FL2: Torquay v Gillingham 22 January 2011

It may be obvious, but a game starts at 0-0 at the kick-off and finishes at the final whistle, the result determined by the goals scored in-between at whatever time may be on the clock.
This match ended one-all with both teams playing some excellent football at times and both teams capable of taking all three points.

Entertaining stuff at Plainmoor once again!

Being sat a few feet away from the dug-out I was able to hear the complete exchange between Paul Buckle and the ref.

It went, near enough word-for-word, like this:

PB: Referee, my good man, would it be possible to explain, in a few words as I know you're busy, why the drop ball should be that close to one's penalty area when you blew your Thunderer whilst the ball was in flight somewhere near the half-way line?

Ref: Go! Go now!! Get out of my sight! Go, go, go before I punch your lights out you little weasle of a man. GO!!!

PB: So sorry Mr Scott. I will, of course, accept your decision and move somewhere more acceptable? And thank you for your understanding in the matter.

Overall I was disappointed with the result. I thought it was 2 points dropped rather than a point gained.

I seem to be in the minority, but I thought that we deserved to win, just. I thought we played really well going forward, but once again we didn’t finish them off when we had the chances. We let ourselves down with some silly, careless mistakes and this is going to kill us next week unless we sort it out.

Once again we played far better in the first half than we did in the second. When we eventually maintain it for 90 minutes and finish our chances/half chances we are really going to do a team over, for all our sakes let’s hope that is next Saturday.

Whilst the end product for our goal was a fairly simple tap in, albeit snatching the ball from under the keepers flailing arms, it was O’kanes interception, piercing run and shot that set the goal up. The more I see O’kane the more impressed I am. When he picks the ball up and runs at defenders he is so dangerous. Zebs is similarly dangerous when he runs at defenders as is Stevens, on occasions. Mansell is a tiger in midfield and when Wroe is on form he is capable of opening defences up, however he was off the boil yesterday and was rightly replaced by the tough tackling Oastler.

I thought Benyon had a good game, for once his first touch didn’t let him down and he was unlucky with a shot in the second half which I thought scrapped the post, however I was side on so if anyone sat behind the goal says differently then I will go with that. He also played a superb ball into Danny when everyone thought he was going to shoot, unfortunately Danny’s shot was blocked, again an opinion from behind the goal on whether Danny could have done better would be appreciated.

Whilst the back 4 had an OK game, they were all guilty of mistakes which led to chances. Robertson dithering whilst trying to play the ball out of defence, Ellis twice, Branston at least twice and Nicholson also. Wroe was another who gave the ball away in dangerous positions a couple of times.

These mistakes all lead to increased pressure we put on ourselves. Whilst we are not putting the game to bed at one end we are creating opportunities for the opposition at the other end and it’s costing us big time. I’ve given up trying to count the cost of these points as it’s too depressing and doesn’t achieve anything, however you could argue that we could be in an automatic spot let alone a playoff spot if we didn’t keep making these mistakes. I understand that we are talking about League 2 standard players here and mistakes are part of it, otherwise they would be playing at a higher standard, however these are simple mistakes that could/should really be cut out.

Bevs was outstanding, at the time I couldn’t believe he was given MoM but on reflection and with our extensive post match discussions in the car on the way home, I agree with them and the sponsors. He pulled off a couple of excellent saves and couldn’t be blamed for their goal as it appeared to take a wicked deflection.

I’ve already mentioned the bizarre drop ball incidents on a different thread, but I still can’t quite get my head around it.

The ref, well he had a good first half but obviously didn’t like the refreshments we gave him at half time, perhaps it was the wrong type of biscuit, second half not so good and by the end utterly appalling. One thing though if he sends Paul Buckle to the stand for that, imagine what he would have done to the fat controller with all his whinging if we had him next week next week.

Bring on Crawley, the way we have played over the last 2/3 weeks I can honestly see us winning but to do that we really do have to cut out our mistakes and finish our half chances.

I tried to suggest that about one of our other games and basically got told that I`m incapable of debate!

In all fairness we gave as good as we got. We just ("Just" he says) need to put those chances away when on top to kill the game. As Budleigh says it was an entertaining game and well worth the admission money (Not the second bit that's my opinion!!)

Sorry to hear Budleigh that Mrs E is making you sell your treasured number plate.

Absolute nail on head pete......