This one originally appeared in the issue that went on sale when Marine visited Holker St on 29 January 2000. Has the Ed got a death wish or something? It's a wonder he's not still in hospital...
The Give 'Em Beans! Guide to... MARINE
Marine isn't a town at all. It's just a name they gave to the football club because it's near the sea, had something to do with sailors and there's a street called Marine Drive near the football ground. The town is Crosby and it's the last dribble of the sprawl that is Liverpool before the sand dunes and links of Ainsdale and Formby take over and before they, in turn, disappear under the urban development of Southport.  Yes, we're in Scouseland, where every word is punctuated with 'ermmmm' and the locals speak in that exaggerated strangulated, nasal whine that is a bastard mix of Welsh, Irish and Northern English and which is the locals' definition of a loveable accent.  Crosby has always been overshadowed by its neighbours. Southport has tried to keep its distance from the Scouse scallywags that inhabit the rest of this corner of Lancashire by developing a refined, superior air. But Crosby is full of scallies, forcibly moved there by the slum clearances of the inner city areas of Liverpool in the fifties and sixties. Before the sprawl of the city swallowed it, Crosby had a distinct, separate identity. But that's long gone. Now it's indistinguishable from Litherland, Bootle, Netherton and all the other areas of this part of the city of Liverpool.  The loss of its own identity probably didn't bother Crosby very much. It's always been a totally anonymous place lacking any notable features of any description whatsoever. There are no grand buildings, distinguishing landmarks or famous locales. The Dock Road from Liverpool is more intent on reaching Southport than spending any time in Crosby and it's not hard to see why. The town centre is being slowly strangled by out of town superstores, and it deserves to be. It's nothing more than a collection of a few dozen shops at a small crossroads by a set of traffic lights. A little further on, set back from the road inside a huge concrete monolith, is the infamous Strand Shopping Centre. But it wasn't any of the shops that gave the Strand its infamy. It was the kidnapping and murder of little two year old James Bulger by two ten-year old hooligans in 1994. There's a station somewhere. It's just a two platform halt on the Liverpool-Southport Merseyrail commuter line. To get anywhere else you have to change at Lime St station in Liverpool.  If you came from Crosby you probably wouldn't want anyone to know. That's why they didn't name their football team after the town. Too embarrassing. But when you find the football ground, in College Road, about two hundred yards from those tiny shops huddled around the traffic lights, it's almost as if they squeezed it in between the rows of terraced houses at the last minute. There are only three sides to the ground because of the proximity of the houses. The other side is so narrow that if one person is stood watching the game there's hardly enough room for other people to pass behind him. College Road is so far away from meeting any sort of ground grading criteria that if Marine had found themselves in the same position as Barrow last summer, it wouldn't even have been good enough to get them into the NorthWest Trains League. Yet Marine are no slouches on the pitch. For four seasons in the mid-nineties they dominated the UniBond, winning it three times, despite knowing that they would never achieve promotion because of the state of the ground. Yet in a crushing display of lack of ambition, Marine seem unable to sort out a move to a new ground that would provide a launching pad for a bid for the Conference.  Holker St is a far superior ground to College Road, so much so that it's embarrassing. If only we were challenging for the title. Roll on next season! Issue 043 - January 2000