Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Conference Premier

Grimsby Town 1 Coulson (8)

Forest Green Rovers 1 Styche (36)

Attendance: 2401 (14 away fans)

The people with gravy-stained ties wanted an attacker: Connell fell over more times than a toddler, Duffy hit the post but hardly won a header so Coulson wins, we suppose, by having the strength of purpose to make some forward runs.

Kenny Arthur: we are starting to really like him. He's got an empathetic side with the Pontoon. He stops all the shots he can stop. And there were far too many in the first quarter of an hour. Any failures there and we'd have lost to the likes of Forest Green, which might have prompted a sacking. Oh, it did anyway. But good on yer Kenny mate.

Was he injured? Was he ill? Was he halfway through a bad trip (we warned about the brown acid in 1970)? Whatever the reason, Dean's performance was excruciatingly poor. The consequence of his removal at half time was that some people thought Leary played well. But only by comparison, eh?

"We need to win games now. We needed to do that on Saturday and we still do. There's a nervousness about the players at the moment. After a good first ten minutes we went longer from back to front and invited Forest Green in to the game."

"We were by far and away the better team in the first half. I'm really, really disappointed we weren't two- or three-one up at half time. Second half: we made it bitty and horrible: we never really got it going but it was a very professional performance."

The jolly green giants made Town's mostly minnows look small, weak and lacking pace. When they realised that there was no need to lump it forward, because they could run with the ball in gay abandon through our central midfield, the trouble started. Mr Bittner deserves a special mention for his bizarre performance. Quite how Duffy injured the back of his head in a full-frontal fair game challenge is a mystery to all. Quite why he persisted in kicking the ball from the outside edge of the penalty area line, even after he'd been pulled up for encroachment, we may never know. He's a nasty piece of work all round. FGR will stay out of trouble, we think, because Styche will keep scoring. But not many home teams will proffer a point as easily as Grimsby.

A very, very thin crowd too numb to complain even when they realised Town's midfield were worse than normal. But the referee and the opposition keeper juiced things up.

Mr J Simpson (Lancs)
The worst in a long line of worsts. Duffy and Bittner went for a ball full-frontal; Bittner gets it, then collapses holding the back of his head ("an impossible injury"); no whistle; trainer comes on; FGR yelp; Simpson books Duffy. Next? A drop-ball. Go figure.

We have a decent keeper. Let's build on that.