The defeat at Winterton had left me a tad peed off, but that mood soon dispersed with it being the week before Christmas. I’d had a rant about a few of the players attitude after one or two abject performances of late, and hoped they were “up” for the derby game on Boxing day at Queeny.
Some rumours had surfaced mid week about us singing a new player from Pickering – Stuart Rice, he who played a blinder against us earlier in the year, here’s what i wrote at the time;
We were buoyed by the return of Wayne Wallace, who is starting his 5th or 6th spell with us, and new signing, defender Jamie Waltham. Watching the first half from the bench, they must have thought “what have we let ourselves in for by signing here?” as we were atrocious. Pickering went two up in the first 20 minutes, both goals by Rice, his second was an absolute stunning solo goal.
We also learnt on the rumour train, that Martin Thacker was to “take a break from playing football at this level” – which was later confirmed by Teach.
But the big rumour that stirred passions came from Boro, where it emerged Ryan Blott was about to serve a 112 day ban, starting Jan 1st. What could he have possibly done to achieve such a ban ? Spouted racist remarks to another player ? No (that only gets you an 8 match ban). Struck a referee or another official ? No. He stole from his playing colleagues or something like that ? No. His crime, picking up 10 different suspensions in two years. Each one of these “crimes” would have been punished at the time, but the FA & the NCEL had adopted this rule at the start of the campaign and was designed to improve standards and respect towards the officials. But 112 day ban? seriously ? This aint the Prem League or Serie A, its Step 5 Northern Counties East, players are paid “expenses” (except Scarborough’s expenses are a lot more expensive than anyone else’s allegedly – thats another topic entirely), they are semi-pro. In reality, Ryans season finishes after todays derby game with his home town club. I think that needs to be looked at again. The FA do make some very strange decisions.
Our squad was looking a bit threadbare as it is, we could have done with Thackers experience, especially when Wayne Wallace leaves us in Jan.
Christmas Day was great in our house, great prezzies, brilliant dinner and a superb bottle of Prosecco to wash it all down. No snow as it was too darn warm. But Christmas wasn’t going to be complete until we played Boro on Boxing Day.
A nice early kick off had to be delayed due to crowd congestion, whilst everyone queued up for the main turnstile, even though the side one was open.
Brid had one or two early chances, but the game sprang into life, as did the Boro crowd, when Ryan Blott hit the post. But for some reason, the Boro faithful, probably numbering 550 out of 802, were very quiet throughout – except the mindless few who were dishing out frequent abuse to their own players, which i’m sure helped our cause no end.
Hoggy scored a cracker of a goal on 25 from the edge of the box, to silence the away fans, and this was followed up with another scorcher from Ash Allanson on 40. We did have other chances in the half, but ballooned a couple over the bar. Second half, we had to endure an opening 10 minute spell of pressure from Boro, but caught them on the counter and a goal from Hoggy on his second attempt, after the keeper saved his first. We then held them at bay for a good twenty minutes before Boro made a couple of tactical changes – Dean Windass (yes he of Hull City and Bradford fame and famous for this)
had played 60-65 minutes, he still oozed some presence on the pitch, but didn’t make much of an impact in the game – perhaps it was too fast for him ? But I didn’t know what position he was playing, coz he was everywhere – I expected him to play up front.
They moved their best player of the game, Tony Hackworth, up front and started to make an impact. It didn’t help our cause, at around the 75 minute mark, we brought our new signing Stuart Rice on and within 90 seconds see him get red carded for a two footed lunge on one of their players – there’s a debut he won’t forget !!
Hackworth eventually scores in the 85th and the game finishes 3-1.
My MOM was Wayne Wallace who was the best player on the pitch today, closely followed by Craig Hogg, Craig Palmer and Wayne Aziz. Tom Fleming and Nathan Cooke had slow starts but had great second halves. Ash Allanson had a great game and scored a great goal. Wilbur was his usual great self, and pulled off a brilliant save in the second half, even though the Boro dude was offside. Frank Belt had a good game and got loads of stick early doors from the Boro faithful. Billy Logan had a brilliant game at right back, and to bounce back like that after the Whitley Bay game hammering he took, showed tremendous character. Josh Greening had a reasonable game – this is not going to be a character assassination of the lad, because i am sure he is a top bloke, but he appears short of confidence, in the game today he made some good runs and some good challenges, but final passes or his hold up play were woeful. He struggles to win headers and apply himself against the more physical defenders – a little bit more aggression, assertiveness and positive thinking should help his game.
But as a team performance they were brilliant and fought for each other. Boro played like 11 individuals for most of the game. What did surprise me was the amount of long ball they played, yet were very successful when they kept it on the deck and passed it around.
Bragging rights maintained, aggregate score of 8-1 in the last 2 fixtures, and to quote Greg Wallace, IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT !!!!
Well it might have done for one fan of Brid, who promised to run onto the pitch at the end and kiss Joe Danby if he had scored the winning goal – bet Joe Danby’s relieved !!
UPDATE 03-01-12 – someone at the game videoed it, so below for you perusal is the Boxing Day extravaganza
