Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Tuesday 6 March 2012

Conference Premier

Fleetwood Town 2 Mangan (pen 77), Vardy (90)

Grimsby Town 1 Cavanagh og (19)

Attendance: 2447

Fleetwood: the last exit from Blackpool and fish as cheap as chips. Astroturf surrounds, Town fans kettled in the corner, fancy dan ticket arrangements. Oo-er, who's playing at being a professional football club? First half: Rained It drizzled. The game fizzled. Fleetwood banging and barging, haranguing and clanging. What a bunch of 'orrible oiks. Local long shots, McKeown spilled, then thrilled. Town testing, Town teasing, Town pleasing. Their cheesy Big Mac presented Hearn with lettuce, Cavanagh poked home with fries. Locals longed for love. Jamie Mack has sticky-backed hands. Second half: Drained Neither side made any changes at half time. Disley dinked, Townsend thrinked lowly and Elding winkled against a red chest from five yards. That was the end of Town. Brodie on, Brodie dived, Brodie , Brodie ABH unseen. Soares left the building, Town's sandcastle eroded as Fleetwood's tide roared in. Townsend scraped off the line, Jamie Mack plunged low and plucked high. Pearson necked and decked, Miller the magnificent. A perfect Church tackle. A Redman dived without conviction, the referee conned himself. We demand a retrial. Mangan swished the penalty, McKeown swung left and missed by an inch. On, on, on and on again the frenetic Fleeters flounced. Town were clamped by a local vice gang. A miss, a save, a cross, a rave as four minutes were added. Fleetwood carved Town's turkey on the right; Vardy preened and pestered and deflected into the top right corner. We know who ate the stuffing. The end of time, the end of the game. The end.

On a night of slip-sliding and slip-shod refeering, McKeown was finger-stickin' custard excellence, and everyone worked for their stick of rock. A giant among tall poppies, there is place on the pedestal of pomp for one man -€“ the magnificent King of the Road, Ian Miller, who was just about faultless. The swishing broom on Brodie was the pick of his pop-tastic tackling.

"I never really thought it was a penalty. I never had that feeling. And the referee certainly delayed his decision. And then, to top it off, apparently a few of their lads have said that it was never a penalty. When you hear that it's a difficult one to take."

Not a dicky bird. Which isn't terribly surprising. It'd be a minor miracle if he can look himself in the face.

We coulda been a contender. Town slugged out the first half as equals, but receded like royal hairlines after half time. The slickness and movements disappeared as the rain rained down and the siege began early. In the end this was all about defending. Town were dogged and determined but undone by the referee and an inability to repel on our right. Oddly, the ineffective Soares was missed terribly when taken off: his bulk and pace were often enough to deflect and deter. Town's ever-shuffling pack of ragged dogs on the right never did find the bone buried under the pitch. Church was paceless, Coulson faceless and Silk simply incapable of competing with scuttling pace and precision. Good enough to give a good team a good game, but not good enough.

Peter Till: which is more orange, boots or skin? They are the best team in the league but they have no class. A typical north-west team: snidey, sneaky pokers, moaners and divers. From the off they were jabbing and jeering at Townites when the referee was peering elsewhere, with Pearson getting a double dose of their nasty medicine balls from Mangan and Seddon within the first 30 seconds. They have a strangely nervous keeper and a defence that think they are better footballers than they are, relying on the positional sense of McNulty. Well, his position on the pitch being, by definition, enough to deter most eminent Victorians from exploring the hinterland of his dark shadow. There be demons in those lands. Vardy was a mardy Mohican marauder who epitomised their attitude to life: a frantic, frenzied intensity that would do anything to win, did do anything to win, and did win. The game changed when they brought on their pub bouncer, Brodie, whose door policy was indulged by the local constable. They kept changing formations, tactics and manpower, and eventually they hit on the winning formula -€“ Vardy and Mangan down the Town right. They are the best by far, but a thoroughly dislikeable team that make us pine for the wit, sophistication and gentlemanly mannered honour of the Creepy Crawleys. They've made the impossible possible: making Evans look like Stephen, not Barry, Fry.

Around 150 scattered cushions showed the wannabes how to be supporters. Noise, passion, pathetic insults, non-linear extrapolations of the local idioms and vernacular to hilariously limited effect. And then the appropriate venom. It felt like old times for a Town away game – seething at a midweek mugging.

Mr R J West (E Yorks)
Well, the proof of this pudding is in his less than flagrant flattering of the Fleetwoodians. After half an hour of excellence he turned into an absolute rank stinking homer. Townsend for not catching a child's chuck; Brodie's arms and mouth given freedom; Mangan and Seddon allowed to elbow through the crowd. And above all, that penalty. That not-penalty-ever-ever-ever as even the carousing cockle pickers in far-off Morecambe Bay could see a blue-shirted boot divert the ball before the desperate local falling. And what's worse, he actually thought about it, he made a considered, calculated decision to make a mistake. He is worthless, he is nothing to us: 0.00.

The fish and chips were 28.73 per cent cheaper with no reduction in quality.

The Lancashire lock-in failed.