Filled with joy, anticipation and excitement for this game, I’d sort of given up hope of attending, when little zin came down with a rotten bug this morning, and with the girls going out to the sales, it wasn’t looking likely to go.
The missus got home around 2.15, with the boys blessing and hers (I hasten to add), I got a pass out for a few hours to come over and watch the game. And i’m glad I did.
I was astounded at the size of the queue just to get in today, always a good sign of decent turnout. In through the turnstile, past the ever jovial turnstile man, and the numbers game (allegedly linked to the mafia numbers racket of New York) and was amazed at the number of people in the ground already. The official attendance was 201, though I reckon around 220+was in the ground for this much anticipated encounter.
Several of the guys from Hall Road needed no introduction to the Town faithful, as has been written before on here, Martin Thacker, Paul Palmer, Lee Harper & Dave Ingram.
It didn’t take long for Town to find their stride, with a very early goal by Nathan Hotte after an excellent team build up. In reality we had most of the first half possession with Hall Road rarely vernturing towards our goal. Chib took an absolute stinker on the achillies from a tackle by their number 10, and was substituted some 10 mins after the nasty tackle. But with Chib going off, the team carried on in that chasing, passing, hustling, footballing style we bacame accustomed to at the beginning of the season, which had faultered a little during November. HRR worked hard, but the attacks were persistant and any counters were well dealt with by all of the defence.
No luck again on the raffle.
Second half saw us come out of the blocks and it didn’t take long for Craig Palmer to score an absolute screamer that would adorn any game anywhere in the world. Great technique, he smacked a bullet from just outside the right hand side of the box with his left foot that flew into the top left of the goal, from where I was standing looked like it had hit the corner of the bar, but it had actually hit the stanchion inside the goal. And quite rightly so, he, his team mates and the fans were very pleased at witnessing such a great goal.
Not long after Frank Belt scored another well worked goal, his second in two weeks. Frank I thought was brilliant today and was all over the pitch, for a lad who I think has struggled to “fit into” this level of football since being released by Hull, he has grown in confidence and in stature over the last month or two, and is starting to show the kind of footballing skills that took him to Hull in the first place.
On 62 minutes, Palms hit his second and the teams fourth and it really looked like the floodgates were opening. Whilst we had numerous efforts after this – their keeper made two or three superb saves during the game, in fairness to HRR, they never gave up and kept the scoresheet reasonable.
I really enjoyed today, I think all the fans and all the players should take heart from a tremendous team performance and probably the goal of the season. We are back to playing like we know we can. Well done guys.
A quick word for the officials – SHIT ! As Pete Smurthwaite said to one of the linesman towards the end of the game, after another dubious offside ” thank god its not a tight game, otherwise you jokers would have cost us points” (or words to that effect). They weren’t good at all today i’m afraid.
Happy New Year and i may see some of you in Dinnington next week.
