Not so Grim for Grimsby.
We start with the bizarre news that the FA – in its infinite wisdom – has fined Morecambe FC two thousand pounds for what is describes as a `mass confrontation’ against Sutton United in a League Two game two weeks ago. The visitors were fined even more: Sutton’s website was quick off the mark last Wednesday to state the following:
“The Football Association has this afternoon released the following statement concerning our game at Morecambe earlier this month. Sutton United and Morecambe have been fined £2,750 and £2,000 respectively for the mass confrontation at their EFL League Two game on Saturday 10 February. It was alleged that both clubs failed to ensure their players don’t behave in an improper way during additional time of the first half. Sutton United and Morecambe accepted the charges against them, and an independent Regulatory Commission imposed their fines.”
There’s no doubt that there were some bad-tempered exchanges during the game. But nobody was sent off and nobody got hurt. Worse things happen in school playgrounds right across the country on a daily basis. Why choose that particular game? I don’t remember any sanctions being taken against – say – Bolton Wanderers in the notorious `racist’ incident a couple of years ago, when far worse things happened. But the FA has always been a law unto itself. Surely it’s time it was reorganised – or scrapped altogether – to both reflect the social structure of the Twenty-First century and replace the Old Etonian fossils who still dominate it with people who better reflect the ethnic, class and gender diversity of Britain today. Isn’t it?
Further disciplinary action has been taken against the club by the other clique which dominates English football currently: the EFL. Morecambe Manager Ged Brannan has been banned from the touchline for today’s match after picking-up three yellow cards in recent games. In his own defence, Our Ged has said “I’m always polite” on the touch-line and never says or does anything truly Out of Order. But – like the FA – the Football League is the sole arbiter of its own actions and accountable to nobody. Some things never change…
More positive news for the club arrived in the shape of Jordy Hiwula-Mayifuila. The 29-year-old forward has signed a contract until the end of the season. Predominantly a centre forward, Jordy has scored 87 goals in 327 appearances in EFL and Scottish football, 221 of which occurred in League One. Reflecting what we all hope for at this moment in time, our new signing said after putting pen to paper:
“I feel this is a perfect opportunity for me to come and play the remaining games of the season, hopefully we can do something special.”
Anyway, our very own Dave Artell – who is definitely not doing anything special at the moment – arrived at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium this afternoon for the first time as the Manager of Grimsby Town. Dave is rightly a fan favourite from Way Back When and is a bright, thoughtful chap into the bargain. However, I listened to Dave Salmon’s as always excellent coverage of Morecambe’s defeat at Walsall last Tuesday and was surprised to hear him predict that his namesake will someday be in charge of the Shrimps. On current form – to be brutally honest – David will struggle to get another job anywhere…
Since he took over last November from the man – Paul Hurst – who steered the Mariners into the EFL not just once but twice, the Lincolnshire club’s traditionally parlous relationship with League membership has got much worse. When Mr Hurst was sacked, Town were twentieth in League Two. Today, they are twenty-second. Only the seemingly irredeemably bad form of the two clubs beneath them in the table – Forest Green Rovers and Sutton United – are keeping Dave’s latest charges from yet another direct experience of National League football. Under his leadership, Grimsby have won only two of their twelve League Two games but have lost a quite staggering seven. Last time out, they were mauled at home 1-5 by Doncaster, themselves really struggling in the Dead Zone of League Two. Off the field, the club has also been struck by tragedy during Dave’s tenure. Youth player Cameron Walsh – just 16 years of age – was killed along with his father in a car crash last month. . Meanwhile, 26-year-old Midfielder Callum Ainley was unlucky enough to be diagnosed with thyroid cancer during January. Let’s all wish him well for a full recovery and a continuation of his career. So it’s not been a happy time for anyone at Grimsby in recent months. An improvement in fortune is thus very much overdue for both the Mariners and their beleaguered Manager. I personally wish both Dave and the club the best of luck – but not today…
This is what Mr Artell said in a very down-beat interview earlier in the week about what he expected from his players today back at the north Lancashire seaside:
“I’ve got to get more out of them; the players have got to get more out of themselves. They’ve got to stop shooting themselves in the foot. I think there’s more worrying things than style. There are other things to address first. The buck stops with me – that’s the nature of the job. We’ve got to all stick together, every single one of us. It’s not about me: it’s about getting the players to perform better.”
