Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 16 August 2008

Division 4

Brentford 4 MacDonald (27, 45), Elder (38), Poole (60)

Grimsby Town 0

Attendance: 4009

This award may get abandoned halfway through because of a lack of wind. Till and Heslop were conspicuously tireless to the end, and for that microscopic morsel of stale cheese Simon Heslop takes the broken biscuit, with no pickle to spice up the taste.

Take your pick: Barnes, Bennett, Newey, Hunt and Butler contributed least, with the first two particularly awful, for they simply panicked while the others simply disappeared. Poor young Ryan, rudderless and far from odourless today, was even incapable of throwing straight.

"I walked out to watch them warm up. Within two minutes I marched across the pitch called the players together and said: 'If this is what I'm going to see we might as well go home.'"

"We played some good stuff, scored some good goals and probably most importantly we kept a clean sheet. It's very pleasing."

Brentford are as Brentford be. Their manager's assertions of playing a passing game suggest either a pixieish sense of humour or a man at the cutting edge of redefining the English language for the 2First century. They were vigorous, energetic and direct. Their game plan was simple and simply successful. These busy Bees just banged the ball high, quickly and often, and chased after it. MacDonald was a pest with zest and Elder was a windbreak with attitude, though they tended to rely on enthusiasm and confidence. They did nothing until they scored, then they swarmed like... ravenous killer ants on a stray egg sandwich. Pace, power and a bully's instinct for slapping a weakling where he's weakest. Town had too many players watching the skies.

Mr DJ Phillips (Sussex)
In provincial grounds you'll jog around, this is what they'll sing: "Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ". A whistle-happy, reactive berk who constantly kept giving free kicks for small nudges when the wounded party were in possession and breaking forward. The corner-that-wasn't nonsense with his lily-livered linesman summed up the officiating. Just rubbish all round, he contributed the general ugliness, but was not the cause of Town's tawdriness. He didn't understand the game and won't understand why he gets 4.654 for being very poor, and that's the law.

We had the option of standing on terracing and the meatballs in Ikea were particularly tasty. The blue away kit looked lovely.