Harry Haddock's cup adventures: Grimsby Town FA Cup run

Words: Richard McClean

Images: Richard McClean

Blundell Park, Grimsby Town on a Tuesday night, under the lights, the sky is clear and the air is crisp. If you’re wondering what the magic of the cup is, it is this. Walking down Imperial Avenue, taking a deep breath and looking up at the floodlights with butterflies in your belly knowing that ninety minutes from now you’ll have either witnessed history being made or walk out wounded, eyes to the floor.

The Mariners started this years FA Cup run back in November, dispatching League One Plymouth Argyle, Cambridge United and Burton Albion before dragging Championship Luton Town back to Cleethorpes for a fourth round replay by the skin of Clifton’s teeth and Hollohan’s header. Twenty seven years after our last fifth round appearance we’re knocking at the door again.

Nine minutes in we’re in shock, twenty eight and we’re in surprise, forty five and there’s laughter in the aisles. Can this possibly be true, surely we can find a way to stuff it up from here? If we can just hang on until sixty minutes, seventy, eighty, you know what, we’re actually going to do this, we’re going through!

In football sometimes you’re the dog, sometimes you’re the lamppost and over the last two decades we've mostly been the lamppost. For one night, under the lights this dog finally had its day, we saw history being made.

The Saints await in the fifth, the North East Lincolnshire coast swapped for the South. The inflatable Harry Haddocks will fill the air once more after Premier league Southampton had a u-turn on banning them.

Maybe we’ll haul them in.