Exeter 2 -v- 1 Wednesday

All week I’d been dreading this game…there was snow forecast for the Friday night and I really didn’t fancy another trip like last seasons…as Friday night came though I had changed my tune completely and was once again looking forward to the long drive and this time a much better result than the 5-1 drubbing we took for our pains.

I decided to get all my lucky routines done the night before…

I hate having a shave first thing when it’s icy cold outside plus this gave me a little bit extra duvet time before getting up and clearing ice from the windscreen and warming the car up. When I did get up and sort everything out I had everything done at my end no bother at all but obviously, the Young Un being the Young Un she was always gonna be late…

It’s what she does…that and wind me up.

Eventually we got under way and set off to pick Danny up…by the time we got there he was leaning on a post and looking for all the world as though he’d frozen to it.

Never mind, the heater was on in the car and he’d soon thaw out…We bought a couple of breakfast burgers and off we went…

The journey passed pretty quickly to be fair and we made good time.

I drove up to the ground and the home car park where just as I’d done last season I asked the stewards where we could park…strangely enough I got the same answer…

Back out here, to the roundabout, second exit and there’s an open air car park you can park in…and just like last time it was full. Well it would be wouldn’t it? It only held about 5 cars.

Just to continue the Dave jar viewedness of it all I headed back to where we parked last time, at the side of the sports centre…Hmm there were some nasty looking signs warning about parking and fines so we parked at the Driving Range next door instead. The friendly bloke inside had said it should be ok and he’d say we were shopping if anyone asked.

We wrapped up warm and headed for the ground…we passed a bloke with a huge grin on his face…it was almost scarily huge….a little like the Joker on Batman huge…he was looking at us with that expression you have when you look at total strangers where you’re about to say ‘hello’ or offer some other friendly greeting…

I caught the look, I recognised the look and acknowledged the look…

‘Hiya mate. Howya doin’

He never flinched…his expression never changed…

‘Bit cold intit?’ I offered….

Again…the smile remained fixed and as he minced past us we all looked round…so did he…with the same scary assed smile fixed across his mush.

And still he said nothing.

Very, very strange individual…

I rang Tommo and arranged to meet him in the Stoke Arms just up the hill from the ground and we settled in for a drink and a natter…

As we were nattering this bloke comes up to us and says… ‘Excuse me. Would you mind if I did some magic?’ We all had blank expressions on our faces… ‘I’ll just nip to the toilet and when I come back I’ll do some magic’ he continued. As he disappeared Tommo suggested ‘he’s gonna come out of there and punch one of us and say ‘That’s magic’’

A minute or so later he reappears and he’s got a pack of cards…he’s got young Jamie front and centre and he asks him to pick a card, he looks at it obviously and the bloke does all this fannying about before producing the card to a warm round of underwhelmedness…

He turns to me and he’s got a 50p piece…I’m ready for the fooker here though…

NO WAY IS HE GONNA CATCH ME OUT!

He holds my hands up, palms down and puts the coin on one hand and it appears on top of the other.

BASSAD!

I never felt a thing…

He has one more trick…he gets Jamie to pick another card…there’s some fannying about…he gets Danny to stand on the card…there’s more fannying and some shuffling shenanigans and he asks Danny to pick the card up…before asking, ‘is that your card’

Obviously it wasn’t and we tell him….

‘Hmm, never mind’ he says and walks off….

He comes back and says ‘Oh, there it is, in your beer’

Inside Dannys bottle of beer is the 10 of clubs….the card we’d picked.

DOUBLE BASSAD!

There was a definite inward, Northern style begrudging almost silent gasp…one of them where we don’t want to show Southerners how impressed we are…but we fookin were!

I say we were ‘all’ impressed but Dannys face was a picture as he told the bloke…

‘It’s in me beer though’

‘Yeah but you can still drink it’ pleads Paul Daniels

‘It’s in beer though’ Danny repeats

‘Yeah but…’ and off he goes…leaving Danny very pissed off that someone had put a card in his beer.

I love all that magic bollox, I was very impressed. I thought it were fookin brilliant…but it wasn’t in my beer.

THE MATCH
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I don’t even know where to start with a game like this…

Were we the better side?

Yes, we most definitely were.

Did we have more possession and chances than Exeter?

Yeah, I think so…

So what went wrong?

Well none of that bollox matters at the end of the day does it?

