Jason Price brings the house down‘Believe’
So said the scoreboard as I took my place at SMS, in front of the Chuckle Brothers, behind the guy who knew too much about Tapeworms and inbetween my Dad and the bloke who is about 100. Believe in what? Believe that a combination of results was going to occur where if you had accumulator on that combination, you could bet a tenner and then retire to Barbados. Would Huddersfield really not get the two points required to condemn us to another season in League 1? They are away at Stockport who have already been relegated and subsequently, don’t give a shit and we are at home to Carlisle who of course, we last saw in the JPT Final.
Pards made a couple of changes from the Oldham bore-fest with Barnard and Wotton being omitted and Papa Waigo and Antonio starting on the left and right wings espectively. This meant Punch was in the middle of midfield with Capn Hammond and Lallana was playing off Sir Rickie. It the words of The Ramones, hey ho, lets go.
How do I describe the first 40 minutes of the first half? I could explain in detail every incident but that wouldn’t take long so instead, I shall generalise. It was shite, real shite, It starts at the back and Kelvin has the ball, he looks to throw it to the full backs who aren’t watching so he belts it forward, usually straight to the opposition goalkeeper. If the full backs are watching then he’s so surprised that he boots it long anyway. He’ll sometimes take a chance on Harding but not on Otsemobor and who can blame him for that. On one occasion he rolled it out to Zenedine Seaborne and guess what he did with it.
I was interested to see how the midfield shaped up with Punch and Deano in the centre but all they did was watch the ball travel backwards and forwards over their head. On the rare occasion that we did get the ball down, Papa Waigo and Antonio were looking dangerous but Papa had that ‘right footer on the left’ thing going on so more often than not, lost the opportunity to cross the ball when he doubled back. Sir Rickie as winning a lot of ball against the Carlisle central defenders, most notably against Ian Harte who seems to have added ‘jumping’ to his list of things he can’t do alongside ‘running’ and ‘turning’. Most of the balls up to Sir Rickie had snow on them and we were creating very very little.
On 40 minutes it all changed and the ball found itself on the grass for a while with Waigo, Antonio and Punch to the fore. Waigo set up Lallana whose low shot from 15 yards was well saved down low by our mate Collin in the Carlisle goal. Again it was another typical Adam effort where you know it would have been a goal if he’d put his bloody foot through it.
Five minutes later and Waigo got down the left hand side and got a cross in which went over the first wave of attackers running in but was met by Antonio who sent a right foot volley back across the keeper and into the net. Lovely finish, nice dance, 1-0.
‘There will be a minimum of one minute to be added’ said the tannoy as Carlisle restarted and it’s amazing what can happen in a minute as a cross came into our box and Seaborne executed a kind of wrestling throw on the centre forward and the referees whistle sounded the death knell. Free kick on the edge. What? It looked a good three yards inside the box from where I was. No matter though as Ian Harte clipped it over the wall and into the net whilst Kelvin watched, feet planted. I was annoyed because we didn’t have a bloke on that post. Hammond was on the other one but he was always going to curl it as it as too close to smash it. Maybe I’m being harsh but I think we made it easy for him. Half time, 1-1
Next to the Chuckle Brothers were two blokes who I never usually notice. Perhaps it was because of the lack of anything resembling entertainment in the first 40 minutes but I did today and the reason is that they chatted for 40 minutes about everything apart from the game. One owns his own cattery and currently has 28 cats in there. That’s interesting isn’t it… no it fucking isn’t. Are the half times from around the country interesting? Stockport 0 Huddersfield 2, ah well, season over.
Saints came out meaning business at the start of the second half and the scoreboards are no longer displaying the ‘Believe’ message. Antonio finds himself out on the left and beats two players before pinging a superb cross to the back stick where Sir Rickie steams in and sidefoots a volley past Collin at his near post for 2-1 to the mighty Saints.
Five minutes of Saints pressure went by before Sir Rickie battled away to tee up Antonio who took his time before lashing in a low finish for 3-1. Carlisle’s defending was shockingly bad and the goals were so easy with no pressure being put on any of the attackers even when they were in the penalty area. It looked at this stage that it could be any score we liked at the end.
Carlisle responded to things taking a turn for the worse by opting for comic relief. They took off a normal looking player and replaced him with a clown with a stupid wig on. The clown charged about and bumped into Fonte and fell over before getting up and moaning at the ref. Oh how we laughed at the slapstick. Very good of the Carlisle manager to cheer us up like that and very easy for the Northam End with ‘what the fuck is on your head’ raining down from the terraces (well, seats – you know what I mean). Pards made a sub for us with Calum McNish making his debut in place of Michail Antonio who must have now done enough to convince everyone that he’s worth signing. McNish went into central midfield with Punch moving to the right.
Saints butchered a couple of chances with a bad final ball before Fonte tried a spectacular long range lob which looked like it was in all the way until the keeper clawed it away. Sadly, it was back towards our own goal and so Carlisle were awarded a free-kick, three yards out and Kelvin got booked. The non-running, non-jumping one had gone off so another Carlisle player lashed it into the wall on the goal line before a 2nd player smashed the rebound over. Papa Waigo celebrated the miss like Senegal had just won the World Cup. He's a nutter.
David Connolly and Lee Barnard came on for Sir Rickie and Punch and combined to give Barnard a chance which he should have passed but instead stabbed wide. As the game petered out Carlisle scored to make the scoreline totally flattering for them when Seaborne and Davis didn’t sort things out and Madine squirted in a shot off the near post which I’m pretty sure was travelling away from the goal when it hit Fonte and dribbled in. After his effort earlier, Jose deserves a goal. Full time, Saints 3 Carlisle 2.
I haven’t really done justice to Saints domination of the second half and with a bit more care we could have easily scored six. Carlisle were pretty poor, probably worse than they’d been at Wembley but fair play to them, at least they tried to play and the second half at least, was entertaining to watch. Michail Antonio was the stand out player for Saints and apparently we are already talking to Reading about a transfer. He’s out of contract there in the summer and whilst we’ll have to pay a bit due to him being under 24 (to compensate for his development costs), it shouldn’t be too much as Reading didn’t really develop him, merely signed him from non-League Yeading. He makes things happen and he’s only going to get better. I do wonder why he runs with his head right back and it does look like it’s going to fall off his shoulders at times but I’ll forgive him that and hopefully, he’ll be the first new signing of the summer. It’s always nice to see an Academy kid get on the pitch though McNish didn’t pull up any trees when he came on but the good news is that there were no big gusts of wind to blow him over. He does look like he needs to fill out a bit if he wants to play in central midfield.
As for the accumulator and Barbados retirement… Stockport 0 Huddersfield 6. Close one then as Stockport went down fighting. Wankers. To be honest, it was always very unlikely this season and today anyway, we won again, the sun is shining and I’m off down the bookies to get a bet on us winning this division next year.
Papa Waigo is a legend! :-D
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