Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 15 December 2012

FA Trophy (R2)

Grimsby Town 4 S Pearson (2), Cook (9, 60), G Pearson (36)

Havant & Waterlooville 0

Attendance: 1215 (28 away fans)

This was an old-fashioned kinda game: a ref in black, hopelessly hapless opposition in happy colours and no sponsors. They would have made Shaun Pearson man of the match, obviously, if they hadn't been doing the traditional activity of queuing for unnecessary frozen sprouts. Sprouts, always unnecessary in any state of matter..

This wasn't a match: it was a parade. Andy Cook was the carnival queen, having the most tinsel on his flat back float. His kind of game, his kind of opposition, with some effective bucket jangling.

When your team is 3-0 up against a collapsing raspberry pavlova, and you've already been booked for a daft trip in nowheresville, even a lobotomised sausage would realise that a studs-up lunge at shin height is a cretinously idiotic thing to do. Joe Colbeck, a professional. A professional what?

Apart from Colbeck, everyone was sufficiently awake and motivated to move their legs and brains, and that was all that was needed. The words 'comfortable' and 'professional' will be bandied about by hacks and chaps with bees in their bonnets, and those mundane choices are perfectly selected to summarise a game as routine and challenging as cleaning your teeth. It was a barely competitive charity game, so we'll charitably not say anything more.

There was no opposition. Their biggest contribution to entertainment history was their choice of kit, presumably in honour of Showaddywaddy. They'd have been just as effective in brothel creepers and drape jackets. They were very drape, with only little Kabba being anywhere near a challenge for the two Ps. They had little defensive organisation, no idea how to defend crosses, and nothing interesting to show us when they crossed the halfway line. The game was over within a minute. Buxton were superior in every way possible. Perhaps the southern non-non-League bit is much weaker than the north. I'm sorry, they, Havant, hadn't a clue.

The little drummer boy kept warm by banging his gong while the rest of us played parlour games to keep interested.

Mr C Kavanagh (Lancs)
He wasn't too bad, though he was far too nice to Colbeck by delivering a second yellow card for Christmas. The poor decisions weren't his: they all emanated from the jovial duffer of a linesman on his lonely shuffle under the Police Box. Should we give him bonus points for deducting time for injuries, rather than adding? We got home earlier and no-one wasted any time, after all. Yeah, go on, let him off for thinking of our toes and tummies: 7.332.

Mark Lawrenson would love the colour of those shirts.

It was a catwalk cakewalk.