Cod Almighty | Match Stats
Saturday 18 January 2025
Division 4
Grimsby Town 1 Davies (17)
Chesterfield 1 Naylor (34)
Attendance: 6,706 (1,147 away fans)
Ah-ha, the new Alan Pouton! If in doubt give it to Wee Janet, the reliably reliable roamer and rover who's infrequently rolled as tourists fall into his trap. Cam the Man was just his usual self.
Most of Chesterfield attacks and chances came down Town's right. Logic would suggest the right-back was erring today. The facts is that Cass had a storming game, the faults lay with others. And Rodgers was decidedly decisive, plugging holes left by others.
Suspiciously and conspicuously silent in the shocking state of the whistling affairs Satnav Dave resorted to passive-aggressive nudges about the lack of flatness of the earth beneath our feet:
"Proper football, two good teams trying to do their best on a tricky pitch…We gave them too much respect for half an hour, we took a step backwards."
With the Cookie Monster legging it up the road for his post-match fish and chip supper it was left to his junior spin doctor to conduct the post mortem:
"I bigged it up as one of the biggest rivalries we've got in the league…I fawt we was dominant in the first 'alf but towards the end of the game they could have fawt and believed they could've nicked a win"
This holds no interest for any non-Spireite, no calamitous or tortuous wrangles of logic or languages, just a straight story. Not worth seeing, not worth clicking to see.
You can draw a lot from that.
Could have been swept aside, could have won. Got, overall, what they deserved for rising to the challenge and rising on the tide of emotion.
Hume, McEachran and Luker had, at best, shoddy games but there was just enough collective cohesion and spirit to get Town through to the end. A series of moments of nearlyness was the best you can scrape out of this. A not-quite day, but quite a feat to make a superficially dull draw so exhilarating.
That'll do. It wasn't boring
They were stronger individually, collectively, physically than Town. But only if we let them. In the second half Town didn't let them and they looked just like every other team in this division. Beatable.
For half an hour they imperiously walked around Town, teasing out the weak and weary. But they did rely on their keeper to be alert to the old-fashioned lump down field and chip over the top. They don't have pace in their legs, relying on pace in the brain at the back. That's a strength, that's a weakness, that's life.
Oddly, they never really looked like scoring.
These occasionally inspired, sometimes insipid, Spireites are most definitely play-off archetypes. They have grit, some graceful (if graceless) footballers and above all they have chunky, gnarly experience running like a stick of rock through their team.
A weirdly satisfactory unsatisfying afternoon of raging against the machine.
Mr J Simpson
The referee is an arbiter, a figure of authority vested with powers to decide the fate of ordinary footballers and ordinary football teams in ordinary football games. For this world to function we must have trust in those we place such trust in. We trust they are fair-minded, even-handed, accept that errors will be made but that they acknowledge them, that they learn from them and don't repeat them.
He's as blind as he can be, just sees what he wants to see, can he see anything at all. How on earth did this tangerine twit, this orange oaf, this mandarin mug ever pass his refereeing exams?
Jeremy Simpson, the nowhere man, a public nuisance, a danger to society. His score: -4.67, and lucky to get it.
There ain't no danger we can go too far with this one: egregious is a word. Egregious is the word. It's got meaning.
In a word: incomprehensi
Town: Wright, Cass, McJannet, Rodgers, Hume, McEachran, Khouri (Green 75), Luker, Davies, Svanthorsson (Vernam 86), Obikwu (Rose 65)
Subs not used: Auton, Warren, Thompson, Barrington
Booked: Hume, Svanthorsson
Chesterfield: Thompson, Sheckleford, Naylor, Grimes, Horton, Oldaker (Akinola 79), Hobson (Berry 68), Mandeville (Fleck 82), Dobra, Colclough (Drummond 79), Pepple (Madden 68)
Subs not used: Boot, Donacien
Booked: Naylor, Fleck