Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 21 February 2009

Division 4

Darlington 1 Main (87)

Grimsby Town 0

Attendance: 3418

In a trickle of trash there were some drops of decency. Atkinson generally performed OK, as did the full-backs. Sinclair ran around a lot and didn't withdraw from some huge chunky tackles. You know who it's going to be: Ryan Bennett. Why? If you have to ask you don't know what's going on, you've been away for far too long. You're outta touch now baby.

"It was a poor pitch and not a lot of football was played, but nevertheless I thought that the wind had gone out of Darlington. Apart from the goal and another chance they had just before they scored, we were their equals and that was pleasing for me. I thought we had seen the game out. We weren't really troubled too much, to be honest."

"We dug in and at times it wasn't pretty."

On the evidence of this game Darlington have no chance of promotion. They were dreadful, devoid of any gumption and just looking for lucky flicks from their totem poles and strategically placed divots. They were the better of two awful sides and light years away from the slick pass masters we saw at Blundell Park. Or maybe they have applied some science: if the ball was not on the pitch then random crevasses were avoided and the randomness of chance was reduced. They deserved the 0-0 more than Town, but didn't show anything of consequence, with nothing impressive individually or collectively. They were mid-table adequate, Macclesfield with knobs on. Their centre-backs could head the ball and Kennedy was a pest. That's all.

Mr G Laws (Tyne & Wear)
Fair is foul, and foul is fair! Together with his evil little pixies he managed to be worse than Darlington, worse than Town, and even worse than the pitch. It takes a lot of hard work to reach that level of rubbishness. All the bookings he did do were for silly nothings, and he avoided terminating 'orrible 'Atch through the simple expedient of indulging in cowardice and incompetence. If he made a correct decision it was by accident. He even started giving Town free kicks in the end. Darlington were savvy enough to realise that they only had to fall and they'd get a foul, especially near the Town penalty area. The irony is that that he played no part in their goal, as that had looked the only way they were going to score. What ruddied man is that? Tubby Laws is a cause of despair: What is the score that hovers through the fug of filthy air? 3.776. He made the impossible possible; he made things worse than they were.

We managed to avoid giving them any money for their car parking racket.