FL2:Crewe Alexandra V Torquay United 2nd Feb 2010

There's a couple of things I meant to mention last night but forgot in the haste for my pit...

Before the game there was a guy on the pitch wandering around with a mic who got a couple of kids out of the away stand to wish happy birthday to one on the pitch, he also encouraged the Crewe fans to give us a round of applause for making the long journey after the postponement. He also interviewed the Crewe mascots so they had their moment in the sun. A nice touch that costs nothing and the kind of thing I would encourage to happen at Plainmoor. That is if everyone wasn't too busy sharpening their knives to pay attention to what's going on...

The other thing is the Crewe fans booing. Christ they had it in for their number eleven (Lloyd?) who ended up being substituted to ironic cheers, the poor bugger. They were booing every long ball into the box that was cleared away towards the end as well.

If that's the one in Gresty Road itself, it's been a legendary gaff for over thirty years! The Football Club used to own some of those houses in that street and one of them was the manager's!

I spent a freezing Friday evening thereback in the eighties when the Alex were playing Peterborough United and they had a very young Bruce Grobbellar playing for them and he was awful!

It was so cold the Alex directors invited anyone in the Main Stand and paddock in front to a free dash of brandy in their half time coffee......................a lovely touch from a club that didn't have two halfpennies to rub together at the time.

Always nice people ~ proper football folk ~ and a lovely club who over time have gone from being the laughing stock of the Football League to something to be really proud of!

Just to add to loyal gull and aussie regarding which is the best keeper, how can you compare them? poke is the shot stopper and to be fair very little else, Hes never comanded the box i guess being short ish dosnt help on that front (although paul cooper playing for the ipswhich in the late 70s and 80s seemed to manage pretty well) While bevan does everything else quite well but aint so hot on the shot stopping (being tall getting down can be tricky) i can think of a lot of games recently where having the ball plucked out of the air would of saved the susequent brilliant save from ever happening, neither well ever be the better they are so different in there abilitys, assuming they were both fit and up for action it would strike me that having them play according to the oppositions tactics would be best the defence would soon get to know both keepers and adapt to whoever was playing,

crewes stadium looked very impressive but give me a half full plainmoor any day wed get no atmosphere in a stand that big or am i just being pessimistic again?

I have just watched the BBC website video of the Crewe game for the first time and am surprised that everyone is heaping so much blame on Michael Poke for their goal.

The ball was lumped so high in the air that it would have been impossible for him to have judged exactly where it was going to bounce. In that sense it is ridiculous to say that he should have rushed out to catch or punch it.

Branston clearly stopped running, believing that Poke would come for it, but their player kept running, presumably more in hope than expectation.

The ball then bounced higher than anyone could have expected, and their player outjumped Poke and nodded it away from him. It was much easier for him to gain height with his jump as he was still on the move. Poke, on the other hand, had to stop and then jump and try to punch owing to the bounce. There was also, of course, the danger that Poke could have jumped into their player and given away a penalty.

It was, in my opinion, a well taken opportunist goal, but assertions that (a) Poke should have come out further, (b) he simply stood still and (c) he allowed the ball to drop over his head, are simply not true.

As I`ve previously mentioned the ball could have come out of the flood lights from that hieght, but only Micheal knows for sure what happened! He might have just plain and simple miss-judged it, it might have been the bounce that did him, who knows apart from him! I still think it would not do him any harm to have a little rest for a game or two so he can freshen up and get back to the brilliant level of goal keeping we know he is capable of! And before anyone goes on about him being dropped, resting someone and dropping someone are two completely different things so think about it before you come back to this shooting from the hip!