Forget Storm Kathleen – Morecambe blown- away by Storm Donny
The White Rose and the Red Rose met today as Doncaster Rovers made the trip from the east of the Pennines to north Lancashire to play Morecambe for the second time this season. The first time they met – last December – the Shrimps absolutely annihilated Donny by winning 0-5 at the Keepmoat Stadium. The game was memorable not only for the score but as the first ever match the Shrimps won under the management of Ged Brannan. Previously, things hadn’t been quite so clear-cut. In their five encounters in the past altogether, the clubs have been absolutely equal, with two wins and a draw each.
Rovers arrived at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium with a vastly different squad to the one which was brushed aside so easily by Morecambe last year. No less than eight of the squad named on that day were nowhere to be seen this afternoon. With a lot of new faces in the team, Donny have climbed to fourteenth position in League Two from the precarious place they found themselves in at the end of December. They were also on championship-winning form: a very impressive five league wins in a row. The most recent of these was last Tuesday night, when title-chasing Wrexham were beaten in Yorkshire by the only goal of the game. It’s probably a little too late for a Play-Off push for Doncaster but if they were able to extend their winning run to six today at the Maz, they would still have an outside chance of ending-up in the top seven come the end of the season.
This is what Rovers’ Manager – Grant McCann – had to say after the victory against Wrexham last Tuesday about the task facing his men today:
“All I know is we set the players an eighteen game table, we’ve played twelve of those games and we’re top of it. We’re actually a couple of games behind some of the teams. So in those twelve games, we’ve been very good. We’ve got six games to go and we’ll see where we are. The next one for us is on Saturday and it’s another tough game against a team in form in Morecambe. They got a tremendous result themselves on Monday so it’s a tough game that we look forward to.”
For Morecambe, another win to add to the six points they earned against local rivals Accrington Stanley and Barrow over Easter was just as imperative. The Shrimps were in eighth position in the table this morning, just two points adrift of Crawley at the bottom of the Play-Off pack. A win for them today and defeat for the Sussex club against Mansfield in Nottinghamshire – a result which was well within the realms of possibility – would see them exchange places. (As it turned out, Crawley easily turned-over one of the best teams in League Two and ran out 1-4 winners.)
These were Our Ged’s thoughts about Donny as expressed the day before the game:
“They’ve had five on the bounce. I watched the game against Wrexham the other day and they done really well. So we know it’s going to be a really tough game.”
It was wet and cloudy this morning right across north Lancashire. But by three o’clock, the sun had come out and the only hint that Storm Kathleen was wreaking whatever havoc she was doing elsewhere in the UK was the very strong gale blasting from the Atlantic across the Mazuma Mobile Stadium all afternoon.
Donny clearly won the toss and elected to change ends to play with the storm at their backs. It was a good decision. Right from kick-off, they asked all the questions and the Shrimps were overwhelmed this afternoon by a side which was high on confidence and looked as if they were going to win easily almost from the opening move. Their first goal arrived after eleven minutes – and it was a classic counter-strike involving three passes from one end of the pitch to the other. Morecambe had forced two corners in a row. Impressive goalkeeper Thimothée Lo-Tutala caught the second one; looked up and sent an accurate punt down the field to Hakeeb Adelakun on the half way line on the Doncaster right. He, in turn, launched a pin-point ball to an unmarked Luke Molyneux in the home penalty area; he brought it down out of the air in one movement and slotted it past Archie Mair with the next one. Four minutes later, they were two-up. This time, hopeless Referee Darren Drysdale awarded Donny a free-kick which their constant diving did not merit. It was just to the left of centre from their point of view and maybe thirty yards out. Molyneux curled the ball around the left side of the Morecambe wall from his point of view and straight into the net to the delight of the noisy following from Yorkshire behind the goal.
