Scunthorpe United v Barnsley

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Football League Championship

Scunthorpe United :
Murphy, Youga, Crosby, Baraclough, Williams, Hayes (Taylor 77), Goodwin, Morris, Cork, Hurst (Forte 77), Paterson (Ameobi 82)
Subs not used:
Lillis, Seck

Barnsley :
Muller, Foster, Souza, Nyatanga (Mostto 84), Van Homoet, Campbell-Ryce, Togwell, Howard, Devaney (McCann 46), Odejayi, Ferenczi (Coulson 46)
Subs not used:
Ricketts, Hassell

SULSESC REPORT

by Jon Dunn at Glanford Park

SUICIDAL! That’s how Andy described one of our fellow SULSESC members at the end of this game.

Understandable in a way but my over-arching feeling was one of disbelief and despair. How did we manage to turn a two-goal cushion, having played some of our best football for some time, against a very ordinary Barnsley side, into what felt like a defeat? I would have to say that we committed suicide!

Throughout the first-half, we were on top with several good chances, some of which we should have done better with and others that Barnsley’s German ‘keeper saved acrobatically to keep them in the game.

It was only a matter of time until the breakthrough came though and just before half-time a nice move involving Paterson, the excellent Jack Cork and Hayes led to the ball being fired home by Morris. It was the least we deserved for our dominance and when Kelly Youga burst into the opposition penalty area and passed the ball into the net for a second two minutes after the restart, thoughts drifted to moving out of the bottom three and starting our climb to safety…elation! At this point even I could not see Barnsley getting back into the game.

Barnsley then made a couple of substitutions and did start to get back into the game a bit and when Grant McCann scored in the 74th minute, there were feelings of ‘here we go again’, but the clock was ticking down and Barnsley were running out of time. Then the fourth official produced his board to say that there would be a “minimum of five”, yes, five minutes of added time. Where he got that from was anyone’s guess but we were holding out.

With the five minutes almost up, we got a free kick about 30 yards out beside the touchline. Apart from the two people involved in the kick, I don’t think any other Scunny player crossed the halfway line! It was therefore obvious that we were going to waste time, but unfortunately we cannot even get that right at the moment!

Ameobi and Cleveland managed to contrive to pass the ball all of 12 inches directly under the linesman’s nose and got caught offside…unbelievable!

Barnsley banged the free kick forward and into the box where Crosby handled to hand them a penalty which, in the seventh minute of added time, they scored to snatch two points from us. I was absolutely gutted! I cannot remember feeling so gutted after a game for years, but we appear to be making a habit of throwing away points late in games.

Such were my feelings of despair, and those of Andy Kerr, we even decided not to go to Preston, it really was that bad!