Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Conference Premier (PO1)

Grimsby Town 0

Newport County 1 Yakubu (89)

Attendance: 5414

First half: Flags of our farmers
Town kicked off towards the Pontoon. Hatton dismantled himself. Welsh wandering, Town squanderings. Thighs and shins, Pidgeley grins. Pipe up! Pipe's up, up and over, Jolley jeapers, Jolley creepers. Moments of danger. Lump, lump and Cook dumped. Devitt repeater, Pidgeley flipper.

They're hammering us, but nothing's going on. And far away, in the gods, a man snapped. That Newport fan's been branded. Marked with a coward's shame.

Yakubu, peekaboo! Free header, wild, wild, life. Hair by Anthony grazing wide like a cow with hiccups. Yellow cards, mark your cards. This is a curdling yoghurt.

Town pressure, Town shot. Devitt, Thomas, Pidgley's left hand of cod, Hearn, scrambled egginess. Half time.

Town dominated the whole of the last minute.

Second half: That sinking feeling
Neither team made any changes at half time.

Town, Town, now it's Town. Devitt wide, Devitt over. Devitt off, Thanoj on, Thanoj over.

Newport, where are you?

Norman Wisdom, Benny Hill, Sir Bernie Clifton, Lord Admiral Shaun Pearson. Your back-pass took a helluva beating.

Oh Cleveland. Over the bar and far, far away. Marshall on. Turn the volume up to 11. Sorry, 1.1.

Muddled mess. Huggling, buggling, a post hit. How very Disleypointing. Cook grazed at Lennie P.

Thomas felled. A free kick to them, under the Police Box. Questions will be asked of the local PCC. Why did the police not arrest the referee for being drunk with power in charge of a whistle in a built-up area? No sir, that was not a free kick to them: that was just a rotten decision.

Sandell swung, Yakubu hung, the ball ambled and fumbled off Miller's flesh and apologised in accidentally. A goal. Head for the hills.

The ladies with glasses and men who wear moustaches plumped for the gingerbread man.

Let us salute Sam Hatton for his rise to adequacy, let's benevolently bury his first five seconds in the soft soap of amnesia. Thomas was back towards his gliding best, but the best of a humdrum lot was the Boston basher: Shaun Pearson.

"Frustration is the overriding feeling at the moment."

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"There was nothing between the two sides and I thought we were outstanding."

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It was a home game: just read every report from the last three months. Incoherent thrashings and crashings from the mish-mashed, mis-matched Mariners. The back four were collectively and individually sound; even Hatton awoke and made a spectacularly excellent tackle. Even!

There was nothing going on up top. Taylor was on the team sheet, not necessarily on the pitch. Devitt was the only man on his planet and Cook a workaholic breezeblock of diminishing returns. The tactics? The method? Hump and hope. Micawberish and dispiritingly dismal.

Faster, stronger and longer than their Saturday jobbers. Pipe was a persistent pest, Jolley was jolly alarming, while Minshull munched carrots in midfield. They hustled, they hassled, they had loads of long shots, but McKeown never had to make a save.

Dangerous, but not frightening, like a lesser Macclesfield.

What a tremendous noise. Until it kicked off. Usual big match flat feet and crooked noses.

Mr G Horwood (Herts)

For an hour a happily useless semi-homester, and oh we chuckled. Then the world turned on his dreadful whims. Had he been on the Pimms? Yes, yes, that free kick, but many things before it, sir, and yes, you madam. Not a wise choice by the FA to mismanage a travelling Welsh whelk stall:3.8888.

Flagging.