Cod Almighty | Match Report

by Miles Moss

25 March 2005

Bury 3 Grimsby Town 1

Spring has sprung. It was a warm enough day for me to leave the house wearing just a T-shirt. OK - undies, trousers, socks and shoes as well, but you knew what I meant. It was the sort of warm breezy weather that pub beer gardens were made for. So we made for one. It was also the sort of weather, I thought as we later approached the ground, that reminds me of the latter stages of the '97-98 season... hmmm... perhaps that's just the beer thinking.

Tickets were only a tenner as Bury attempted to fill the ground, but perhaps beer gardens seemed more attractive than mid-table bottom-division football for many locals, as the end behind one goal was totally empty, and even at 2:59, gaps in the seating in the other stands stood out like so many patches of alopecia. The official figures say 5,671, though it looked like a couple more thousand than that to me. Ah well, it's nice to know other clubs, try as they might, are met with the same indifference from their locals as we are.

The teams emerged. I had warned my friend Paul - attending his first Town match - that there might possibly be a chance of a small amount of harsh words each time a certain Dave Challinor touched the ball, and I was half right. The Bury number five's studs had barely touched the turf when a large proportion of the away crowd firmly suggested that he was a member of the Self-Abuse Society, and drove home this assertion throughout the 90 minutes, regardless of the proximity of the ball to his foot.

But let's try and put Pringle's leg behind us, shall we. What of the team today? Town's team sheet read: Williams, McDermott, Whittle, Forbes, Bull, Reddy, Pinault, Crowe, Parkinson, Harrold, Gritton; the bench had room for the ten buttocks of Jones, Downey, Coldicott, Hockless, and Soames. It was like 4-4-2-ish, as you'd probably expect.

First half
Bury kicked off, passed it backwards, then hoofed it forwards to Bull's bit of the pitch. Somewhere behind a fat fan's head, Town conceded a corner. The corner was whacked over to the far post, then headed back across goal to Porter, who nutted it into the net in a training ground stylee, like FIFA on the Playstation set to 'really, really, really very easy indeed'. Less than 30 seconds gone, and one-nil down already. Sound familiar?

Four minutes in, it could have been - and should have been - worse. Another Bury attack down Town's left, more wide open spaces, gave Porter another chance from a similar position, with so much space and so much time that... that he missed it, the ball sailing over the bar and into the empty seating. Phew.

Hang on, what's this? A Town attack, a Town chance; Bull floating a cross right through the Bury area where, at the last, Reddy popped out from behind his marker to say "Boo!" and to head the ball just wide. But don't get your hopes up, for two minutes later Bury won a throw-in. Challinor threw it in, somebody nodded it on, and Barry-Murphy said ta very much before, y'know, kicking into the net and scoring another one of them 'goal' things.

Back down the Bury end, Reddy had another chance, a blocked shot arcing deep into the box where the Tousled One met it at the foot of the left post and just failed to poke it goalwards. Minutes later, Harrold got himself into a great position too, hoping to receive a super Macca cross, but found himself surrounded by no fewer than three Bury defenders. Gritton went on a run, almost circumnavigating the box before being overrun and losing the ball.

Everywhere and at all times Parky was being a proper pest, running here and there with twisty wiggles and causing little hand grenades of danger. The pick of the Parkies: receiving a throw-in on his chest, controlling the ball before spinning wickedly and ripsnorting a low pass into the box; too good for the defenders, and too good for the waiting Town players, the ball eluding everyone - Whittle the closest with a late lash of the bootlace. "Oooh"-worthy, though.

Meanwhile, Bull was yin to Parky's yang; cursed with the Inverse Midas Touch, everything he touched turned to crap: every pass misplaced; a horrid clearance nearly gave Bury a 3-0 lead, as it cannoned off an approaching Shaker, Williams mightily relieved to see the ball trickle right across the goalmouth and past the far post; and in the worst of it all, Ronnie hesitated with the ball three times before deciding to kick it against his own shins and set up a Bury attack. It simply wasn't his day; in fact, when he redeemed another fluff with an excellent tackle to retrieve the ball, he was rewarded with a yellow card.

Parky, Crowe, and Gritton were all subject to rather meaty tackles, but only the latter resulted in a yellow for the Bury perp. Let's not dwell on any refereeing inconsistencies, though - Mr Taylor set a new benchmark last Saturday; after that, anything looks good.

Another Bury attack, a cheeky clearance by Macca: running away from the ball, he ducks down and lets it skim off the back of his head and away from the pursuing opponent. What? Of course he meant to do that - he's Sir John of McDermott.

With a minute to go, Pinault whips a free kick through the Bury box, and Gritton comes close enough to a goal for a few cheers to go up in the away end. Alas, it's just the ripple of the side netting. Sit down, everyone.

