Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 14 March 2015

Conference Premier

Chester 2 Heneghan (75), Rooney (84 pen)

Grimsby Town 2 Palmer (21), Pittman (67)

Attendance: 2916

The quaintly pleasant locals chose Jon-Paul George and Ringo Pittman as the most conspicuous visitor on the pitch. Not a bad choice at all. For the sake of completeness, the home man of the match was someone called Paul Hurst. No, never heard of him either.

Palmer and Pittman were well balanced and would be welcome to start every game. Chester couldn't cope with them. But as everything fell apart there was only one little bit of old ginger sticky-backed plastic holding the jalopy together: Captain Sensible, Craig Disley.

"Obviously, for me, the disappointing thing for me is to have been two-nil up and, with the defensive record that we've got, that we couldn't see the game out... It's as though we just settled for what we had and tried to protect."

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I'm trying to make some sense of it all, but I can see that it makes no sense at all.

They worked hard and failed; now all I can say is Town threw it all away. I say Town but I mean the present manager. His Pavlovian pulling of Palmer for Parslow ceded the initiative immediately. The Deviants wanted space into which they could run, and the full-scale retreat invited such a surge and siege.

Up to what scientists have identified as "the Parslow Point", Town were a force, not a farce, with the front four being svelte swingers and pingers. The flagging Feet of Clay was generally hopeless with the ball, but hey, that's just the way he is. Poor old Robertson's positional poise wasn't enough to stop him being exposed by the pace and persistence of little locals. But we could cope. Then most of the team disappeared from view in the last quarter of an hour. As did automatic promotion.

Should have won by four, lucky to get a point in the end. Another scraped pass in Shorty's coaching module portfolio.

It's not about Danny Parslow: it's about a state of mind where fear is the key.

What a good manager they have.

Well, this season they started out with nothing, and they should be proud of their big bald man, for the Devamen like to play football with the football: passing, dribbling, scoring a goal. Not quite soccer superstars, but at least they know where their team-mates are.

"Loose at the back, fluid up front" would be the seven-word summary. Impressively persistent and persistently picking at Town's weak spots. It's not their fault that The Short One chose to give it all away as they sailed away, sailed away past Mr Jam. A lot of sexy surges down the centre and driving dribbles down the flanks disconcerted the retreating defenders. Little men causing havoc.

If their manager had our squad that'd be interesting to watch.

Bouncing, flouncing and announcing mass discontent with management.

Mr M Coy (Co Durham)

What a splendid chap the real Mr Coy was, being totally consistent in not booking anyone and in applying the advantage rule perfectly sensibly. And what a splendid chap he was for not falling for McBurnie's Mcstumble near McRobertson. He shall get a rather splendid 8.888 for being perfectly sensible from start to finish.

Pinging, swinging, singing and winning. Then we reached the Parslow Point, aka absolute zero on the Shorty Scale.

In a word: genius