Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 5 April 2008

Division 4

Rochdale 3 Howe (47, 55, 90)

Grimsby Town 1 Taylor (85)

Attendance: 2974

Who to pick out among so many performances that were almost adequate? The Town defence imploded on the left on the second half, but the right held firm, so lets give some credit to Ryan Bennett, who if not quite back to his best was at least authoritative in clearing his lines, and above all Jamie Clarke who put in some crunching tackles and tried to use the ball constructively all afternoon.

On the principle "judge not, lest you be judged", we'll draw a veil over this one; but by the same token, Tom Newey and Ciaran Toner would be well advised not to do any judging in the near future.

"[We] looked tired for sure. I thought we started slowly, sloppily. Jarman made a rash challenge on the far side, got booked and within a couple of minutes he's miss-controlled the ball, got frustrated. You can't go and make a challenge like that after you've just been booked. From then on in it is going to be an uphill struggle against a team who are very much in form. "We've then slit our own throats within a minute of the re-start. We are a man down, we've weathered the storm up until half-time. We speak [at half-time] about how it has got to be in the second half. Straight after half-time we have conceded the first goal. You can't climb inside player's brains and make sure they are right about that, you have to trust them with that. "As much as we put the ball in their box we didn't react to a second ball. They are the sort of balls that you have to win if you are going to snatch something back."

"There wasn't enough end product for me and I felt that we should have killed them off much earlier than we did. Some of our approach play in the game was magnificent but we have to be better in our end product. We gave them an opportunity to get a goal back and all of a sudden it was very cavalier from them. "There was some tiredness there, and though we do work very hard on recovery strategies we did look a bit leggy in the first half. "The players should want to go again and I know that they do. Sometimes though players do get tired and mental tiredness can sometimes play a big part. They will respond in the right manner though because they all want to win football matches and get to the promised land of the play-offs."

Rochdale were shading the match until the sending off, and dominated thereafter, until Town's late goal. They always had the edge in midfield, and had the confidence to try and make things happen. Truth to tell, that confidence tipped over into arrogance after they took a two goal lead, almost costing them the match.

DS McDermid
For twenty minutes, Mr DS McDermid was fine: relaxed and authoritative. This all changed when he started having to make any decisions. It began when he booked Jarman for a tackle on the touchline, yards away from one of the linesmen, that was scarcely a foul. The decision to book was something of an afterthought, and left the suspicion that he hadn't seen the incident. Suddenly, players started flying into tackles, their opponents started going to ground, and the ref had problems. From then on, all decisions -€“ free kicks, corners, throw ins -€“ might as well have been awarded by drawing lots. On the way out, someone said that the ref had spoilt an otherwise mediocre game; a fair assessment. Three out of ten is kind.

At least now we can concentrate on... oh... next season?