Although he didn’t explain how he intended to do this, the beleaguered Mariners’ boss added the following as far as Morecambe specifically are concerned:
“Me and Shaun (Pearson – Dave’s Assistant) went to see them on Tuesday at Walsall. And although they got beat three-nil, they were the best team – without a shadow of a doubt, they were the better team; they were a good team; they are a good team. We know it’s a tough challenge – as they all are. They are a bit less of a transitional team and more of a footballing team and that’s all credit to Ged and the staff up there: he’s certainly imparted his own style. But we also know they’ve got some weakness and we’ve got to make sure that we exploit them.”
In the past, the two clubs have met 22 times in various competitions. Morecambe have won nine of these; Grimsby six. But the Mariners – under temporary management at the time – won the reverse fixture against Derek Adams’ Shrimps last November, coming from behind to run-out winners by the odd goal in five.
Morecambe’s fine run of form in recent times came to a shuddering halt at Walsall last Tuesday night. The Shrimps played all the decent football – but the Saddlers scored all the goals: three of them without reply. Today, central striker Ged Garner (missing for the last two and a half games with a hip injury) was back in the team to lead the line. Jordy Hiwula was also available to make his debut for the club. Ged Brannan’s side are still handily placed for a Play Off finish in League Two this season: eleventh and just a point shy of seventh-placed Harrogate. The Shrimps have won three and drawn one of their last six League Two games. Today presented a perfect opportunity for the team to get their promotion push back on track. Our Ged had the following thoughts about the opposition before the match:
“I’ve watched them play. They’re not a bad team. It’s a little false position that they’re in at the moment. Games like Grimsby we need to go and win; take the three points, obviously.”
It dawned sunny and bright in north Lancashire today. It was still bright with barely a breath of wind as the game started. Morecambe lined-up with Justin Larsson in the centre forward berth as new signing Jordy Hiwula sat on the bench and there was no sign of Ged Garner anywhere. There was no place anywhere in the team for Jake Taylor or David Tutonda today either.
Grimsby – in a predominantly white strip with dark blue socks and trim – went straight onto the attack. They worked the ball down their right before Harry Clifton found their unmarked leading scorer Danny Rose in the centre with a cross and the latter did what he has been doing all season: found the back of the net. Less than two minutes were gone and the Mariners had taken the lead. This wasn’t in the script. But Town clearly hadn’t read the script today.
Morecambe started sluggish and disorganised at the back and played some disjointed, ineffectual football for most of the first half. Yann Songo’o forced visiting stopper Harvey Cartwright into a routine save after six minutes with a shot from distance. Then Jordan Slew – who was again lively all game – had a good shot deflected for a corner after 20 minutes. Then the visiting goalkeeper had to palm away a thunderbolt from deserved Man of the Match Gwion Edwards after forty. And that was the sum total of the Shrimps’ endeavours before half time.
For the visitors, Gavan Holohan had a volley well blocked by the home defence after half an hour. Then a cross clearly aimed at Captain Rose was defected narrowly wide of the goal by the men in the red strips with 21 minutes played. That was their sum total of chances other than the goal. But they went back to the Dressing Rooms one-nil to the good – and probably just about deserved it on the balance of play.
Our Ged shook things up by replacing the largely anonymous Justin Larsson with Charlie Brown at half time. And Charlie wasted no time doing all the things Justin had failed to do: getting stuck in; forcing Grimsby to play the ball and constantly harassing their defence.
