Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 1 April 2017

Division 4

Grimsby Town 1 Sam Jones (34)

Doncaster Rovers 5 Marquis (37, 43, 61), Williams (78), May (88)

Attendance: 6,821

The uncomplicated Sam Jones for being uncomplicatedly persistent.

Town did have a defender, his name is Zak! Mills. Unlike many others, he defended.

Five months in charge: this is his team, his players, his “project”. There’s no-one left to blame for the collapsing soufflé of codswallop and cobblers: Marcus Bignit.

The four centre-halves we've got, technically we've got three out of contract and one in. Rightly or wrongly - was this the game to have a look at them? We are only ever going to learn in a League Two fixture 

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We have been transformed into a team which has a great work ethic and that's the big change for us as a football club.

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Town's best players were on the bench and in the stands. He's playing all the wrong players and in the wrong order.

Gunning is not a defender. Boyce is not a Football League footballer. Clements is no left winger, and Comley is absolutely not a right winger. Dan Jones is a reserve left-back for a rather poor, ailing fourth division team – not a central midfielder. Osborne is presently underpowered, physically and mentally. Dyson is a callow youth team player for someone else. These things were known-knowns before the game. These things did not need to be found out through experiment, an awful adventure in time and space, especially against the division's strongest team.

Is this the future? Is this the grand plan? If it is, what, exactly, is that plan? Are these methods sound? Marcus, I see no method at all. This is a football apocalypse now. There's no safety or surprise. We are desperately in need of some stranger's hand to lead us from the land we're sleep-walking towards.

The warning signs are there, flashing ever brighter. Town are barely brittle, for it hardly takes a whiff of wind to blow Bignot's pre-fab straw house away.

This is the end.

Hey, they were perfectly professional. Nothing mighty scary, just competent footballers playing in a clearly understood structure, doing simple things calmly. The moments when Townites just got into 'em revealed they were as incapable as anyone in this sceptic league, panickily passing the ball out of play in a funk.

They were miles, miles better as a team without being more than just a decent set of footballers who stood in the right places.

Well, they're up aren't they? Probably as champions. They just have that air of confident competence about them. Everywhere.

The spirit was willing at the start but, with Town’s flesh weak, the mumbles of a mounting mutiny bubbled and burbled as the stands cleared.

Graham Scott

A little fussy, but that let Town keep the score down with his arbitrary application of the non-existent non-advantage rule. He loses a whole point for choosing the wrong foul throw to penalise: 6.777.

Hapless, helpless, hopeless.

In a Word: CBA