Cod Almighty | Diary

Help yourself

7 October 2019

Trentside Diary writes: Are you like me? Are there certain games when you get to half time and you just know that this is not going to end well? If you are, then you must have been feeling that in buckets on Saturday. Forty-five minutes when we looked quite good, were on top most of the time but we just hadn’t put it away.

Before the weekend I would have put Mansfield down as a non-entity club for us. Over the years I’ve seen Town play them quite a few times because they are pretty easy to get to. They have never been pretty, they couldn’t really be described as a football team, but if that’s your local side then fair play if you support them.

Mansfield is pretty much like Grimsby/Cleethorpes: similar size, original industry mining rather than fishing, without the seaside to brighten your day. What they do have over us is their shithousery: far beyond anything I can remember at Blundell Park before.

Any Stags fan reading this would probably think this is sour grapes, but having seen them on Saturday, I know who I am happier to have as my team. I can honestly say that I would rather Town tried to play football than games, however the result turns out. Maybe I’m naive but I believe that if you stick at playing how you want to play, it will come good.

Unfortunately, on Saturday the referee and his oompa-loompas were severely lacking in every department – knowledge of the rules, decision making, management of the game and control of each situation. Frequently we see teams come to BP, try it on and they know within the first ten minutes how much they will get away with. A telling-off followed by a booking would soon stop much of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ref so completely lost as to what was going on and we’ve had our fair share of poor ones.

If the ref wasn’t going to do anything to stop them then what we needed was a calm head taking control. A Disley comes to mind. Someone calming everyone down and pushing them on. Not letting the games get to them. We never play well against ten men so I wasn’t too excited when they lost a man and we really didn’t stretch them. Again we needed a bit of midfield magic to break them down.

What was Andy Cook’s problem? I’ve been wracking my brains to try to remember if he left on bad terms or had a lot to say after he had gone but I cannot remember anything much. Bishop, I think, has self-image issues or small man syndrome or something. Both players embarrassed themselves. Bishop is obviously a rather delicate soul if, as has been reported by sources I trust, his 90th-minute flounce really was because a fan threw the ball back to him too hard. It would be laughable except that a player trying to point out a fan like that could have potentially serious consequences. HE. THREW. BACK. THE. BALL. You’re a keeper, catch it.

What do I take from this? We weren’t good enough over 90 minutes, we let them break up the game and we were a little unworldly. But we have the basis of a great team. Let’s not let these tactics get to us again. Just think, you could have the pleasure of watching that Mansfield dross every week. UTM!