A sublime hat-trick from Kevin Ellison smacked the final nail into Alan Buckley's coffin at the weekend and the Grimsby manager left the club for the third time.
Now, there's no secret agent mission on Ellison's agenda as he enjoys a wonderful second spell at Chester City, but for an ex-Hull City winger to belt in a hat-trick at Blundell Park and prompt the departure of Grimsby's most successful (and yet, somehow, lowest profile) manager has a rather tasty irony to it. Maybe it's not quite on a par with Denis Law backheeling the ball into Manchester United's net to help send them down, or even that car crash performance by Liam Ridgewell in Birmingham's defence to contribute to his former club Aston Villa's win the season before last, but there's something to it.
Not least because Ellison's period at Hull City was very, very mixed up. It was hard to work out whether he was popular or not.
Ellison joined Hull City from Chester when Peter Taylor decided, in his wisdom, to buy a second left-sided midfielder as cover for the invaluable Stuart Elliott. Taylor went on record recently to say he always wanted two left backs "in the building" (natch), hence the arrival of Roland Edge to cover for Andy Dawson, because left back was the hardest position to cover if the first choice gets crocked. Presumably, this extended to left wingers/midfielders too, and so Ellison came across the Pennines midway through our League One season.
We shouldn't have been surprised at Ellison's arrival. Taylor knew him well from his time at Leicester, for whom Ellison made one appearance in the Premier League (as a sub, at Old Trafford!), and assistant Colin Murphy had later recommended him to Stockport, from whom he then joined Chester. Murphy was now Taylor's number two at the KC, and so Ellison joined up.
Familiar faces greeted him - not just Taylor and Murphy, but also his ex-Leicester team-mate Junior Lewis and former Stockport colleagues Ben Burgess, Aaron Wilbraham, Boaz Myhill and Damien Delaney. To complicate things further, Delaney had also been at Leicester. A real sense of in-breeding between three clubs was going on, but amidst it all, City were building a team.
What became obvious about Ellison from the start that he lacked outstanding ability but was a stunning example of effort over end product. He got some stick from lamer brains in the crowd, especially when having managed to get half a yard on a full back, he couldn't get his cross into the air and the first defender trapped it, but he was always ready to try again. Frustrating as Ellison often was, he forever wanted more. He never hid, he never shirked, he never reacted to catcalls nor seemed thrown or put off by them.
He made two telling individual contributions to the remainder of the League One season - scoring an exceptional goal at Tranmere (later to be usurped by Craig Fagan's debut goal in the same game) and hitting a queer as they come chip from halfway against Colchester at the KC with his apparently useless right foot, which came back off the bar and allowed Nick Barmby to follow up and score. The rest of that season, he was just there, trying so hard, putting his body into the cause, but rarely getting any good fortune. It was hard not to appreciate him, even if it was easy not to love him, but promotion for City certainly made it easy not to concentrate on him.
In the Championship, Ellison had some real mares - his first appearance of the season, in a 1-0 defeat at Wolves - was rightly criticised from all angles as the irrefutable proof that he wasn't up to the task. But, well, he got better. He was odd, he was eccentric, but he never played woefully and didn't lose us a match - indeed, he earned us an astonishing point at Southampton when, on as a sub, he battered his way past two defenders and cracked in a vicious shot from a wide angle which earned City a late 1-1 draw. His second goal only for City but like the first, it was memorable and vital.
His swansong period involved a clutch of memorably idiosyncratic performances on the right side of midfield, during which he never showed any intention of using his right foot, which came after Taylor fell out with Fagan in training and looked around to see who else was available for that berth.
Ellison didn't fit the bill in the slightest, but nonetheless managed to. A performance at Luton Town, which City won 3-2, was the highlight of his Tigers career, as he ripped their full back to pieces despite showing himself inside constantly, setting up two goals and receiving a standing ovation when withdrawn late on.
Taylor's resignation at the end of the season seemed destined to spell Ellison's end too. He turned down a move to Scunthorpe - which earned him one final shot of respect from the Tiger Nation - before agreeing to go back to his native Merseyside and join Tranmere, the club he had tortured in a City shirt just a season and a half before. A smattering of applause came his way when the Carling Cup draw brought him back to the KC within weeks, and he's now back at Chester, a club that adores him, and where he is evidently one of the best players in a bereft division.
And now Ellison has just managed to get the Grimsby manager fired. For all that he struggled to earn the Tiger Nation's love, he clearly has fond memories of us. And for that effort, that endeavour, that honesty and that bloody-mindedness, I may just add him to the list of greats on the right. He wasn't our finest player, but sometimes you want the really talented ones to be a bit more like him.
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