The Shitemare before Christmas
MAIDSTONE UNITED 2 DORKING WANDERERS 3
MATCH REPORT BY SEUMAS MILNE’S SUICIDE VEST
George Michael was giving it to someone special. This was followed by Mariah Fucking Bastard Donkeywank Shithouse Carey, a sonic war crime that set the tone for what was to follow.
This performance, like the “music” that preceded it, is difficult to defend. So difficult in fact, there’s no point trying to defend it. It was gash. AIDS. It was Iain Duncan-Smithsonian in its incompetence. Let’s revive a joke we’ve used before and say we were like a Southeastern train to Strood: carrying half a dozen passengers.
Which, incidentally, was half a dozen more than Southeastern were carrying. All trains north from the Barracks were cancelled because of a landslip near Halling which caused five pounds worth of damage. Aylesford resembled a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And Yalding was completely cut off from the outside world (you do it, I can be bothered …)
Even that centre of European civilisation, The Stone itself was flooded. The underpasses were closed, the banks had burst and it was wetter than Helen Grant when she watches Dominic Raab’s temple throb.
Last week we were unlucky. It happens. The main charge against the management was that they should have brought a sub on, but given the performance of some of the replacements today you can understand why they didn’t.
Blame should not be shared equally for this #cuntquake. Lewington and Akanbi are absolved. Others did well in patches. Unfortunately some either did absolutely nothing at all, or performed for five minutes out of the 90. Against a motivated, properly-drilled team this was never likely to be good enough, although for a while either side of half-time at least it was possible to believe that “The Shithouse” was on.
We could have been 5–0 down at half-time. Lewington was picked ahead of Cole and after a couple of ropey clearances and one “for the cameras” stop, he suddenly looked like a reincarnation of Gordon Banks. The fact he needed to make five high class saves in the first half hour tells you everything you need to know about the way the rest of the team was performing. At one-point Wishart managed to Kuenssberg a header straight to Jason Prior. Lewington bailed him out, but the situation was looking absolutely Sarah Vine.
10 minutes before the break they finally bundled one in. The players complained it had hit an arm, but with the linesman blindsided the referee didn’t bother to consult him. You can say the protest was futile, but they did at least look pissed off and whether or not they converted this into anger, within six minutes the game had turned on its head. The Shithouse was on.
From the kick off we did something we hadn’t done all game and attacked. A Dorking defender appeared to Weinstein a Chesmain cross and with everyone screaming for a Richie Benaud, Akka rammed in the equaliser.
We were still digesting this minor act of larceny when Wishart played in Akka, who rounded the keeeepaaaah but seemed to have taken the ball too far wide, only to curl in the second almost from the byline. It was a brilliant goal and if it’s true that Akka is a de facto amateur his work rate ought to embarrass some of his team mates.
2–1 up at half-time and having not so much ridden our luck as given it a full, tantric work-out, there was cautious optimism that we could push on against demoralised opposition and that we could use a “Busted By Akka” headline. It didn’t happen. The second half performance was maybe the worst 45 minutes of football we’ve seen at the EPIAC all season.
Even then The Shithouse was still a possibility, but only until the 63rd minute, when the ball was given away in midfield and the culprit stood still for several seconds before running back to help the rearguard action. The ball was never properly cleared and after a short period of twatfinangling they scored the equaliser.
The atmosphere, already flat, went so dead it called to mind the moment when Geri Halliwell sat on the nation’s face during the 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony.
On 77 minutes, for some reason, we thought it’d be a good idea to give Prior a free-header at a corner. That went about as well as you’d expect but the reaction was the killer. The players just stood around watching each other. After a few seconds a couple of them tried to rouse the others but there was a similar lack of reaction when Pennell was sent off a few minutes later. I didn’t even know he’d been booked and no one in the Elvis End seemed to realise what had happened until he put on a jacket and started walking round the sideline. No one saw a card and everyone assumed he was being subbed, until it was obvious no one was coming on to replace him. A red card should incense the home crowd and a player’s team mates, but there was barely any reaction at all.
When Embers was introduced with five minutes left it was already 20 minutes too late. There was a stoppage time flurry and Hoyte caused some panic when he got to the byline and put in a decent cross, but no one got on the end of it.
It felt like Alan Walker’s first season in charge in 04–05 when he was constantly lamenting the lack of leadership on the pitch and there are other similarities. Two men were in charge, although one was obviously the senior partner. No one took liberties with Lloyd Hume, but with JS2 absent (apparently because of a knee operation) it was left to Hak to take the flak. Would the half dozen players who were taking the piss have done so to the extent that they did had Mr Mackay been running the wing instead of Mr Barrowclough?
HH alluded to this with his “smell the coffee” remark in a post-match interview the club should probably have allowed him to redo. He usually speaks well no matter how badly the game has gone but on this occasion he didn’t seem to know whether to shield the players or be brutally honest and ended up confusing Ibrahim Olutade with Ibby Akanbi.
Some of the frothers already want either one or both of the duo gone, because this is 2019, when everything can be solved with a sacking.* In an alternate universe, where the owners had ignored these frothers last August, we’d probably be hovering somewhere above the NL relegation zone, but would the frothers be happy? Would they tits. Frothers gonna froth.
In recent years our most successful managers have taken at least one full season to turn the club around. Walker and Hume were seriously unpopular in 2004 and JS1 couldn’t get us into the play-offs in the final season at Sittingbourne. The difference this year is that we only need to finish seventh to have a chance of going up. We won’t have to play Dorking again till the play-offs at the earliest and with the injured players fit The Shithouse may yet be on.
*(We’ll make an exception for whoever played Mariah Carey. They can fuck off to The Hague.)
**You’ve got about three weeks left if you want to see the exhibition at the Museum. News reaches us that attempts to find a permanent home in the Stone have so far floundered, due to costs. Which is both desperately sad and eerily fitting.
