Cod Almighty | Match Report

by Paul Ketchley

19 March 2011

Bath City 2 Grimsby Town 1

On Saturday, the day of a 'supermoon' - the perigee moon where it is closest to the Earth - disaster is supposed never to be far away. So, not forgetting events in Japan and north Africa, over 400 Town-ites took the A46, the single road from Cleethorpes to Bath. Would they find disaster or triumph?

If disaster beckoned then it was apparent that nobody would be saved by fog. The sun shone and the sky was blue as we arrived at Twerton Park, where it costs a whole £1 to park at the ground. Car parking at Twerton Park follows the same model as bike parking did in the front gardens of the houses by Blundell Park in the 1950s. Everyone goes in nose to tail so if you're first in at the front you're the last one out at the end.

Did we want to be among the first to leave, the steward asked, or would we like to stay behind and sample the bar? Innocently I suggested that we were thinking of finding a screen to watch England play Ireland. I might as well have invited everyone to Glanford Park for a free afternoon out. I was told fairly firmly that this was a football club and rugby was off limits. No chance there then.

Worse was to come, because I also innocently wore a Saracens baseball cap. "Wrong game," said the steward. "Right colours though," I replied. He saw the point. Bath City also play in black and white, though with black rather than red socks. Theirs is a Juve black Kappa-style strip, but it's not too far from the 1995 Town kit.

Disaster was also in the air when you realised that Town were without half a team due to suspension and injury. No Kempson, Ademeno, Cummins or Hudson as a result of various red cards and no Bore or Arthur either. Bore evidently has a groin problem and for some reason Arthur was fit enough to be on the bench, but not on the pitch.

We lined up as Croudson; Wood, Watt, Atkinson, Ridley; Coulson, Leary, Sinclair, Eagle; Duffy, Connell with Town playing towards the away fans and into the afternoon sun in the first half. It was yet another outing for the sky-blue strip, of course. Arthur, Peacock, Thanoj, Gray and Makofo warmed the bench.

First half
From the kick-off the ball was wellied out to Coulson, who passed to Duffy, who was bundled over. It was the shape of things to come as almost every good thing about Town's play came from the excellent Coulson, and Duffy was just duff.

Bath's strategy became quite clear early on and they relied on punting the ball into the channels most of the time. The white round thing in the sky was... the approaching moon? No, it was the ball sailing forwards towards the far corner of the ground where the Bath faithful were congregated.

Town at least tried to keep the ball on the ground for some of the time and Connell and Coulson combined well only for one touch too many to put the ball out of play, then Sinclair headed straight to their keeper and Coulson fizzed the ball wide of the left post. All the decent contacts led to shots going wide and those on target were usually scuffed or went straight to the Bath keeper.

A long crossfield pass from Coulson found Eagle in acres of space. It was a situation in which you would bank on him giving the ball to Connell. Instead he hit the ball half-heartedly, hardly testing the keeper, who collected the ball easily.

Then a punt down the Town left resulted in a Bath forward getting away and cutting inside. Atkinson ended up on the floor and the ball was cut back for Watkins to show how to make contact with the football and hammer it unstoppably into the roof of the net.

Town nearly got one back a few minutes later when Connell was fouled just outside the penalty box and Eagle and Coulson got together in a conspiratorial pairing. Their intentions soon became clear. Eagle ran over the ball, feigning to float it into the top left corner of goal, and Coulson followed up and hit the ball powerfully off the wall. It looped up and came back off the crossbar a few inches lower and it would have resembled the free kick which led to Brehme's goal for Germany in the 1990 World Cup semi-final in Turin.

It was the nearest we came to scoring in the rest of the half. Too many chances fell to Duffy, whose opening goal at Eastbourne is just a fading memory. At Kettering he made a hash of heading into an open goal. Today he hit a golden opportunity straight at the keeper and missed another which fortunately was judged to be offside. It was a duff afternoon for him, as both the Town supporters and the Bath defenders soon began to realise. As time went on the latter simply didn't bother to mark him and concentrated on ganging up on Connell instead.

Half time arrived with Town putting on more inconsequential pressure as a shot from Connell was turned around the post. The inability to finish and put the goalkeeper under real pressure meant that Bath went in a goal up when by rights they should have been no more than on level terms.

Stu's half-time toilet talk
"I told them my dad was Polish and I came from Healing, but they said that only counted if you went in the home end."

"Why is Arthur warming up so energetically if he's not up to starting the game?"

They'll never get 3000 to pay to watch when you can stand on the hill and get that good a view."

"Help!! I'm stuck in the toilets"

Second half
Unlike the previous week Town didn't come out early and there was no evidence of a tough talking-to at half time. From early on Peacock, Makofo and Arthur were warming up energetically in front of the Town fans. Arthur was putting a lot into it and you wondered quite why he wasn't playing if he was up to being on the bench. Some eight-year-olds copied his every move in front of the seats housing the away fans.

The referee managed to play his part in the entertainment by colliding with a Bath player at a set piece which threatened the Town goal. He shrugged in apology as Town broke to threaten the other end. Then Duffy got his head to a ball which a Bath player handled to concede a free kick.

Once again Coulson and Eagle got together over the ball, and once again they did the same routine. Eagle pretended to float the ball to the top left corner and Coulson ran in behind him and smacked the ball upwards, where it caught the wall and deflected neatly into the top right corner. Game on. The Town players were clearly delighted with a move which had presumably been worked on in training. It was no less than they deserved.

For the next 20 minutes Town had the better of the game and there looked like only being one possible winner. Peacock came on for Duffy, which improved things a lot, and the only sense of alarm was when the ball was played through to a Bath player who was clearly offside but was not seen by the linesman, who was slow to keep up with play.

So it was against the run of play when a Bath player got the ball on the Town left and crossed it into the box. Croudson blocked the ball and was bundled over. Looking across the pitch it was as clear a foul as you're ever going to see on the keeper, but Mackie again hammered the ball into the top of the goal. No foul was given and the Bath fans, who seem to have adopted 'Can't Help Falling in Love' as their anthem, were singing: "2-1 to the part-timers". This wasn't the one winner everyone had expected to see!

The game faded away with Town pressing. The PA system announced that the Bath keeper was their man of the match, which said a lot, because although he had kept them in the game few of the attempts had been particularly testing.

Discipline disintegrated as first Ridley and then Atkinson were both booked in the dying minutes of the game and after four minutes of extra time it was all over.