Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 11 September 2010

Conference Premier

Tamworth 2 Rodman (14), Perry (38)

Grimsby Town 1 Connell (69)

Attendance: 1616 (603 away fans)

There is no man of the match; as a matter of fact, it's all dark. Connell was the best of a basket of crabs, with the howling shank for Tamworth's first goal causing the epaulettes to be ripped from his shoulders, though he isn't to be branded like the rest of 'em. Let's give it to the man in the peach shirt, rather than the men in the loon pants.

Oh dear me. Bradley Wood would if he could, but today he didn't. He looked like what he is: a right-back playing at left wing, and for that he only gets a sad mention in despatches as the now usual suspects of Gobern and less than leapy Lee Peacock get ready for us to be all medieval on their mass. Peacock in the stocks, Gobern in the pillory, though we wouldn't go as far as the bastinado treatment.

"We are losing too many of these types of games. It was woeful. We were too easy to play against... There were no positives whatsoever to take out of the first half... Why are the players flat after just seven games when we just won two on the bounce?"

They ran around more, that's all. Tamworth had two pub crawlers at centre-back and centre-forward and lots of little lads scampering around like ants, as Town were pants. On at least three occasions they passed it to each other along the ground in a series of connected movements. They were nothing more than enthusiastic, confident and clinical. They should hold no fear, but should opponents fail to run, they'll stun. Their number 7, Jay Smith, was the pivotal player as he swept up and swept through Town with indefatigable energy and sensible nicking and knocking. The rest worked hard. As is already clear in this league, if you do to them what they do to you, they collapse into gigglesome flailers. Nothing to be scared about, but not to be treated lightly -€“ a bog standard team that can bog you down. Basically, they did the basics to baseline standard.

If Mike Newell had straightened his tie today he'd be shouting about the idiots underneath the corrugated roof. Not quite far enough away to deter enough of the home core, these midlands matches bring out the more morose and moronic Mariners en masse. Oh the irony of these obese orators declaiming athletes as fat. Self-loathing is rising, and with it the self-harm of pathetic personal abuse. The rumble was magnitude 6.3 on the Cretinometer. The match DVD was shot using the old Grumble-rama system.

Mr R Metcalfe (Lancs)
He saw no Tamworth evil, he heard only Town evil: this little weevil wobbled only one way -€“ against the 'Big Team'. He could have given Town three penalties; he most definitely should have given one, when he continued his unwillingness to punish Wylde for handball. The booking of Watt followed a crassly trash decision and he spent the entire game falling for Tamworth's falling, giving barely half a dozen free kicks against them. Weirdly, he only seemed to move towards sending Kempson off after the worst linesman in the world ever this week flagged insistently. His linesmen were worse than him. He moved from disgracefully poor to disgustingly partial. Every little thing he did was tragic, for Town. A useful figleaf for a complacent performance, he is not worthy of a score.

No-one was arrested for sartorial extravagance, and the stewards seemed cheery folk.