Town finally lose patience and tear down the Iron Curtain with brute force
Mon 15 Mar 10 by Alf
Town tore up the beautiful passing Bible and reached for the heavy-duty manual to finally batter their way to three points against a solid, stubborn Scunthorpe side.
If Tuesday night’s win against Cardiff had Alf and the purists drooling, then this one had the finesse of a septic tank. After Town had huffed and puffed against a ten-man ring of steel, it was left to a sixteen year old, with the strength of an ox to break through the visitors’ lines. Step forward, the next big thing at IP1, Connor Wickham.
Town left it late to demolish Scunthorpe’s plan of parking ten men and a dumper truck behind the ball. One nil to the football team chorused the locals, but it was route-one stuff that won it. Still it was fully deserved.
If the visitors had turned up to stifle any chance of Alf being entertained, then some bizarre refereeing decisions and a linesman, who was away with the fairies, saw the beautiful game stamped on and thrown over the fence.
Town are now on a run of six-pointer games thanks to the fact that this year’s Championship is as tight as Olivia Newton John’s trousers in Grease. With so much flotsam and jetsam floating round the nether regions of the Championship, the difference between a win and draw is seismic. The smart money is on 52 points as mark of safety. But don’t bank on it.
Clearly Nigel Adkins was winding-up for Timex, with his pre-match comments about Town making the play-offs. Still these are strange times. Keane kept the tinkering to a minimum and slotted in Pablo Counago to partner Daryl Murphy. Fair enough thought Alf. The Spaniard – a class act, who doesn’t always deliver on the Championship stage, deserved his chance after a neat and tidy showing against Cardiff.
Likewise Owen Garvan kept his place and once again provided balance and that necessary ball out wide to keep the Town engine ticking. Alf did have some inside information, having bumped into Owen in the Central Canteen for a pre-match breakfast. Run by a Turkish-Cypriot football fan, this seems to be a not-so-secret haunt for a number of players – and there was Alf thinking that today’s 21st century footballer had his meal intakes monitored 24/7.
It’s been a while since Town played up against a side with the ambition of a lettuce. Scunthorpe came with a game-plan marked out on the back of a fag-packet. Alf’s finest laboured against a wall of maroon as the visitors came to frustrate Town at every turn.
Chances were few and far between. The ones that did crop up fell to Norris and Walters, who as has been par for the course all season, missed. The referee confirmed he’d lost the plot when he red-carded Damien Delaney for what seemed a standard silly yellow card trip. Having sent off Byrne earlier, it looked like a classic case of evening things up.
The game was locked in an untidy stalemate with the locals groaning at the officials and the opposition tactics at a growing regularity. Coupled with Town’s inability to cope with such spoiling tactics, most of the 90 minutes were about as easy on the eye as a skip.
With Town’s patient approach clearly running up a cul-de-sac, Wickham entered the stage, to kick the visitors’ door down. For a 16-year-old, Wickham’s strength is frightening and just what the suffering Town fans wanted to see. Finally in the 92nd minute, Wickham broke through and kept the ball before firing into the Scunthorpe net to send the locals into unexpected raptures.
Back-to-back wins and hey it’s only March, thought Alf.
