This is going to be a very short report. First, I don’t have much time. But second, there isn’t much to say. The match started. For 15 minutes play went on – I’m sure some things happened but I can’t remember now. It seemed a fairly open game. Then we lost the ball stupidly in midfield and one of their players came down the right channel towards the box. Jockie fouled him and was sent off. This last man thingy is just another one of those rules that must sound great when you’re in a committee room somewhere but introduce a frustrating element of subjectivity. So the chap outside our box, over to the right had a clear goalscoring opportunity? And none of the other defenders would get across? Bliddy Pythagorus would take a couple of days to triangulate the positions of the various players and the relative velocities involved. The ref has to make a decision there and then. You’ll see such things several times a season. If you’re the attacking side you’ll always scream for a red card but, other than haul-downs in the box directly in front of goal, it happens sometime between rarely and never. So Jockie was sent off. While we attempted to pull ourselves back together again and work out our new postions, they scored a free-kick that we’d never usually let in (very poorly positioned wall).
That was it really. We decided to try to take the game to them but with ten men it just didn’t work. They scored three more times. We should have scored (Whitley and Breen in particular). I don’t think we learn anything from this (although it’s going to make our blood boil next time one of our players is brought down charging towards the box and nothing more than a yellow is given). Let’s get over it and have a good week in the cup and on Sky next week.
