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It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it
Hmph. I still think we’re gonna win the league, but maybe it’s gonna be harder work than I first thought.
Mellon named an unchanged starting XI last Saturday at Colchester, and quite right too, don’t change a winning team. We were under a bit of pressure early on. Scott-Morriss cleared the ball a yard out from goal after Thorn played it into the six-yard box. In a passage of play after we conceded a needless throw-in when Scott-Morriss missed Daniels’ pass, Hunt hit the post.
All of which made us taking the lead even funnier. It was against the run of play, it came from nowhere, and it’s an early contender for goal of the season. Keenan Appiah-Forson turned his marker inside out (despite his marker pulling his shirt and doing his best to foul him) and hit an absolute thunderbastard into the top right corner from 25 yards out. Wasn’t expecting him to have that in his locker. A very nice surprise. A goal worthy of winning any game. It should have won this one.
It looked like we were starting to get on top after that. A nice bit of play culminated in Fawunmi playing it into the box and Kavanagh attempting an overhead kick but not quite reaching it, and the ball being put out for a corner. Norburn’s delivery was headed across goal by Robson, and Fondop’s shot (after the keeper flapped at it) was blocked.
It was all set up for a cracking second half, until Iandolo and the referee decided otherwise just before half time. Scott-Morriss put in what looked a strong but reasonable challenge for the ball, Iandolo rolled around screaming that he’d been stamped on, and James Durkin (son of Paul – as Will Holdaway explained so eloquently in the Oldham Owl) couldn’t get his red card out quick enough. He also couldn’t seem to make up his mind what it was actually for, appearing to indicate that Scott-Morriss had elbowed Iandolo. It wasn’t a stamp, it wasn’t an elbow, it wasn’t a red card, fuck off.
📸 Richard Blaxall
It messed Micky Mellon’s half-time team talk right up, and he chose to bring on Lewis Temple for Kavanagh in the second half. I’m never keen on bringing off a striker when you’re down to ten players, especially with half the game to go, but it was a reasonable move when we were 1-0 up. They were horrible circumstances for a 21-year-old to be making his debut in, but he made a decent challenge early on to put the ball out for a Colchester corner; Hudson had to punch Raggett’s header at the near post away and had to save from Raggett’s shot at close range from another corner.
We were very much under the cosh in the second half, and the equaliser had been coming. Thorn played it into the box just over an hour in, and Anderson put it away with a decent header at the back post.
Things went from bad to worse ten minutes later. Poor Lewis Temple. Having been thrown in at the deep end, he shoved Williams over near the byline, and there was no question that it was a penalty. (Then again there was no question that it was never a red card for Scott-Morriss, but such is life.) It was a really daft challenge, and perhaps one that a more experienced defender wouldn’t have made. Having got booked for delaying the penalty (honestly, you could forgive us for wanting to flush James Durkin's head down the toilet), Hudson saved Temple’s blushes by saving the penalty with his legs.
Was that the turning point? Could we hang on for a hard-fought draw? It was an admirable backs-to-the-wall performance, with some brave defending. Raggett headed the ball in on 84 minutes, but clearly barged Hudson in the process and it was rightly ruled out. Were we going to get a point against the odds?
Alas, no. Poor, poor Lewis Temple. Iandolo, the fucking wanker, played a cross into the box, Hudson shouted for it, but an over-eager Temple tried to put it out for a corner, and instead hooked it over Hudson into his own net in the ninety-fucking-fourth minute. Football’s a horrible shitty cruel game sometimes.
Mellon was as gutted as we all were after the game, and was keen to stress that he’s not allowed to talk about the referee, but said there had been a lot of ‘bizarre’ decisions. He gave credit to his players for running themselves into the ground (or rather, “ran oor socks aff”): “We didn’t deserve to lose that game, we were not beaten by the better team…We were beaten by a number of decisions on the day.” He also said that we wouldn’t appeal the red card because “you won’t win it”.
Never play poker with Micky Mellon. We did appeal it, and it was rescinded, because it was so fucking obviously never a red card. Which is nice, but it cost us three points. Nothing we can do about that though. Sometimes life’s a shithouse. You can only do what you can do.
James Durkin appears to have been told to spend this weekend sitting on the naughty step thinking about what he did. Well, he isn’t refereeing any games anyway. Good.
We rage at the injustice, we dust ourselves off, we go again. Swindon at home today. Both games against them last season were a fucking nightmare. Hopefully today will be the opposite, and we’ll be singing about it being a long way back to Swindon when you’re shit come 4.45pm. KTMFF.
Written by Arlene Finnigan
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