Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 15 February 2014

FA Trophy (SF1)

Cambridge United 2 Bird (21, 55)

Grimsby Town 1 John-Lewis (90+4)

Attendance: 3264 (1023 away fans)

I will not insult you like they did.

Dante's inferno was a Nostradmus-like vision of a windswept fenland field on Saturday 15 February 2014. At level one we had McDonald, Doig and Hatton. These were simply not very good, mostly. We drift through layers of silt and sewage to get to the lowest level, where lies Alex Rodman. Lazy in foot and mind, responsible for the second goal, inconsequential throughout. Hurst should have put him out of his and our misery, but left him hanging, a catnip for catcalls, a focal point of fulmination and fury.

Town dominated the first kick and last kick. The 94 minutes in between were approaching the Shay Stadium Disaster in incompetence, if not quite in misapplication. McKeown was by far the very least bad of the starters. James, yes, James McKeown, you can go and sit down now while we line the rest up against the wall for a good old shout and whack on their backsides with Horace the Cheeseboard.

The outfielders played like they wanted to avoid Wembley: gormless bystanders, dumb whackers, shameful shufflers. The three late arrivistes added some pep, vim and competence which in a normal world would be dismissed as 'alright'. Compared to what went before they were world-beating game-changers.

No-one, absolutely none of the starters should show their face in public this week. Where's Horace gone? What they need's a damn good whacking.

Cambridge should have won by a lot more. Without being much better than last time, they were infinitely superior to the embarrassing slops that were set before them. Their strikers were much more mobile, slippy and tricky and they eventually had adventures in space and time that didn't involve cavemen or a gravel pit near Huntingdon.

Bird looked like someone who would score, and Town gave him enough time to do so. So he did. There was nothing clever about their tactics – overload the wings, expose Town's full-backs – and there was nothing clever about the execution.

They had no defence and a ball boy in goal. That's why they conceded when Town finally placed the football vaguely near their goal. They aren't anything to be scared of.

The discontent was being contained, the cork about to be popped, but Lennie's late laughing lolloper stopped the lynch mob in its tracks. Surprisingly restrained during the unfolding unpleasantness.

Mr D Bond (Lancs)

Town were so, so embarrassingly bad that he started to give free kicks and corners because he clearly felt sorry for us. He had the slight air of a prancing Clattenburg, but his biggest sins were in Town's favour. We scored because he added so much time and gave a corner because Thanoj cried: 6.201.

No fun, no fun, no fun, no fun. Fuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyyy.

In a word: infuriating