The second half went in fits and starts: periods where the visitors dominated possession and actually stretched the Shrimps’ rearguard – and other times when the home side were completely on top and asking all the questions. Town had actually been attacking in the fifty-third minute when Edwards led a lightning counter-attack from deep in his own half. He flew down the Morecambe right and pulled a low cross into the danger area which the young visiting goalkeeper dived at but only managed to push towards Jordan Slew, who bundled the ball over the line to equalise. The goalkeeper redeemed himself, however, with a simply sublime save from Edwards after 75 minutes. How he managed to get down low to his right to turn Gwion’s effort away for a corner is something only he could explain: it was truly miraculous. The Mariners conceded no less than seven corners in a row between about the hour mark and the seventieth minute as Morecambe looked for a winner. But the nearest the Shrimps came to taking all three points was as late as the eighty-eighth minute. Slew’s lob from the left hit Cartwright’s far post with the goalkeeper beaten and fell invitingly for substitute Jordy Hiwula. With the whole goal to aim at and totally unmarked, Jordy turned-down the chance of a perfect start to his Morecambe career by slicing his shot horribly wide. After this, though, Grimsby had the better of things. The hosts kept giving up possession at vital moments with sloppy or inaccurate passing and I thought the visitors were the better side for the last ten minutes or possibly even longer. They won nearly all the second balls; were slicker in their movement and seemed far more determined than the men in red. And how Holohan managed to miss the target when found unmarked right in the middle of the home goal in the third minute of injury time, only the gods could account for – what a let off as he scooped the ball from virtually off the goal line straight over the bar!
At the end of the day, Morecambe were perhaps a little lucky to hold onto a point because the visitors had at least two decent shouts for penalties during the second half. Dave Artell – whose gesticulations from the side lines particularly in the first half didn’t do him any favours and were the mark of a man under severe pressure – will probably still be in a job on Monday. The Referee – Will Finnie – will be too, which is a shame: he was pathetic today; both officious and weak at the same time. But, given favourable results elsewhere (Harrogate lost at home 0-2 and the real Dons were surprisingly beaten 2-1 at Doncaster), Morecambe found themselves a place higher in the table at the end of the game than they had been at the beginning. Grimsby remain twenty-second but – with Forest Green beating Tranmere 1-0 in Gloucestershire – are only four points above the Drop Zone tonight.
Our Ged said the following after the match:
“Tough one to be honest. It was a hard one to swallow today. We conceded another early goal which really, really was annoying. We can’t keep going into games conceding early goals and then chasing the game. You can’t afford to give top players like that ten yards in the box – he has got loads of space in the box. I don’t know what we were thinking. We’ll have a good think about that – how we’re going to sort this problem out of conceding goals early on.”
As far as the Grimsby miss right at the death was concerned, he added:
“Thank god it never went in. I was in the tunnel; I haven’t seen it – apparently it was a sitter. Someone’s looking down on us. The league’s been crazy today: everyone’s beating everyone else. We’ve gone up a place. So we’re still well in it. Obviously I’m not happy we never won the three points but I’m happy we got a point and didn’t throw it away at the end.”
Morecambe: 30 Archie Mair; 4 Jacob Bedeau; 5 Farrend Rawson (C); 6 Yann Songo’o; 8 Joe Adams; 11 Julian Larsson (20 Charlie Brown 45’); 12 Joel Senior; 14 Jordan Slew; 15 Chris Stokes; 19 Gwion Edwards 38 Nelson Khumbeni (Y).
Substitutes not used: 21 Adam Smith; 17 Cammy Smith; 18 Jake Taylor; 22 Kayden Harrack; 23 Max Melbourne.
Grimsby Town: 1 Harvey Cartwright; 4 Kieran Green; 5 Harvey Rodgers; 24 Doug Tharme; 8 Gavan Holohan (Y); 15 Harry Clifton; 19 Jamie Andrews (18 Harry Wood 77’); 20 Justin Obikwu (7 Abobaker Eisa 77); 28 Toby Mullarkey (9 Rekeil Pyke 77’); 32 Danny Rose (C); 33 Denver Hume.
Substitutes not used: 12 Jake Eastwood; 25 Donovan Wilson; 34 Aaron Braithwaite; 38 Jamie Bramwell.
Ref: Will Finnie.
ATT: 3, 794 (553 from Grimsby.)