Just before the half finishes, there's time for another scare. A long Bury ball finds space in Ronald de Bull's part of the pitch. Mattis is first to the ball, and sends it harmlessly towards Town's goal. Did I say 'harmlessly'? Williams collects the ball and then drops it on his own feet, eventually fumbling it back up again. If you could hear the sound of eyes being covered, the sound would have been deafening.

The half ended. The usual collection of morons booed their own team off the pitch. Bull was having the biggest 'mare, and collectively the defence seemed AWOL. Parky, Pinault and Reddy had been creating chances, but Bury had done their homework and learned that Town don't like it up 'em. When we had the ball, they tried to get it off us, hassling the players into hurried passes and generally unsettling them. On a lighter note, the police and stewards decided to throw out some young chavs for being loud and annoying, which suited us fine.

Half-time toilet talk
"My flippant Williams joke at the ticket office didn't go down well: I was stood next to his brother at the time."
"I've never seen topiary trousers before."
"Are those floodlights high enough to light the pitch?"

Second half
No changes were made by either... oh, hang on, I was on autopilot there. Jones came on for the two-left-footed Bull, and Coldicott replaced Gritton, who seemed to have been struggling since Flitcroft's brutal tackle. Town went to a sort of 3-4-3, and from the off looked more comfortable, the attacking more effective. Within two minutes, more hip-swivelling trickery from Parky resulted in a dangerous pass into the Bury box. The ball took a deflection on its way to Reddy on the left side of the area; he controlled with his first touch and smashed home with his second, right across the keeper into the far side of the goal. It was glorious, and nothing more than he deserved.

The goal fired up Grimsby, players and fans alike. For the next five minutes you felt that Town could actually come up rose-perfumed from what looked for all the world like a smelly defeat. There was new purpose, new belief in the Mariners players.

And then, of course, Bury scored their third. A Challinor long throw into the box was headed out by Jones, but only as far as a Bury head, which nodded it back in again. Nothing majorly dangerous, until... ah... Kazim-Richards with his back to goal, swivelled on the spot and smashed the ball into the net. Just a great goal; not much to be done about that.

So, Town's bubble burst, then. Well, no. Even for the next five minutes there was belief. More attacks by Town; two Pinault corners, the first headed just over by Jones, the second plucked out of the air by Bury keeper Garner.

One hour gone, and I realised that although Town's bubble hadn't burst with Bury's third goal, it had certainly suffered a slow puncture. From here on in, life drained out of the match, and by the end it was a joyless and sluggish affair. Grimsby seemed to resort to longer and longer shots, the best being a Pinault attempt which missed the angle by a small enough margin to warrant an "oooh", but not a very enthusiastic one, as by then the "oooh"-ers were too bloody fed up.

Jones was booked; Whittle was lucky not to be for smacking the speedy Kazim-Richards in the gob as he sprinted past on the way to glory. A Bury free kick right on the bye-line - moved forward 10 yards to inside our box - came to nothing; Harrold, once again crowded out, got his head to a free kick but it was over - as was the match, you felt.

With ten minutes to go, huge plumes of bonfire smoke started to drift across half of the pitch from one corner, and we began once again to wonder about the rules of abandonment. As the smoke disappeared, so did large numbers of Bury fans, clearly of the same mind that this was over as a contest, perhaps as a season.

A round of applause was summoned up with five minutes to go, marking the replacement of Macca with Soames. Shortly afterwards, time for one last seat-flipping moment, as a Jones header from a Pinault corner beat the keeper but was cleared off the line. And time for one more moment from the comedy/horror section: Williams, literally and metaphorically right out of his box, fluffed two clearance kicks, the ball eventually being nicked by Parky... who then gave it away, giving Kazim-Richards the chance to lob it in from 35 yards. Williams just got back in time to launch himself backward and claw the ball round his right post.

Aside from a Pouton-esque Pinault 'shot', that was kind of it, the match finally giving up on itself and slumping face down on the turf. The ref took pity on it and blew for full time. How can I sum this up? Bury deserved to win. Last week, Town were robbed, playing brilliantly and losing. This week? Were these the same players? There were a few good performances, a few of them trying; other performances were anonymous at best, dreadful at worst; but as a team they looked disjointed, like a bunch of strangers. There's nothing left to play for this season, and that's just what it felt like.

Man of the match
Parky was very dangerous, and almost worthy, but the accolade for this match goes to Michael Reddy, not just for scoring, but for running his little white boots off.

Un-man of the match
We deliberated whether or not this could go to a man who only spent half a match on the pitch, but he seemed to pack a full 90 minutes of howlers into 45 minutes of play. Ronnie Bull, this is your strife.