Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 22 March 2008

Division 4

Mansfield Town 1 Arnold (49)

Grimsby Town 2 Till (32), Boshell (74)

Attendance: 2616

The curate has an egg, you know. Bolland was magnificent until he got kicked, then someone put the head back on his chicken and that was that: he was back to being Captain Shins. Butler was neat and knowing, while Till was effervescent and sporadically brilliant. Overall the game was won by one man: the all-tackling, all-blocking, all-passing and all-scoring Danny Boshell. He is the music man, he comes from down our away and he can play.

"We intended to come here and have a go at them and I was delighted with the first half. We played some decent football though the final ball was sometimes lacking, but I thought we deserved our lead. But I was bitterly disappointed with our second-half performance, certainly the first 20 minutes when Mansfield could have scored three or four. "It was a fantastic winning goal -€“ a superb first time strike. Danny Boshell had a big influence on the game and scored the winner after keeping out two chances for them on the line. "Mansfield played some good football to be fair so credit to them. They are scrapping for their lives but didn't play long ball. They passed the ball and supported each other well."

"The lads gave everything again even though we didn't play perhaps quite as well as we did in the last two games. We started very brightly after half-time and Nathan Arnold scored a good goal. But we just couldn't get the second and their winner was an absolute peach. It's no good feeling sorry for ourselves. They have to puff their chests out and show some pride."

We entered the ground with goodwill, which evaporated when they started to overcharge us for everything. We had wanted them to stay up, but not at those prices. They play football as it should be. Interesting, neat and nifty in counter-attacking, they are just a little too slap-dash in defending and shooting. Boulding continues to serve double faults, but Arnold's ground strokes purred when he passed Newey at will. They have half a good team, which is not even as good as half a sixpence these days. They look hollow-eyed and are simply waiting for someone to put them out of their miseries. They had no fight. Size up the coffin, the bell is tolling for thee.

Mr Andy Hall
Andy, there's always an Andy, isn't there. He started off perfectly adequately, being hardly noticed amidst the hubble and bubble of Mansfield's toils and troubles, but he was getting odder all the time. He introduced the concept of reverse pushing to football, where shirts forcibly enter the hands of a footballer causing mayhem and merriment to children of all ages and their children's children of all ages too. He was mostly liberal and allowed the game to flow, but by the game's middle age, when he started to lose a few hairs and wear patterned cardigans, he became intolerant of the slightest disturbance, accusing the youngest players of hanging around on street corners and pulling the petals off his prize petunias. He was probably doing the best that he can, but it wasn't consistently good enough, so he gets a consistently non-descript 5.565.

Our ears were warm, as the wind came from behind the stand we were sat in. We'll go up next year.