Post by a more piratey game on Nov 12, 2015 0:50:34 GMT
Sarfend is a long way to come for fun on a not-too-cold Wednesday night, but we guessed that around 150 souls made the trip and got the reward of paying £12 for an evening of League 1-to2 floodlit football.
International duty limited Rovers’ options (which is not, I think, a phrase that suffers from over-use) so that both Ellis and Tom L were unavailable. Nicholls kept his spot after Saturday’s howler, J Clarke was again at right-back, and Macca, Parkes and Browner filled out the back. There was no place for Mans in midfield, and it was left to Sincs, Lines, Bodin and Gos to provide the ammunition for Taylor and Easter to fire upfront.
Sarfend rolled out Bus Pass Barrett and their highly-rated goalie Bentley, but no one else that I knew anything about. They seem to be doing alright in League 1 though, so I thought they’d probably have at least as much to offer as us.
The goalie wasn’t the only Bentley on view though, as there was a very nice one in the car park, with its own personal minder, that might or might not belong to our esteemed leader. Its possible that the personalised numberplate was a coincidence – this was Essex after all – but it did seem to me to be a bit too much of a coincidence at a Rovers match.
We went close very early doors with nice move that ended with a good shot which hit the side netting. A good antidote to DC’s talk about being reluctant to pull the trigger, and we pressed forward in the early minutes.
They soon spoiled it though, having first a shot which swerved around like a James Bond golf putt before being parried by Nicholls, and then a header at the back stick which little Gos was too short to challenge for effectively and their bloke got a textbook header down into the corner of the goal. It was a good goal, but disappointing.
The goal came from a Sarfend theme which permeated the whole match – penetrating attacks down the right highlighting that James Clarke, for all his speed which was enough to outpace his winger, is not a right-back.
Sarfend looked the sharper side all half, with fast passing movements on the ground, and we huffed and puffed and generally looked keen but from a division below. We had another shot, and so equalled the opportunities score, and just before half-time one of our players was farting around with it on the edge of their box.
But this time, for the first time, he pulled the trigger brilliantly and the ball found the corner of the net. There was deep joy in the Away end, and Rovers players all pulled back to defend the kick-off, when the ref went to have a little conflab with the lino (or ‘assistant referee’ in modern parlance, which nobody I know uses), which took a while, before he decided no goal. Pah!
A bloke in the pub said afterwards that it was deflected by one of our players, who was offside, but the lino seemed to be one of very few people in the ground who noticed. Wenger-style, we can honestly say that we didn’t see it and will look forward to seeing it again.
So half-time was a bit flat, and whereas we had felt that it was now ‘game on’, it felt like we’d been deceived instead.
Second half their fans continued singing at low volume, accompanied by their usual pathetic drum, while the Gas generated a truly impressive volume-per-head, as well as some well-judged post-watershed feedback.
Rovers worked hard and were to the second half what Sarfend had been to the first, although without the ball on the ground so much.
Easter had a couple of shots from the right of the box, both saved by their excellent goalie who has had something like a dozen Premiership games and is reportedly bound for greater things, as well as an opportunity at the edge of the box which he flubbed.
Several times the ball bounced around the middle of the Sarfend 6-yard box, and they got the luck of the pinball. Bodin, who had looked capable all match, had a decent shot which was about 3 feet over the bar, and their goalie tipped another couple of good shots over the bar.
Lucas came on for Easter (although, on the subject of High Days and maybe paradoxically, the Sarfend fans had all lit up their phones, presumably to celebrate the start of Diwali tonight) and Montano came on for Gosling. Both made a difference, with Montano having a good shot tipped over the bar and Lucas looking both bigger and more energetic than Easter (who I have always liked, but who seems to be turning into a disappointment).
The game was getting stretched and open, but Rovers stuck to their task and had several good moves running in and around the box, while Sarfend had some but fewer chances at the other end. Nicholls flubbed a few clearance kicks towards the end of the match, and Rovers were, maybe unsurprisingly, at full stretch trying to cover both ends.
For the last 10 minutes Macca played centre-forward, trying to inject some height, and Taylor dropped into the back four, and he almost got on the end of the first cross only to deliver a ‘defender’s finish’ which went wide.
In the end we didn’t come close enough, although I felt that Sincs (MOTM, with both energy and skill), Browner, Bodin and Taylor had had decent matches, and that a draw would have overall been a fair result.
On the other hand, I thought our crosses and set-piece deliveries had been far too high and floaty (Chris Lines!), that we’d lacked threat in the air, that Lines isn’t looking like the player he looked last season with his surging runs, that the boy on the bench or Tyler Little deserve a try at right back, and I think we all wonder what Bliss has done wrong to not make it onto the bench when we’re not scoring.
I got back and my wife said that she’d wished a ‘good game’ to the bloke who drove me home and he’d replied ‘you do know that its Bristol Rovers we’ll be watching, don’t you?’. It put the first smile on my face since we’d realised that Macca was playing centre forward
