Post by a more piratey game on Dec 6, 2014 19:19:38 GMT
It was one of those days when the warmth in the sunshine can make you forget that its brass monkeys in the shade. There was still frost on one corner of the pitch, but the low early winter sun brought a sharpness and relief that wasn’t to be reflected in the football.
It’s the smallest ground I’ve ever seen Rovers play a proper game in, but with a very short terrace of about four or five steps behind each goal, and a reasonable stand on either side, it was about right for the crowd of 1,100 or so.
There was some little line-up ceremony before the game started, but I couldn’t tell what it was about as, as the bloke next to me said, it was more like listening to a bloke with a loudspeaker than listening to a tannoy.
But they came out in red, and we wore the quarters, and we had a proper Rovers vs the reds game to look forward to. The emergency keeper didn’t look very big, but there was the big back line of Lockyer, Parkes, Macca and Brown in front of him, the middling midfield of Beardy, Clarke, Mansell and Balaaaanta, and the new pairing of Bliss and Goldburger up front.
It was my first look at Golburger, and a first start for Balanta, so plenty to catch the eye.
They had a bloke playing number 10 who looked just like Marlon Harewood, but Harewood was live on telly last night so I’m guessing that it couldn’t have been him. Apart from that, since they’ve just sold their top scorer, the pulchritudinously-named Beautyman, I didn’t know any of them.
We kicked off downhill, and then 50 or 60 of their fans changed ends – just like the old days at Eastville. Then the 651 Gasheads piped up, very loud under the low and sonorous roof, and it really and sweetly reminded me for a little while of being back in the Tote.
Rovers had a good attack down the right, with Goldberg getting free and then dribbling and getting a shot off, and the atmosphere was building nicely.
Blissett has several promising touches, and I started thinking of him as being much more than the new Devon White, but he seemed to get pushed off the ball when competing for headers (and then get penalised for it!), so he also had something of the new Matty Harrold about him too.
We played like the home side, dominating possession, but the ball did pinball around the midfield quite a lot so that we were often winning it by being first to it rather than through good passing. In fact with the temperature the ball did end up having quite a lot of ‘snow on it’, and I wondered what had happened to some of the sweet passing football that Rovers had shown signs of earlier in the season.
I noticed, for the first time ever, that Olly Clarke has something of a girly on-tip-toes running style about him. It seemed odd that I’d never noticed it before. He won some good challenges, but also, tried some over-ambitious balls when the simple stuff would have done.
There was some good-natured hokey-cokey at the front, from Gasheads old enough to know all the words, and the stewards took it all in good spirit.
While we dominated possession, it was them who twice came closest to scoring – once by a free-kick outside the box which Speiss seemed to see late but still palmed perfectly round the post.
So it had been an entertaining though goal-free first half. I wandered down to get a burger and found that there were 2 burger places, a bar, and only a short queue. I’d parked 5 minutes from the ground, and it was seeming to me that this Conference football isn’t so bad after all. Then I ate the burger, and found it was Conference standard too, so it took the gloss off a little.
Trots was warming up near the crowd, and stopped to exchange a few words with blokes at the front. I think of him as a commanding central defender, but up-close he is of course not long past being a boy. Never meet your heroes, as they say.
Second half resumed similar to where the first left off, with us having lots of possession but lacking the quality touches or passes to bring off a goal. Goldburger, who hadn’t really had much impact and who dribbles the ball only slowly forwards, came off for Wall, and then Balanta, who had grown increasingly influential but who I had spotted blowing a bit a few minutes earlier, came off for Gosling.
Finally, Blissett, whose touch had started to desert him a bit, came off for Matty Taylor, and we had 20 minutes or so to continue our season-long search for a goal.
Welling tired visibly, though kept trying to keep in on the ground, and Rovers finally began to learn that they did better with the ball on the ground. The left side provided 6 or 7 good opportunities, with Browner and Gosling combining well to open things up. One good header was cleared off the line, and then Wall put an excellent free kick onto the target only for their keeper to palm it away – a save at least as good as Speiss’ in the first half.
The atmosphere in the stand was still building, a great defence against the cold, and the singing was loud and the hokey-cokey increasingly entertaining. They even sang a song about one of the stewards, although calling him ‘Ben Mitchell’ might not be his favourite compliment ever.
Wall had a great opportunity from a header, but couldn’t quite get on top of it, and they had a few breaks but couldn’t seem to get on the end of anything either.
Gosling had took up a great position but seemed to take the hard option with his left foot rather than the easy one with his right, and the ball went past the post. Browner made some great runs and passes, as he so often has done before, but couldn’t seem to find the right cross at the end of it.
As the whistle went I thought it had been one winning goal short of a really good afternoon of football. We applauded the players pretty warmly, and they had put in a good and entertaining shift, but I suppose that that’s often what football in the basement is about – play that lacks the little bit of crispness and sharpness you find in the sunnier levels above.