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All that counts is how to change
Well, it’s an improvement, isn’t it? We’re over halfway through the month, and we haven’t conceded a League goal or lost a game in October. That’s good, innit?
Sigh. It’s incredibly depressing to acknowledge, but after the shitshow that was September, drawing 0-0 at home to Accrington Stanley, in one of the worst games of football that any of us have been lucky enough to watch, was, in fact, an improvement. That’s how low the bar had been set.
After a week of enthusiastically supporting the Portuguese wine industry, me and Andy could have done without a lunchtime KO. The change in the weather was kind of welcome, though. It was sunny enough to still need sunglasses, and it was nice to be giving my new big coat a debut. We’re both of Irish heritage, we can’t cope with the Iberian heat.
We were in need of a reset, after the dreadful run we’ve been on, so I suppose it wasn’t a surprise that there were changes to the starting line-up. Pett and Hammond came in for Chilvers and Fondop. It was announced before the match that Delaney had a hamstring injury and is expected to be out for three months, and it was deemed that Temple was the best available option to play on the right of a back three. Sigh. OK. Whatever.
It could have been a different match after Anderson pulled Appiah-Forson’s hair 8 minutes in. You will be aware that pulling someone’s hair is a sending off offence, because you will recall Wilfried Moimbe pulling Tom Eaves’ hair in the 90th minute of our League One game vs Gillingham in April 2018, which resulted in a penalty, a red card, and a stoppage time equaliser that cost us the two points that would have saved us from relegation to League Two. (The only detail I had to Google was the exact minute of the foul. The rest is seared into my brain indelibly.) However, the referee and his assistant last Saturday, who both had a clear view of the incident, felt that it only deserved a yellow card.
Shit refs again ole ole, but they were far from the shittest thing on display. It was windy, it wasn’t ideal conditions to play attractive football, but fuck me, did both teams embrace the opportunity to not try. Temple was booked after giving the ball away twice within seconds, then fouling Mols on the edge of the box. I felt bad for Temple, I really did, but I couldn’t help but feel worse for Sutton, who must have been watching in disbelief from the bench. Thankfully Mols skied the resulting free kick.
Accrington were forced into making a change just 15 minutes in, when Conneely went off injured, which should have helped us put them under pressure, but we just didn’t look interested. Hudson made a decent save from Henderson’s backheel; there was very little to cheer about for either side.
I told Andy that it was definitely my turn to go to the bar with about ten minutes to go until half-time. I wasn’t the only one; the bloke next to me at the back of the Rocky was on the phone to his mate and said “I’d rather watch my neighbour shag my missus than watch any more of that”. I was too polite to say that most of the ground would watch the livestream rather than the rest of the match.
The first half had been terrible, so why were no changes made for the start of the second half? Kavanagh up front on his own wasn’t working, and Temple was painfully out of his depth. The poor sod was finally put out of his misery 56 minutes in, when he came off for Sutton. I’m not a fan of booing your own players, and it’s inexcusable when you’re not booing them for a bad attitude or lack of effort, but because they’re just not up to it. Achieves nothing. It’s not his fault he just isn’t good enough, blame whoever should be able to see that and picked him anyway. I’m told the jeering from the Rocky couldn’t be heard from the other stands, thankfully. Drummond came on for Hammond at the same time.
Watching the highlights (for I did relive the horror of this game, in order to better serve you, dear readers), when Monthe got forward, the commentator said “sarcastic shouts of ‘shoot’!”. They weren’t sarcastic, lad, we were desperate for someone, anyone, to have a shot on goal. In the event, he played it back to Robson, who crossed it into the box for Scott-Morriss to head it wide at the far post. It was exactly the kind of chance you’d want Fondop to be getting on the end of.
The referee continued to be awful, booking Drummond for simulation and awarding Accrington a free kick for what looked like a fairly clear foul on Drummond. We continued to be worse and inexplicably waited until the 76th minute to bring on Fondop for Pett. He hit a shot well wide from the edge of the area pretty much straight away. The game ended without us having a shot on target. Zero. Not one. 4 shots off target, only 9 touches all game in their box. I don’t need xG to tell me that it was fucking dreadful, and we could have played until the normal natural Saturday full-time of nearer to 5pm without scoring.
I was a little surprised to hear that Monthe had been given MOTM. I was inclined to agree with Andy’s assessment of his first half performance: “Manny’s playing like he’s got boxing gloves on his feet.” In a not-at-all crowded field of nominations, I’d have gone for Appiah-Forson, who was at least trying to get forward and create something. Actually, I’d have given it to whichever traffic warden gave the Accrington kit van a parking ticket. Highlight of the day.
📸 Kev Leach. Up the parking enforcement massive.
Mellon spoke a lot about the conditions, about us huffing and puffing and not having enough quality, about us being ‘gritty’ and ‘determined’, etc et fucking cetera. He also claimed that “it was two honest sets of lads who went for it”, which was not the impression I came away with.
Pett’s description – “not a pretty one, League Two at its finest” – felt a little more accurate. He spoke about needing to stop the rot and keep a clean sheet, and about us needing to be organised and hard to beat. Which I understand, but fucking hell, setting up to be hard to beat at home against Accrington Stanley? (Those of you of a certain age, don’t pretend you didn’t read that in your head in the voice from the advert.) That’s horribly reminiscent of Unsworth playing one up front at home v Dorking.
It’s an improvement after losing four games on the bounce. Of course it is. But we’d all love to see us aiming a little bit higher than grit and battle and being hard to beat. At the risk of sounding entitled, we’re Oldham Fucking Athletic, for fuck’s sake.
The women couldn’t continue their winning run, unfortunately, but it couldn’t have been a more different game in terms of entertainment and fight. It looked dead as a contest after a strong Hyde Utd side went 0-3 up inside the first half an hour, but we rallied towards the end of the first half and Caitlin Knowles pulled a goal back in a goalmouth scramble from a free kick just before half-time. We looked a lot stronger in the second half, but couldn’t make it count, and the game definitely looked all over when Hyde went 1-4 up.
📸 Oldham Athletic
Then their keeper responded to a bad challenge by Chelsea Cook with what has to be acknowledged as an impressive right hook. With Hyde down to 10 women, and with an outfield player in net, the game opened right up. Having given away a penalty, the stand-in keeper did well to save Cook’s initial shot, but Cook put away the rebound. Cook then got another to make it a hell of a finish to the game (and Hyde would have gone MENTAL if she’d got a hat-trick and equalised), but we couldn’t quite complete the comeback and it ended 3-4. What a fucking game, though.
📸 Oldham Athletic
Apparently the men progressed to the next stage of a B-team tournament that I couldn’t give a fuck about on Tuesday night, and I have nothing to say about that, other than I would quite like to see Chilvers and Hawkes involved today, please.
Fuck know what’s going to happen v Cheltenham. They’ve had a decent start to the season, but have lost their last two games and had a man sent off in both of those, so from their point of view it might be an ideal time for a trip to Boundary Park. Or maybe the shackles will come off today, and we’ll look a little more like the team that battered Port Vale and Swindon. We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. Or, as Martin Luther King Jr did not say, KTMFF.
Written by Arlene Finnigan
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