The only thing that does matter is that Exeter scored more goals than we did

Well despite the Exeter keeper pulling off a few very good saves indeed we really didn’t ‘get at them’. We didn’t make the best use of that possession and it was almost like we thought we were doing ‘just enough’ and that eventually Exeter would lay down and let us ride roughshod over them…well that didn’t happen and if we have got into that sort of mental state then we really do need to have a look at ourselves.

There was something not quite right about the whole thing though right from the off and despite one or two Wednesday fans trying to get the singing going and lift the mood it just wasn’t happening. One thing you can be sure of about Wednesday fans, if they can’t amuse themselves and lift their own spirits there’s gonna be some chuntering going on during the game… And that’s what happened throughout, even after we went ahead…the celebrations were muted and it still didn’t get us singing as one and belting it out as we know we can do. FOR FOOKS SAKE!

This game could help us cement our second place and put pressure on the other teams around us! What more incentive do fans and players need?
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Well Exeter started off brightly, taking the game to us and playing some good football but we weathered that early ‘storm’ pretty well and it looked as though they’d run out of ideas very quickly indeed and we stepped up our own game to bring home the points.

We did it well too…we passed the ball well, we had plenty of movement and for long periods Exeter were chasing shadows and getting nowhere near us but for all that good play…for all that movement, and all that possession once again we were lacking where it mattered, in front of goal.

Don’t get me wrong we were getting the shots off but our old friend ‘Wide’ had returned and his good mate ‘Big Pile of Shite’ joined him today. We found ourselves in some very good situations but we couldn’t find the composure to stick it in the back of the net…or in O Gradys case, perhaps too much composure.

When we did finally find the target and we were all set to celebrate, the Exeter keeper pulled off a blinding save.

SWEET BABY JESUS!

GIVE US A FOOKIN BREAK MAN!

As much as we were enjoying watching us dominate the game it was becoming increasingly frustrating that we couldn’t get that breakthrough and when Bostock took a free kick from around the 20-yard mark we expected better than seeing it sail over our heads. Here was ‘wides’ mate, ‘Big Pile of Shite’ in all his glory.

It was exasperating and yet another waste of a good opportunity.

As the half wore on Exeter started to pick their way back into the game and there was a moment of backs to the wall defending for us with blammer after blammer being blasted at the Wednesday goal and our players throwing themselves at everything that came in… Llera seemed to be everywhere and he was quite the composed figure in amongst all the flailing and lashing going on and between him and Prutton we kept them at bay. We’d managed to turn a game we were running comfortably into a very difficult mess and we couldn’t wait for half time now.

Madine had brought nothing to the game at all and his partner O Grady was frustrating the hell out of everyone as he tried to inch the ball over the line by taking touch after touch after touch…we were doing well everywhere on the pitch up to those two and they really needed to up their game second half.
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The half time interval duly arrived and still the buzz around the ground didn’t pick up from either set of fans…we enjoyed watching the kids on the pitch and the Wednesday fans did get behind them, cheering and applauding saves and goals in equal measures but no one was chomping at the bit for the restart to be fair.
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That was true of the Exeter players and the officials too as Megson had sent our lot out early and it seemed to take ages before we kicked off again.

When we did get underway it followed a very similar pattern to most of the first half where we had a good grip of the game but couldn’t find a way through…or lacked the skill or nous to find a way through…

When we got to the hour mark a few of the Wednesday fans that had made a weekend of it down in Exeter were thinking about making an early exit, they’d had enough but before they could make that decision we got a throw in on our right…the ball is chucked into the mix and it’s cleared but it falls to JJ around 18yards out and he leathers it first time, hard and low….BLAM!

GOAL!

WE’RE AHEAD AT LAST!

I expected the players to turn it on now and hammer home the victory and what’s more I expected the fans on the terrace to lift the noise and make Exeter rock…sadly neither happened.

Our chances weren’t helped though by Llera having to go off having taken what looked like a knock to the face. He’d been outstanding. Assured and composed for the hour and one of maybe 2 or 3 Wednesday players who’d hardly put a foot wrong and he had marshalled the back line well.

On came the club captain Rob Jones in place of Llera.

All Jones needed to do was a captains role.

We had the lead so let’s see the game out.

Almost his first touch of the ball and he gives a needless free kick away. It’s almost exactly in the same spot that Bostock had belted one into the next county in the first half.

