Game of Two Halves at Morecambe
It was grim enough to witness Morecambe’s humiliation – for that is what it was – against Crewe last Tuesday night. But to read on the fans’ forums afterwards reports of racist insults been hurled at some of our own players by our own alleged `supporters’ just puts the tin lid on it.
Anyone who has ever watched the Shrimps play this season will see that Wes McDonald, for instance, isn’t good enough for League One. Against Crewe, he clearly didn’t even try a lot of the time. But he wasn’t alone in this.
So why single him out for abuse simply because he is black and some of the other slackers aren’t?
It doesn’t make sense apart from anything else. The Neanderthals in our crowd shout racist slurs because they are less advanced along the spectrum of human evolution than the black players they are shouting this nonsense at. I suppose we should actually feel sorry for these Throwbacks for being forced by whatever it is in their pea-sized brains as their knuckles drag along the floor to behave in this way in the first place. But I would personally like to see them banned permanently from the Maz – we have enough white idiots who throw flares and whatnot already without adding racist morons to the list as well.
It’s truly depressing – and actually shameful – to read on the net remarks such as “My 8 year old son watching football with his dad does not deserve to ask me what a certain racist comment means at a football match.”
Absolutely. But the black guys in our squad – or in anyone else’s for that matter – deserve it even less…
Oh – and on that uplifting and very positive note – Happy New Year to (almost) everybody…
Anyway… Stephen Robinson went on record straight after the Crewe fiasco and said the following:
“I am extremely disappointed with the way that we defended, their player is heading nowhere and he manages to get a cross into the box and it lands on a player who has a free header. We didn’t land on the second ball for their second goal, so you deserve to lose when you defend like that, we have been conceding too many goals and we have tried to get more bodies in there. We didn’t pass the ball (either). I have said previously it was a big game and it was a big game for a lot of players, but a lot of them froze, they were hiding from the ball unfortunately. I have to compliment the fans. They got behind the team for 90 minutes on Wednesday night and they expressed their views after the game, which is the right thing to do. I live in the real world and I’m a very down-to-earth person who understands that people want to see passion and desire, you see me in the dugout and I try and do that as much as I can. So I agree with them to a certain extent, but with some of the younger players it is about fear rather than not trying, and I think we saw some players playing with fear.”
He’s in a difficult position, really. It may be true to say that some of his players froze (although that begs the question – why? – because Crewe’s certainly didn’t) but it was obvious to anyone who watched the game that several of them didn’t put in a shift either. I’m also personally puzzled by the Manager’s constant relegating of Toumani Diagouraga to the bench. He is one of only about three players in the squad in my opinion with any obvious class. Perhaps more importantly, he always leads by example on the field too – and that can’t be said for too many among the Morecambe squad at this moment in time.
Robbo has also bemoaned the fact that Burnley loanee Adam Phillips was injured last Wednesday and faces a long lay-off. This man has offered virtually nothing on the field this season and he never gets stuck-in plus rarely tracks-back into the bargain. All I can say is that he must be absolutely brilliant in training to have the Manager place so much faith in him, week-in and week-out.
The jury is still out on Jonas Ayunga – who was scintillating earlier in the season before having a serious injury – and strike partner Jonathan Obika is clearly not match yet fit either. We know we have a gem in Aaron Wildig but his fitness and form has been poor all season so far. Anthony O’Connor is a decent central defender most of the time and I think his commitment to the cause is beyond doubt. But that can’t be said of too many other members of the Morecambe squad.
Stephen Robinson has made too many rods for his own back this season so far. Early on, he defined the parameters of success and failure of the campaign ahead by saying that the Shrimps must win a minimum of two from each batch of five games they play. They have consistently failed to do this recently. I also think it was a mistake for him to say before the Fleetwood game two weeks ago `we need to get six points from the next three games to be exactly where I thought we would be.’ So far, his players have earned just one point from two of these games and can now only obtain a maximum of four. So why set an unattainable goal publicly in the first place? Sadly, Robbo also increasingly sounds like a broken record. He has repeatedly called for mistakes at the back to be cut-out – but the team is arguably weaker at the back now than they were when he first started chanting this mantra several months ago. He is the Coach when all is said and done. So why is this happening? Before the game, he repeated the `must do better’ message yet again:
“I think every game is huge. You’re not going to stay up based on wining this game or losing this game. We simply have to perform better. We have to have more people stand up and be counted. We’ve tried to knock the pass backwards as many times in our final third, but no one’s ever told them to slice balls 60 yards up the pitch with no curve or no quality. But sometimes that’s an easier option when you’re playing with no confidence. People go missing and hiding from the game. We need brave people at this moment in time. We’re losing people around tonsillitis. I was in the hospital with tonsillitis; it was quite bad. Things aren’t going our way at this moment in time in terms of getting any kind of consistency with selections or injuries, but saying that, the players on the pitch have to be better. It’s probably been the story of our season. Individual errors. Different people each week are struggling to cope with the quality at this level. The truth be told, it’s been a different person every week making individual mistakes. I have to look at myself as well – and the players have to look at themselves. Everybody has to look at themselves. That’s the industry we’re in. The fans voice their opinion at the end of the games. I fully accept that.”
