Match Report vs GRIMSBY
GRIMSBY 2 READING 0
Report comes to you from Phil Newton:
Mmmmmmm, Grimsby, never has there been a place more aptly named, it was minus nine million degrees and it smelt of fish. The team news was fairly promising, no parkinson/bodin and three attackers on the bench, including our youth team golden boy Neville Roach (who should have been fairly at home in the home of fish) Mr Madj was doing a bit of a meet 'n greet effort before the game, so he must care a little bit to come all the way to fishland? The teams came out, it started raining, from the kick off Grimsby should've scored, Minestrone couldn't hold a shot but the unfeasibly tanned Clive Mendonca (must be a sunbed, i'm sure the sun never shines in Grimsby) couldn't score from 1 yard. Grimsby should've been 4-0 up after 20 mins only Minestrone saved our bacon with 2 or 3 one on one saves.
We might have had a good shot deflected at the other end, but we were so low down you couldn't really tell. For some reason we had Hopkins at right back and Booty at left back, presumably to cope with the pace of their 8 year old right winger. Anyway he couldn't, and even when he got the ball poor mr boots just looked confused "what am i doing all the way over here?" Hopkins on the other side was woeful, he'd just sort of run up to their player and fall over, which is exactly what happened for their first goal, having recovered from the shock of having this old man lying at his feet, one fish crossed for another to swim into the box and slide the ball under minestrone, 1-0, and they deserved it. In response Reading sort of kicked it about a bit, but with no aim or ambition, and Grimsby closed us down quickly and were unlucky not to have scored more before half time.
After 54 minutes Glasgow and Nogs came on for Meaker and Geordie, Williams, who had been having a crap game as Mr Hold The Ball Up, went to the right and things looked a little bit brighter, we even had a shot!, corner from the right came out to Hopkins of all people who saw a good (yes good!) half volley well saved. We were still crap tho', and most of the play was at the other end of the beach. The Fishmen had one disallowed for offside, but we couldn't take the piss for long as they scored again soon after, thus causing the only entertainment of the match when a fat fishfan had to be removed by about nine hundred coppers for "dancing" (swimming?) on the pitch. Shame.
Our Very Own Fish, Martin Williams, actually hit the post with a header soon after, but nobody got too excited. Then Neville Roach come on for, erm, someone (it was that exciting) and........... ran about a bit. He tried the "dream debut overhead kick" type goal, but it didn't come off, apart from that he didn't really see much of the ball, and can't have done any worse than Archie, who was complete crap, but then what do you expect if you pump the ball up to someone his size?
What happened to all the luvverly passing?
In all Grimsby wanted to win, Reading wanted to go home and I wanted my head seeing to driving to the end of the earth and paying twelve quid when I could have seen all the best Reading moves on teletext.
It was pants (brown and cream Y-fronts at that)
Phil