Seconds later Exeter were level.

Where Bostock had shown how not to take a free kick, Billy Jones for Exeter had shown the perfect way to do it and it really was a cracking shot.

I couldn’t really attach any blame to the keeper as the ball was well placed with venomous pace, low into the right hand corner of Bywaters goal. It was a terrific free kick, pretty much against the run of play but there ya go and we were back to being pissed off and we needed to start again…

We did did just that…we went straight back to attacking…and straight back to not making it count.

JJ had a shot that was blocked and fell to Madine…Madine in his ‘couldn’t give a fook’ mood is tackled and the chance is gone…in this mood a toddler could tackle him and he was neither use nor ornament to us…on the other hand we get a chance that falls to O Grady and it’s screaming out to be hit first time…of course he doesn’t…instead he fannies around with it and once more….

ONCE FOOKIN MORE THE CHANCE IS GONE!

JUST TWAT THE FOOKIN BALL MAN!

Exeter were enjoying a moment, they were buzzing now and looking to build on their goal…suddenly they had a bit of zip about them…they hadn’t scored a chuffing goal since Napoleon died so they were obviously gonna be buoyed by that…and of course we love to help out with these things…

The Wednesday fans weren’t happy and the chunter level got a little higher when the Exeter keeper was forced into yet another superb save…we weren’t done though…When Exeter attacked it was broken up neatly by Prutton who put a silky ball through, perfectly weighted for JJ to run onto, which he did…he raced forward and as got into the box he realised he’d forgotten to take the ball with him and before ya know it Exeter were attacking again….

ARRRRRGGGGH!

GET AT EM WEDNESDAY!

Just to compound our frustration we gave away another free kick yet again in a very similar spot to the one we’d missed and the one they’d scored from…3 free kicks from an almost identical position and they’d scored one and we hadn’t.

Make that ‘They’d scored two’ from those  free kicks.

Sweet baby Jesus on a bike!

We set up a wall, they ignore it and blast it goalwards…it looks wide, even from our great view of it, it looks wide but it hits the upright with a loud THWACK! And bounces across into the back of the goal behind the motionless Bywater. Our hearts sank and our faces dropped even further…I dunno what the collective noun is for a thousand faces looking like smacked arses but that’s what we were.

The long suffering Exeter fans were loving every moment of it though and they were making plenty of noise as their team set about showing us how to defend a lead like this with only a few minutes to go.

When we have a lead at the end of a game we invite pressure on and it becomes unbearable but here were Exeter showing us how to defend by ATTACKING!

There was no sitting back for them, they just came at us…admittedly they did have a few panic moments and it looked as though one of our chances was cleared off the line but they weren’t gonna hold the ball in the corners and they weren’t gonna sit back…

We still had time though and as the last seconds dribbled away we managed to get one more shot on target and again the keeper kept us out. No sooner had he done that than the whistle went…

The Exeter fans celebrated and the Wednesday fans prepared once more for a long, miserable trip back North with nothing to show for our troubles.

We were stunned.

How had we lost this game?

There seems to be a bit of attitude amongst some of the players at the moment, like they’ve done enough for the season and they can get away with coasting now. They need to sort themselves out sharpish.

Llera, Prutton, and JJ were blemish free today…they worked hard all through the game and at least looked as though they wanted to make things happen…most of the others put in an error strewn performance or one involving very little effort.

Chief culprit was Madine and if he can’t find a goal in his next couple of appearances maybe even his next appearance then the fans will turn. There was a lot of discontent amongst the travelling fans at this game and most of it was aimed at Madine.

For most of this game we were better than Exeter and you could see why they’ve struggled of late and find themselves fighting it out at the foot of the division. We should have put this game to bed early on, when we took the lead it’s inexcusable that we should then go on to lose again.

It was so disappointing…such a let down and you could feel that amongst the Wednesday fans…and it’s not helped by the club captain strolling off the pitch at the end without acknowledging the fans. He’s all over that when we win and he loves the adulation but when we’re pissed off…when we’re feeling lower than a monkeys chuff he ignores us.

At least Prutton didn’t…he came right over and applauded as we left but the fans didn’t even have it in them to get angry and have a go back…we were sloughened and we just wanted to get back home.

Megson has his work cut out now but he MUST lift them for the Stevenage game and nothing less than 3 points will do…
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That drive home is a fooker when you’ve lost

Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive
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