By columnist Geoff Ford
I THINK all Town fans of a certain age lost a little bit of their own souls with the passing of Kevin Moore.
His great leaps and thumping headers, his thunderous challenges, they all form part of our combined experience of some great days at Blundell Park.
The days when over 20,000 crammed into the ground and the roar of the crowd could be hard for miles around. That was Kevin Moore's stage and we were privileged to be in the audience..
I was fortunate enough to be part of the Telegraph team covering the Mariners for much of Kevin's career. I saw a fearless, swashbuckling leader in a side which rose from the depths of Division Four in 1978 to to fifth place in the old Division Two in 1984. The four sides above them were Chelsea, Sheffield Wednesday, Newcastle and Manchester City.
I reckon that, pound for pound, the 1983/4 line-up was probably the highest quality squad assembled at Blundell Park since the pre-war glory days. It had the likes of Moore himself, Chris Nicholl; Joe Waters, Bobby Cumming, Tony Ford, Kevin Drinkell, Trevor Whymark and Paul Wilkinson. The Buckley team of the 90s, with Futcher, Handyside, McDermott, Croft, Childs, Gilbert and Mendonca would run it close. Both had the sort of ability we can now only dream about.
Talking of players, what was it about the 1970s and 80s that produced so much local soccer talent from the Grimsby area?
Was it just a freak of nature that we had the likes of Terry Donovan, Ford, the Moore brothers, Drinkell, Wilkinson and Gary Lund graduating from local schools to the Town first team?
And why such a dearth of top class talent since? The barren spell culminating in none of the current crop of second year YTs being given contracts.
Yes, we've had a few superstars who've gone for big money. But John Oster from Skegness is the nearest we've had to locally produced talent. Gary Croft and Ryan Bennett both came through the youth scheme but were not local.
Others have come through to the first team but with only limited success.
It's a real puzzle. Maybe we just got lucky when Tommy Casey recruited his cadre of promising youngsters in the mid-70s who went on to form the backbone of the side that rose through the Football League.
Meanwhile, friends of mine who are Hull City fans are having kittens at the moment. What seemed like certain promotion to the Premier League has now degenerated into a last game scrap against champions Cardiff.
If Town fans are disappointed at their side's failure to get out of the Conference and Iron fans distraught at relegation, just imagine the emotions of 'Taargers' supporters if they fail to reach the promised land and Watford replace them.
Maybe Cardiff, with nothing to play for, will already be on 'holiday'. But then again their boss, Malky McKay, is a former Watford manager.
Putting tribal prejudices aside, forgetting for once that City's rise was prompted by being gifted a new stadium by the council, I hope they do go up.
Bringing Premier League football to 'Humberside' can only be good for the area as a whole.
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