Sheff Wed v Scunthorpe United

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Football League Championship

Sheff Wed :
Grant, Hinds, Wood (Bullen 35), Michael Johnson, Spurr, Whelan, O'Brien (Esajas 76), Jermaine Johnson, Kavanagh, Tudgay, Burton (Sodje 46)
Subs not used:
Burch, Lunt

Scunthorpe United :
Murphy, Crosby, Butler, Byrne, Youga, Taylor, Hurst, Goodwin, Sparrow (Williams 81), Hayes (Forte 72), Paterson (May 85)
Subs not used:
Lillis, Iriekpen

SULSESC REPORT

by Ian Rees at Hillsborough

DAVID Blunkett, Roy Hattersley, Michael Vaughan, Tango Man, three- quarters of the Artic Monkeys, Osama Bin Laden, the Chuckle Brothers (okay, Rotherham but near enough because I'm struggling now), we have beaten them all! Brian Laws, can you hear me? Your boys took one hell of a beating!

A cold Tuesday night, warmed by the singing of 3,000 Scunthorpe supporters packing the Leppings Lane end. The game started ominously for Scunthorpe with a few shooting chances gifted to Sheffield Wednesday but luckily even with Jermaine Johnson holding its tail, Burton O'Brien would still be unable to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.

After 20 minutes, the referee helped as best as he could when, from behind a wall of three players, thanks to his X-ray specs that allowed him to see through solid objects, he adjudged either Cleveland Taylor or Jim Goodwin, not sure which, to have brought down Glenn Whelan. Deon Burton scored with a good penalty into the top left of the goal.

Immediately after the goal, Jim Goodwin started getting into them.

The first free kick awarded for a foul against Goodwin by Kavanagh was wasted as Goodwin tried to place it past Kavanagh who intercepted and cleared. Less than a minute later, another foul on Goodwin brought another free kick in an identical position. This time Goodwin put in a good cross and somebody leapt like a majestic salmon to head back across the goal for Martin Paterson to score from six yards out.

I say “somebody” because the goal was scored in front of the home fans and I was stood in the Leppings Lane end at the opposite end of the ground. The BBC report says it was Andy Crosby, the man next to me said Kevin Hurst, but the timing of the leap to win a ball for which he started second best could only mean it had to be Andy Butler.

After 35 minutes it got worse for Sheffield Wednesday as Richard Wood injured himself in fouling Paterson and had to be stretchered off.

Then on 40 minutes Taylor broke down the right and put in a great cross for Paterson to hit home.

Unfortunately after that Taylor was not involved that much because I can only surmise that underneath the glare of the floodlights, Paul Hayes bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Torpey, because our only tactic was to bang high balls up to Hayesy. I couldn’t fault his effort but I can’t remember him winning any of those balls. Luckily, this did free up Taylor to join the search party for Matt Sparrow who had gone missing immediately after the kick-off.

The second-half was a bit like the Alamo at times and Scunthorpe’s midfield, despite the valiant efforts of Goodwin, was being completely bypassed. The defence were great in their resolve. The officials tried to help Wednesday out again when (whatever you call that man who holds the time remaining board up), having found only four minutes of added time at the end of a first-half with two significant stoppages, managed to find an extra five minutes at the end of an incident free second-half.

Ben May looked fairly impressive in his ability to hold the ball up when he came on for the last ten minutes. This left me thinking that if ever Adkins was brave enough to play Hurst, Taylor, May and Paterson together, we could have some exciting attacking options but that can’t happen until we can shore up midfield and Taylor finds some form.

Great result. Man of the match – a few contenders, Butler, Paterson, Byrne. But for me, having paid good money over the past 30-plus years to watch some Scunthorpe United players who just didn’t try, I’d have to go for Goodwin. He is by no means the most skilful of players and has to play up to his very best to compete at Championship level but putting it simply, without him in the team on Tuesday, we would have lost.