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Well Tuesday was a kick in the crotch, wasn’t it? Happy fucking Valentine’s.
The game started brightly enough, and we were comfortably dominant in the first half, without really doing anything with it and making it count. Following the now standard ‘tweaking’ at half-time, we looked sharper and more threatening in the second half, and Rooney’s goal had been a long time coming. Tollitt (who had another great game) showed some lovely footwork in the build-up, Kitching put a good cross into the box, and Sutton’s header put it on a plate for Rooney to tap it in. A quarter of an hour later, we looked to taken control of the game; Sheron nicked the ball in midfield after a poor clearance by the Gateshead keeper, made an excellent run down the right and crossed it in for Reid to bag a classic poacher’s goal.
“We can breathe now!” I said to Andy after we went 2-0 up, like a dickhead. We’d been comfortably the better team, we had a two-goal cushion, and I thought bringing Abraham on for the last 15 minutes to run them ragged when we apparently had them on the ropes was an ideal substitution. Unfortunately, with 10 minutes left, the team had a collective brain fart. Gateshead seemed to stroll through our midfield for the first goal, and the shot didn’t look like it should have troubled Norman too much, but it ended up in the far corner of the net. With depressing predictability, we panicked, and the equaliser followed just two minutes later. Norman got a hand to the initial shot, no one cleared the ball, it bobbled and bounced about for what felt like about half an hour then trickled agonisingly over the line. A couple of the Gateshead players celebrated by cupping their ears towards a Rocky crowd who had given them precisely no abuse throughout the game because most of us didn’t know who they were. Roses are red, football is shit, fuck off.
Was it frustrating? Definitely. A sickener? Absolutely. Worth booing the players off? Not for me, Clive. Ration your boos, lads. They mean nothing after a performance like the Halifax game if you go throwing them out frivolously after we’ve controlled the game for the best part of 80 minutes. Yes, it was gutting to throw away two points after being so dominant, but if you’re going to boo every time we concede or drop points, at best it’ll get boring. It’s really not the motivating ‘kick up the arse’ you think it is.
Apparently today is (ahem) National Drink Wine Day. Darren – hi – can we mark this by having red wine in the Rocky bar please? And maybe in the other stands if there’s any spare after the Rocky’s been fully stocked. I dare say we’ll need it.
We have to win today. Have to. Even David ‘if you can’t win then don’t lose’ Unsworth said so. Maidstone are bottom of the league, we’ve been looking more confident and positive in the last couple of games, if we don’t beat them at home we deserve to go down.
No pressure, lads. KTMFF.
Written by Arlene Finnigan. Photos by Luke Reynolds.