Mr Robinson has already tried to dampen-down speculation of new signings to help alleviate the crisis the club is clearly facing. One of his problems is that – with the exception of Greg Leigh and Cole Stockton – most of the players currently on the books (and the majority are his signings, we mustn’t forget) would struggle to find new employers on current form. So they ain’t going anywhere, are they?
Without Cole the Goal, the Shrimps would already be in even worse straits than they are and I think that most fans see it as inevitable that he leaves the club sooner or later. But he was included in Morecambe’s starting eleven this afternoon. In the absence of the injured Phillips, Toums also started.
The Shrimps began the game in twenty-first place in League One. Donny were rock-bottom; four points behind their hosts but with one fewer game played. In terms of form, Rovers were also better-placed than their opponents today, with one victory in their last five league games as opposed to a single point for Morecambe. In previous contests, the Shrimps have met Doncaster three times. They have never beaten them. The best they have achieved was a draw against the Yorkshire club. Their most recent loss was last September at the Keepmoat Stadium, where the Shrimps turned-in what is becoming an increasingly familiar really feeble display on the day.
All things considered, then, the prospect for the New Year looked pretty bleak even before a ball was kicked today. Would it look any better two hours later?
Previous Caretaker Gary McSheffrey was confirmed as the permanent occupant of the Manager’s hot seat for Donny earlier this week. One of his first moves was to appoint Frank Sinclair as his assistant. Their joint mission is to save Rovers’ League One status. So far this season, Doncaster have picked-up only a single point on the road – at Crewe. So the team’s fortunes need improving immediately. The new Manager expressed these thoughts prior to the clash by the Irish Sea coast today:
“I expect aggression and for them to be on the front foot, with a front two that press well. They’ve got physical strikers who cause defenders problems and fast wingbacks who like to join in attacks. We’ve been doing work on the training ground, putting over the messages we want to give our team and working on things so we can get the results. It’s a game against a team that is around us and it’s important when you’re down that end of the table that you take points off teams around you. We’ll be going there and trying to get the win.”
It had rained very heavily during the first full night of 2022 in North Lancashire. But it was dry under sometimes very dark skies as the daylight gradually faded and the match wore on. Rovers must have won the toss because they chose to play facing their own supporters during the first half. Right from the off, they were the better team. They took the game to Morecambe and were clearly pumped-up for the fray in the way the home team equally clearly weren’t.
This was the team at the bottom of the division but against the men in the red strip, they looked accomplished and slick. Only four minutes were on the clock when Aidan Barlow shrugged-off the home defence as if they weren’t there and drew a good save from Kyle Letheren. Just six minutes of away pressure had passed when the team in the blue striped strip took the lead. The Shrimps conceded the first corner of the game on their left; Branden Horton slung the ball came over and ping-pong ensued on the goal-line. For the millionth time this season, the home defence yet again failed to clear the ball before Barlow walloped it home at the far post to register his first ever goal for the club.
Cole Stockton missed the target with a scissors kick after eighteen minutes but it was largely still one-way traffic in the opposite direction. Alfie McCalmont started for the Shrimps today and after twenty-four minutes, he took a free kick from a promising position and then sent a really weak effort way over Louis Jones’ goal. Not long afterwards, Rovers found themselves in uncharted waters this term when Horton’s ball from the left fell to a well-placed Dan Gardner whose shot went straight through Letheren’s hands to make it nil-two to the visitors as the massed tanks of supporters from Yorkshire behind him taunted the large Welshman for having too good a Xmas: “You fat so-and-so!” They were at it again in the twenty-ninth minute when another low ball from the left was converted by Joe Olowu. This time, the ball went between the goalkeeper’s legs.
The home support was shell-shocked. Our team was being completely outplayed and actually hammered by a club which has not won away from the Keepmoat all season. In doing so, they had scored three goals – and this was a team which had only hit the net on their travels eight times in the previous five months. Could it get any worse? It could have – Gardner dragged a shot wide when he might have done better few minutes before the break.
