If the excuses are there then we’ll take them, I mean you only have to look at our home & away record to understand that we are inconsistently consistent. But alas we have no real excuses, as suspensions and injuries hit the very thin squad we find ourselves in the same boat as everyone else and to be fair Roy Mcfarland to my knowledge has yet to use these excuses for the side failure to win at home, and that’s because we had been doing the business away. If you consider our excellent start to the season as we occupied fourth place just before Christmas and if you look at how we are playing now you would think that we had sold half of our side and sacked the manager (remember Rushden last season). We haven’t done either of those, all that’s happened is Jamal Campbell-Ryce was stolen by Rotherham United and Sammy Clingan is trying desperately to get into Wolverhampton Wanderers first team. Two players! but two players of such quality that we badly miss as we continue to struggle without them. Adam Smith has been mooted about as a replacement for JCR. In my opinion he most definitely isn’t and can never be compared, Campbell-Ryce was at least half a yard quicker and Smith is a lot more bulkier in physique although Smith is quite sharp as Hull found out when they tried to practically murder him at the KC. As for Clingan’s replacement, well, we’ve seen a return to the Mark Hudson of old and a fresh face in Jordan Fowler who is different in every way so we haven’t got a Clingan mark two. Let’s hope then that Clingan mark one makes his way back to Saltergate at the end of the season and he will be strutting his stuff on the Rec pitch next year. Let’s look at the positives though, it’s going to be really hard for us to get relegated and that is down to the good start that we had. Our players are getting noticed by higher division sides and crowds are on the up and our successful in relevant terms managerial duo have been awarded further contracts. So life’s not all doom and gloom despite everything and I haven’t even got onto the ground issue. I hope I can feel the same on Saturday at around 5pm. Torquay are going to be a tough nut to crack, as they were at Saltergate, it won’t be easy especially as we now may be without the Chief and N’Toya and Folan. I personally think that a point would be to our advantage but we seem to be playing well away from home so if three would be for the offering I’ll take it. |
