Grimsby Town owners hail fantastic film All Town Aren't We as fans flock to premiere

The owners of Grimsby Town have hailed a new film that captures the "ebbs and flows" of a dramatic season for the Mariners.

Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit were among guests at the Parkway Cinema, Cleethorpes, for the premiere of 'All Town Aren't We'. a documentary covering the 21-22 National League promotion campaign. Directed by lifelong Mariners fan Jack Spring, the film retells the season's big events through the voices of those who experienced it, from the owners and players to the fans.

And the club's committed custodians were delighted to be involved in a project that their hard work helped to create, seeing the club they have supported their whole lives, and are now responsible for, shown in a positive light. “It’s a fantastic story,” said Pettit, who is an investor in Spring's production company, Shush Films.

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“You see the ebbs and flows of the season and we all know how the story ends which makes it a little less nerve-wracking to watch. I don’t think either of us were expecting to get promoted in the first season, but it has been a fantastic journey so far.”

Stockwood added: “I hadn’t thought much about it until I was driving over [to the premiere] and it struck me that there has been a documentary made on Grimsby Town and a successful period for the club before, so I’m really proud to be involved in it.”

'All Town Aren't We' premiered to five sold-out screenings on Friday night, with more than 1,000 people – members of the promotion-winning squad – watching it on the big screen. The film covers the highs and lows of the season, starting with the unceremonious relegation from the Football League in the previous campaign with no fans in attendance, with the emotions of that time captured perfectly through the words of Grimsby-born academy product Harry Clifton.

Following the takeover by Stockwood and Pettit, the film depicts Town's flying start to the new season, with John McAtee leading the charge. His importance to the team that year is discussed in detail, with his first injury at Wealdstone coinciding with the team’s dip in form.

The Mariners lost that game at Wealdstone on October 26 and went on to win just two of the next 12 league fixtures, which saw them drop to tenth in the table. Stockwood and Pettit stuck with manager Paul Hurst, however, and it proved to be a wise decision, with Town losing just three times in their last 20 regular season fixtures.

In the film, the additions of Jordan Maguire-Drew and Gavan Holohan during the season are highlighted as vital to the team recovering their form and getting over the line in the end, with both going on to make vital contributions at different points of the play-offs. The three play-off ties in across a fortnight could provide enough material for a documentary on their own, and unsurprisingly, a good chunk of the run time is dedicated to those games.

All those watching knew the outcome this time around, but no doubt some of the same emotions were felt as a dramatic soundtrack played over the highlights of a tense series of games. The film culminates with tear-jerking and heart-warming celebrations at the London Stadium.

It is a reminder of why the club’s custodians, staff and players put in long hours of work and why the fans turn up in droves every week to spend their hard-earned cash, in the hope of experiencing more moments of the kind that made the documentary possible. The game of football is one of the best scriptwriters out there and 'All Town Are We' encapsulates that well, going back through the season that allowed supporters of this historic club to believe again.

Jack Spring – whose previous work has included the acclaimed comedy-thriller Three Day Millionaire – said making 'All Town Aren't We' had been an emotional journey. “It’s the first documentary I’ve done, which brought about different challenges,” Spring told Grimsby Live. “My job usually as a director is to try and get the emotion out of actors, which is easier compared to getting it out of footballers.

“It wasn’t difficult in the end though and I felt lucky because I knew the topic [of the documentary] so intimately, already being a massive fan of the club, and I knew who we should speak to outside of the playing squad.”

Spring did not initially expect that the 21-22 campaign would provide a documentary-worthy story, but he was delighted to see his initial feelings proven wrong. He added: “I can’t take any credit for writing the story! The important thing about it now we’re 18 months on from it is that it was the turning point for the club to be on a one-way trajectory. I don’t expect to have to do another documentary about us getting out of the National League.

“I didn’t believe we’d get promoted that year initially and we were approached about doing the documentary at the start of that season, but there wasn’t a story then and I was working on [Three Day Millionaire]. It was as we were walking down the steps at the London Stadium that we decided that we had to do something and we started filming a few weeks later.”