The men in the red shirts were rightly booed off the pitch at half time. As we joked among ourselves that our boys would score four goals in the second half to win, Gallows Humour was the order of the day. On this performance, Morecambe would struggle to win in the Northern Premier League. Goodness only knows what any spies from Spurs – who the Shrimps will face a week today in London – must have made of this car-crash of a performance. Maybe if the just fielded five men against us or played a blind-folded team, we might have at least a sporting chance of at least avoiding a cricket score against us.
McCalmont – who had a shocker today – was withdrawn at half time to be replaced by Aaron Wildig. But whatever Stephen Robinson had said to his men at half time clearly went home. They didn’t look like the same team. Right from the off, they pinned Donny in their own half and not only threw the kitchen sink at them but kept them pinned there for the rest of the game.
The visitors had only one answer to it: to cheat. Sheffield-based Referee James Bell did nothing to stop this and was rightly booed off at the end. Substitute Joe Dodoo constantly led with a straight left arm in challenge after challenge when he made no attempt to head the ball but constantly fouled whichever Morecambe player was up against him. He should have been sent off. But the Referee was happy to book him once and wag his finger at him when he kept on doing it. Equally, Jordy Hiwula-Mayifuila kept infringing on free-kicks awarded to the home team throughout the second half. He was booked only after he had done this for perhaps a fifth or sixth time. As soon as the next infringement by his team-mates was penalised, he kicked the ball away. He should have enjoyed an Early Bath too. But the sub-standard Man in the Middle let him get away with it.
However, it didn’t do the away team any good. Cole the Goal reduced the arrears after seven minutes of the restart. A cross from the left was beautifully headed towards the Morecambe Goal Machine by Skipper Anthony O’Connor and Cole did the rest. With just over an hour on the clock, he almost scored again when he headed Shane McLoughlin’s free-kick only just wide. Then Greg Leigh headed just over the bar after 67 minutes. Five minutes later, visiting custodian Jones earned his corn with a good save from the Shrimps’ leading scorer. But Morecambe’s talismanic Number Nine wasn’t going to be denied much longer. Toumani Diagouraga won the ball in midfield and set McLoughlin away again to set-up Cole to almost burst the net after 74 minutes. Jonathan Obika came on as a substitute just three minutes later and opened his League account for the Shrimps with a well-taken goal as the Doncaster defence was again at sixes and sevens with eight minutes left to play. As their team fell apart in front of their eyes, there was trouble on the terraces shortly afterwards as Doncaster fans appeared to fight among themselves but their team was losing the fight on the field. Deserved Man of the Match Toumani scored a magnificent winning goal for the Shrimps with a superb shot with just four minutes left. And still the home team pushed forward after that as Donny laid down and died.
This was a tremendous victory for Morecambe this afternoon. To be able to transform the gloom of being taken to the cleaners by a weak team at half time and show the resilience and sheer drive to turn things around in the second half was a fantastic achievement in itself. It showed that Robbo is able to inspire his men in adversity and gives credence to his claim last week that the squad is good enough to survive in League One. If they play like they did during the second half, they almost certainly will. If they play as they did in the first half, they wouldn’t survive in League Two. The tremendous win saw Morecambe escape from the relegation zone in League Two altogether tonight. This evening, they sat in nineteenth position in the table. Meanwhile, what must have been a really demoralising body-blow to the Rovers if only because of the way they were simply blown-away in the second half saw them in even more trouble right at the foot of the Division.
An account of the season so far can be found at: www.shrimplythebestfootball.com
Morecambe: 1 Kyle Letheren; 2 Ryan McLaughlin; 3 Greg Leigh; 4 Anthony O’Connor (C); 17 Jonah Ayunga (Y) (21 Ryan Cooney 94’); 8 Toumani Diagouraga; 9 Cole Stockton; 19 Shane McLoughlin; 22 Liam Gibson; 24 Arthur Gnahoua (14 Jonathan Obika 77’); 25 Alfie McCalmont (10 Aaron Wildig 45’);
Subs Not Used: 20 Jökull Andrésson; 6 Callum Jones; 15 Ryan Delaney; 16 Jacob Mensah; 33 Jamie Nicholson.
Doncaster Rovers: 1 Louis Jones; 2 Kyle Knoyle; 5 Joe Olowu (Y); 7 Omar Bogle (20 Joe Dodoo 33’); 10 Tommy Rowe; 16 Aidan Barlow (21 Tiago Cukur 60’); 14 Matt Smith; 17 Jordy Hiwula-Mayifuila (Y); 22 Ethan Galbraith; 23 Dan Gardner (31 Liam Ravenhill 45’); 28 Branden Horton.
Subs Not Used: 12 Pontus Dahlberg; 6 Ro-Shaun Williams; 29 Lirak Hisani; 30 Ben Blythe.
Ref: James Bell.
Att: 4,001 (392 from Doncaster).
