Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 16 February 2013

FA Trophy (SF1)

Grimsby Town 3 Disley (24, 84), Cook (87)

Dartford 0

Attendance: 3573 (242 away fans)

There's a new darling of the dinnertablers, for it is the irrepressible workhorse, Andy Cook, who gets to shake hands and smile with sponsors as the breeze blows back their hair..

Why did Town win? Because they didn't concede. Why didn't they concede? Because McKeown made one brilliant save and Ian Miller marshalled his scamps. Dartford were never going to turn it up to 11 with Miller head-and-shouldering danger away.

"We didn't wake up for 15-20 minutes and once we did I thought we played really well in the first half. That was the best we've played in a while and we looked like we could get that second goal. In the second half, the longer it went on and we hadn't got that second goal, that's when you just wonder if it's going to come back and bite you. After the first 10-15 minutes of that half I didn't think we were great -€“ we didn't play the correct balls and we didn't clear our lines far enough to turn them around."

"I was disappointed with the result. I know we were 1-0 down but I felt we had control of the game in the second half. We'd have taken a 1-0 to bring back home. It's the first leg of a semi-final and 1-0 would have been OK, but at 3-0 we've got a mountain to climb. It was just a mad 10 minutes."

When Otto von Bismarck stood on the terraces at Clee Park in 1884 he was heard to observe with a weary sigh that watching Town is like eating sausages. The results are satisfying but it is better not to see them being made. Ain't that so. Since the arrival of Brodie we're watching the same play, with a different supporting cast and clothes. Town are deeply, deeply unimpressive as a coherent attacking entity, especially for the first 20 or so minutes. There are isolated moments of connectivity which hint at life beneath the frozen lake. Town relied on Miller's nous and McKeown's right hand to keep danger away. The midfield was tentative and surfing a slough of despair between the deep blue waves of blueness. Marshall was inconsistent, but was frightening the horses, and Colbeck was back to being Colbeck again. Cook looked tired and stuck in the mud while Brodie was immobile and peripheral even by his own standards of ambling shambling indifference and diffidence. These two wear the same colour shirt and that's about it in terms of suitability for a civil partnership. The second half was a bit lousy apart from the last ten minutes, when Dartford disintegrated. Town got lucky. Again.

In October they were exceedingly admirable: organised, disciplined, intelligent and physically sturdy. In February they were exceedingly admirable: organised, disciplined, intelligent and with a ropey keeper. They controlled large parts of this game and Harris, their left winger with automatic shoes and 3-D vision, was the scourge of Telegram Sam Hatton. For the opening 20 minutes Hatton was turned into a howling wolf, boo-hoo-hoo, and Town had to resort to some accidental kicking and prodding to deflate the balloon. But the story of Bert's blanket is really about Bettenelli, the nelly in goal. His feeble-weebling turned on a thousand smartphones to Google cheap hotels in the north London area. Without Berty the nelly, the Darts would have been daddy cools down Wembley Way. I suppose the boy can't help it. It really was all his fault.

Too busy capon counting to worry about the Kentish canoodlers.

Mr J Adcock (Notts)
Was he auditioning to be the Clattenburg of the Conference? Seeing was believing with this miked-up miniman who had an aversion to the application of advantage, particularly for the homesteaders. He was Cookaphobic, but helpfully blind to some sly nit-picking and kicking from some of the madder monochromers. Yes, we mean you, Brodie. This Clattenclone was more likely to sadden than madden, and was no more and no less than the normal standard of 5.356.

We're rubbish, we're rubbish, we're rubbish, we get a set piece, we score. We're not rubbish, we're rubbish again, we win.