Freezing cold and extremely disappointed, I listened to Paul Buckles interview on the way home to Paignton in my car. He got one thing right when he said we did not play our best and when he said we need all the fans back on Tuesday night for the Hereford game, I laughed out loud and said you will be lucky to see even 1500 bother to turn up.
It’s not easy being a Torquay United fan and yet somehow despite all that has ever happened in the past, you still manage to find deep inside of you the power to believe in your team and club. This was our very best chance in our history to get into the fifth round of the FA Cup and we blew it big time. We let a side we were more than capable of beating, have a very easy afternoon and it was not just down to our players very poor performances , it was down to Paul Buckle getting his tactics completely wrong.
Why play just one up front? Why did we not start the way we did against Crewe? Why were we just lumping the ball up to Benyon? And why could we not do even the simple things like passing the ball?
Right where to start? Our club can’t even get 5565 fans into the ground in time for a 3pm kick-off. The gates should have been opened much earlier than they were and it was being reported the queues were going past the swimming pool for both the popside and the family stand.
I knew the ref was going to be a clown, a bloody joker, in all the time I have been going to football matches, I have never seen a referee doing what this one was doing while he was warming up.
He was right over by the middle of the popside with one leg up on the wall, as fans were walking past him he was pretending to take their hats off. He was pretending to steal their chips and when on fan walked past him with a funny yellow sort of hat on his head, he stood their mouthing the words “what the bloody hell as he got on his head”, while making funny faces. I shouted out to him that I did not mind him acting the fool and trying to be some sort of comedian as long as he stopped such behaviour when the match was on. It obviously fell on deaf ears.
The niggle factor was plain to see long before kick-off, our grounds man went and had a word with Raynor and I can only think it was about them using the proper goal for their warm-up. Raynor clearly puffed out his chest and tried to knock our grounds man to the floor, what a horrible man he is. Our grounds man left the field and headed to the control room to complain I think about Raynors actions, meanwhile Aussie and a few others with forks in their hands stayed very close to Raynor.
I actually thought we started the first few minutes OK and I was convinced we were going to take the game to Crawley and keep them under pressure in their own half, how wrong did I get that. Benyon was soon off the field getting his nose seen to again and when he came back on it was clear to see we were playing 4-4-1-1 and not even very well.
Is Zebs community service wearing him out? No first touch, no control and let’s be honest here, no bloody idea what to do when he did have the ball. O’Kane once again in my view guilty of giving the ball away so cheaply, or making a very poor passes and Crawley never had to win the ball back off us, as we seemed happy just to give it to them.
I have never written so little down in my little notebook during a game, there was not a great deal of any action or anything really worthy writing down and that tells its own story about our very poor performance.
Crawley was the first to get a shot on goal, Branston was judged rather harshly to have committed a foul just outside our box. Their number 23 took a shot at goal but it went well wide of the far left hand post. Stevens did do well to make himself a shooting chance and he hit the ball well enough but it was always going wide of the post.
Ellis had what looked like a good chance but he headed the ball well over the Crawley crossbar.
What happened for their goal? We stood and watched as the ball just bounce over our defence and let Tubbs run onto the ball and hit a very good volley past Scott Bevan. I really feel that was very poor defending, but give Tubbs his due, he made sure he put away the chance and in style.
Crawley could and should have gone two nil up just before half time, the ball came into our box and back out to the edge where it was headed toward our goal and there was a Crawley player who ended up hooking the ball over the crossbar when it looked easier to score.
So that was it really for the first half, a number of stewards rushed by as there were reports of trouble going on it Boots and Laces and later in the second half a number went rushing out to the lane behind the main stand so there might have been some trouble going on there as well.
Not surprised the see Wroe go off in the second half, Mansell worked hard enough but we never won our midfield battles and at least we might then go 4-4-2 I thought with Kee coming on in his place.
Zebs just looked so clumsy on the ball, but he did get past a few Crawley players out on the right and laid on a perfect ball for Danny Stevens to score. Stevens never got a good contact on the ball and it went tamely past the far post, if only we had a good natural goal score who could have got on the end of such a ball as he would scored for sure.
Then a crazy two minutes that saw Zebs booked and then sent off, the ref decided Zebs had committed a foul but let play go on until Ellis committed a second foul. The ref blew his whistle, booked Zebs and Ellis and let them take the free kick from the spot much closer to our goal where Ellis had committed his foul.
The free kick was swung into our box and Zebs put his hand up high and directed the ball behind our goal, it was a clear penalty and there can be no complaints about the decision. What a fine save Scott Bevan pulled off and I started thinking this still might be our day and we might at least get a draw out of the game and still be in the hat for the next round, wrong again.
Then he only and went and made another fantastic penalty save, I have no views of the decision to award Crawley a second penalty, but when a player runs into a box with such pace and maybe gets clipped, he is going to go down. Bev’s first save he dived to his right low down, for his second save he guessed right again only this time diving to his left. The ball ended up still in play and he had to pull off another fine save getting the ball over the crossbar.
Kee made himself a good shooting chance but his shot cleared the bar and young Mr Halpin who was a surprise second half substitution, went on a run and hit a power driver from just outside the box that skinned the top of the crossbar.
Nico took a long through in from the left hand side and that ended up being cleared back to him, he hit a cross come shot that hit the crossbar when it looked like it might just squeeze in the top right hand corner.
So that’s it, very poor, very disappointing and while we the fans played our part, the players and the manager did not play theirs as good as they really should have for such an important game and a game that had we won, really would have made such a big difference to our club.
