Grimsby Town, my grandad and his final match

We didn’t know it then, but Grimsby Town v Torquay United, on Saturday 23 April 2022, would be the last match my grandad ever saw at Blundell Park. And I was there with him.

Blundell Park, to those not au fait with the east coast’s black-and-white yo-yo football club, has been the home of Grimsby Town since 1899. The club is famous for many things, but quite notable for being the answer to the pub quiz question ‘what football club doesn’t play in the town it’s named after?’

Cleethorpes, by the way.

Born in 1939, the same year as the Osmond Stand sprung up to cast a glorious shadow on the terraced houses surrounding the stadium, my grandad was Town through and through. A season ticket holder for many years, football to him – like to so many – was the chance to spend time with friends, sharing in the collective ecstasy and misery of watching 11 players hunt for glory.

But in recent years one by one his friends left us and by the time Saturday 23 April 2022 came around, and following his recent terminal cancer diagnosis, a loving rotation of family members were accompanying him to games.

Mesothelioma is a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. It’s a cancer caused by the negligence of people who didn’t care about workers. The negligence of people who didn’t care that one day I would have to kneel next to my grandad and through my tears be careful when hugging him so as not to pull out his oxygen tubes while I said goodbye and told him how much I loved him.

Asbestos was known to be a killer as early as 1930, nine years before my grandad was born. Yet it still got him, and up and down the country there will be football fans at each game, not knowing it’s their last because of it.

On that bitterly cold but sunny April day, for a man who was so ill, he was remarkably sprightly making his way up the 100 or so stone steps of the Young’s Stand to seat J51. He spoke to the men who sat around him, the men who knew he was ill and who may well have feared his fate when he didn’t make it to the last two league games of the season against Maidenhead United and Boreham Wood.

I sat there next to him, my arm wrapped around his shoulders trying to protect him from the whipping wind that comes in from the river Humber. He refused to take my woolly hat or my gloves and sat as stoically as ever simply enjoying his football in his flat cap.

When Grimsby went 1-0 down, I feared that this day may not be all I’d hoped, but as I saw him leap into…