Home (Actually about an hour ago!) (and huge respect to all those who travelled for c.6 hours rather than 30 mins to watch that nonsense), so where to begin...
Positives - I don't live in Barrow.
The pub was very nice and I will probably visit again
To one fellow TEF'ender I am no longer an anonymous northern monkey, nice to meet you @Paolo69 and hopes for next time Ardiles!
Negatives
The weather
The ground (I was more intimate with my immediate neighbours that I have been with anyone for months), it was very crowded!
The pitch
The referee was dreadful, he seemed oblivious to a Barrow tactic which seemed to be control the ball and fall over and invariably win a free kick. The highlight in the second half was when a barrow player slipped over with no one near him and he gave them a free kick. In terms of the pens from the other end, the hand ball seemed harsh but they are invariably given, with the foul it was obvious about 5 seconds before it happened that Gladwin was going to clatter the bloke, it was an incredibly clueless thing to do. The ref did improve when he went on a booking spree for time-wasting, rather tempered by booking the wrong Barrow player (as far as I could tell) when Williams was clattererd.!
In terms of our players, Gladwin (how the actual fuck did he last 90 mins without being subbed) spent the whole game either receiving the ball facing our goal and passing it backwards or failing to turn round and run into the space which was there (on that topic do our players not talk, the number of times a defender would have the ball and not be told he was being closed down suggested a massive communication problem, in short Gladwin as our driving midfielder has all the penetrative outcome of a flaccid penis.
Conroy is the master of the 5 yard sideways pass, even better if the player he is passing to is already boxed in!
McKirdy did nowt bar winge a lot and like everyone else give the ball away at every opportunity.
Payne ran around a lot but seemed to have the dead ball ability of me.
I see the Garner honeymoon is well and truely over for many, only seen this game in detail so cannot comment hugely, but it was blindingly obvious from 30 mins in that it wasn't working!
Generally it was total dross, from both sides, they just seemed a little bit more streetwise and adept at shithousery!
A final thanks for the STFC Twitter for getting a picture of me looking like I am having the best time ever!
Oh and one final thing, I am not convinced they made a single chance that wasn't the result of an STFC fuck up, we don't shoot ourselves in the foot, more blow our foot off with an elephant gun at every opportunity. The problem with this sort of system is that ball playing centre halves don't tend to stay at this level and much as with previous era's we are playing a system that our personnel don't seem to have the skill set to play.
