Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 28 February 2015

Conference Premier

Grimsby Town 1 Disley (47)

Braintree Town 0

Attendance: 3339

Their run of success continues. It's championship-winning form from the catatonic carrot munchers and numb number crunchers.

You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream how you gonna have a dream come true?

We said captain, he said "wot?" We said captain, he said "wot d'you want?" A goal? Age is not withering him as Captain Sensible continues his happy talking, happy scoring.

"For me that's the best win out of the three at the end of a tough week."

He actually said that.

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Is there anybody going to listen to the story all about a team who cannot play? At home.

A new low on the scale of normal. The most ineptly dull game so far this season, with Hurst's Heroes having no method at all in terms of attacking: utterly incapable individually or collectively to work out the rudimentary, basic Brainteaser being posed. The trite tosh trotted out by the Twitteratti of being Town being "clueless" would be, for once, an aptly accurate summary.

Toto was in doze mode and, apart from Disley, the 'front six' were intent on showcasing their inabilities for any watching agents. The Shopping Trolley hid behind his marker, static, watching as crosses were contemplated and clipped, as the ball trundled inside the penalty area. That's not a centre-forward: that's a spectator. Pittman was all slips and shins. The Feet of Clay are made of sand.

Arnold is strolling inexorably towards the celebrity zone marked "enigmatic". A hard-working lazyboy with sloppy skills, infuriatingly inconsistent within the same second, central yet ephemeral to the action and an important irrelevance within the team structure. If he were a swan he'd be gone; if he were a train he'd be late; if he were better than he is he wouldn't be here for the beer.

Robertson. Magnay. Disley. Pearson sort of mostly. They earned their wages and were not embarrassing.

You know, this Town are the kind of team who get you down when friends are there. You feel a fool for inviting and inciting them to enter the Black And White Hole. Mariners moodsuckers: mumbling and fumbling towards the dreary destiny of death by play-off.

Conference stereotypes. Hard-working. Organised. Ambition limited to keeping it tight and see what happens on the break or a set piece. That standard is particularly boggy, just like the pitch.

The Braindrainers were completely untroubled by the wayward muckspreading by the Town tractors, apart from a nanosecond of narcolepsy. Ruggedly efficient in defence and reliant on a bulldozer up front, they really should not have lost this game. Fact not fiction: their keeper made no saves at all and had no crosses to catch, nor rivers to cross, nor women to cry.

Should finish twelfth. The sort of team you need to grind past to think about the play-offs, but would be ground down by if you're tottering and teetering near Telford, or shivering and shaking near Southport.

The little drummer boys tried to rouse the dead, but rigor mortis had long set in.

Mr Moonlight aka Mr J Brooks (Leics)

Here I am on my knees, begging you, please don't come again. Was he seeking to match the ineptitude and turgidity of the players?

He gave Town got just two free kicks in the first half – when Magnay fell over the ball and Pittman fell over his own feet. The exaggeratingly elongated refusing of Magnay's grand return, yet ushering fallen clementines back immediately, was wilfully, woefully partial. He waved his cards willy-nilly and was a right silly-billy. We don't think you're fine. 'Cos we loathe you. 4.401. Do change the things you do.

A farcical miss, a farcical half, a fanciful punt, a Norwegian Blue.

In a word: flatlining