored 40 goals all season, that's pretty poor for any side never mind one that finished 11th.  Second worst in the division behind Bury who stayed up on goal difference.

Donovan wasn't the same player as the previous season, I think he carried an injury for most of the campaign.  Nogan, Ashcroft, Clare and Lester probably mustered a similar figure to Groves between them and Livvo, who was never prolific, I think had started to play more games at centre back.

In hindsight, Lee Ashcroft wasn't really what we needed in the summer of 1998.  Although he formed a decent pairing with Jack Lester a year or so later, he didn't really get the goals we needed.  Lester never scored enough goals for us, bizarre as he scored for fun everywhere else he went.  Lee Nogan was, in my opinion, never quite good enough for the second tier albeit an excellent foil in the division below.

Groves was at his finest that season and for large periods carried the team quite a bit going forward.  Defensively we were sound but going forward we didn't have the same swagger as the year before.  1997/98 we were swashbuckling and looked like we could score from anywhere on the pitch.  Fast forward a few months and two of our most creative influences were struggling with injuries (Donovan and Burnett) and we seemed a lot more cautious, especially after Christmas.  I always got the feeling that Buckley almost felt we shouldn't have gone toe-to-toe with the likes of Birmingham and Wolves.   The one thing I always felt Laws had over Buckley was that he didn't care who the opposition was, but Buckley became very focused on the threat of who we were playing.

When he was sacked, Buckley was hung out to dry.   Don't get me wrong there was some absolute dire football on display in the previous months and we were so negative it was unreal at times.  But having had Jack Lester sold for £300,000 in January and then getting a similar figure for Lee Ashcroft but having nothing to spend in the summer summed up the board position.  It felt like the board didn't want Buckley but weren't brave enough to sack him in the summer. Doing it after an opening day defeat to a newly promoted Preston who ended up in the play-offs and then picking up a point with ten men away at Portsmouth was bizarre.

Buckley ended up bringing in the likes of Michael Jeffrey and Paul Raven, presumably as they were cheap.  Another player he lost in that summer was Mark Lever because we couldn't compete financially.  As soon as Buckley was gone the purse strings were loosened and in came the likes of David Nielsen, Zhang Enhua, Menno Willems et al. on mega money....

I don't remember what season it was but we played West Ham about the second from last home game and we had not scored many but only conceded 4 goals at home all season.

It was chucking it down and had to wait in the rain getting soaked until the ref gave a pitch inspection.

Finally got in the ground  wet through and we let in 5 one more than the other 20 games put together.

We did score one though so that was good 😉