But by this time, the match was already over as a contest. Donny pushed their luck and were very physical at times with Jamie Sterry lucky to stay on the field. But the incompetent in the middle with the whistle and the shaving foam was too busy preening himself, poncing about and squirting white lines on the pitch to penalise him for his blatant holding, pushing and diving all the way through the game. Only very near the end did this dirty so-and-so get the yellow card he should have got early in the game when he kicked Gwion Edwards and then pushed him when the Welshman made his feelings known. Or – moments later – when comprehensively out-thought and out-manoeuvred by Jordan Slew, he threw himself on the ball to be awarded a free-kick for an offence by Jordan that only Mr Drysdale could see. The Referee was absolutely hopeless this afternoon.
But so were Morecambe. In Ged Garner, they had a man supposedly leading the line who never got stuck-in; dived and wasted gold-plated opportunities to score as he ran around ineffectually all afternoon and flapped his arms about at his team-mates as if they were letting him down. The Manager should have taken him off at half time, if not earlier: he was worse than useless this afternoon. But nobody else in the team covered themselves in glory either. In my view, Slew was again our smartest and most effective player but – very uncharacteristically – he showed signs of losing his temper today and it was probably a good thing that he was taken off before Darren Drysdale helped him on his way. What more is there to say? The Shrimps didn’t have a single shot on goal during the entire first half and the most taxing save the visiting goalkeeper had to make all afternoon was in extra time at the end from one of his own players, who miscued a header. But even after this, Morecambe had a golden chance to reduce the arrears when substitute Jordy Hiwula found himself in the clear and bearing down on the Donny goal on the Morecambe right. Yes – right. And he made a right mess of it: his attempted finish was so far off target when he had the goal at his mercy as to be almost laughable. It was truly pathetic. And in the meantime, Donny had broken away and scored again. Substitute Maxime Biamou set-up fellow replacement Tommy Rowe to finish off the near-rout for the visitors in the ninety-first minute – and it was well deserved.
This was a wake-up call for Morecambe this afternoon. They were a class below Doncaster, who played to a plan with better tactics and greater determination throughout the entire game. The win pushes Rovers up to twelfth place in League Two, two points and two places behind Morecambe but with a game in hand. Today’s win will have certainly also given Grant McCann tremendous satisfaction as ample revenge for December’s hammering in Yorkshire.
As for the Shrimps, their lingering hopes of a Play-Off position were more or less blown-away with the weather today in Morecambe. By this time next week, these hopes could well be well and truly extinguished altogether. If they play like they did this afternoon against either Crewe or particularly Stockport in the next eight days, they certainly will be out of the Play-Off scramble without any doubt at all.
This is what Our Ged said he felt about this afternoon’s shambolic display after the game:
“Very disappointing to be honest. We just never got going today. It was a very flat performance from us from the very start. Obviously, they deserved the win in the end. They out-battled us all over the pitch today; run more than us – which is the most disappointing thing for us. We just never come out of the traps at all. The only good thing from today was the crowd – the fans were really good. But on the pitch (dismissive noise) – it wasn’t good enough.”
Morecambe: 30 Archie Mair; 3 David Tutonda (5 Farrend Rawson 77’); 4 Jacob Bedeau (C); 9 Ged Garner (39 Jordy Hiwula 77’); 12 Joel Senior; 14 Jordan Slew (11 Julian Larsson 77’); 15 Chris Stokes; 18 Jake Taylor (Y) (10 JJ McKiernan 60’); 19 Gwion Edwards (Y); 20 Charlie Brown (8 Joe Adams 60’); 38 Nelson Khumbeni.
Substitutes not used: 21 Adam Smith; 6 Yann Songo’o; 28 Oscar Threlkeld.
Doncaster Rovers: 15 Thimothée Lo-Tutala; 2 Jamie Sterry (Y); 3 James Maxwell; 5 Joseph Olewu; 6 Richard Wood (C); 7 Luke Molyneux (24 Zain Westbrooke 83’); 14 Harrison Biggins (10 Tommy Rowe 27’); 17 Owen Bailey; 20 Joe Ironside (36 Maxime Biamou 73’); 37 Matthew Craig (Y); 47 Hakeeb Adelakun (Y) (21 Kyle Hurst 84’).
Substitutes not used: 8 George Broadbent; 12 Louis Jones; 25 Jay McGrath.
Ref: Darren Drysdale.
Att: 4,146 (741 from Doncaster.)
