At the time of writing, a match report on the Long Eaton game is yet to be added to the official website. It seems fair to assume that whoever was assigned to write this one up has downed tools in protest, or has been unable to get past “shitshow” in the opening sentence.
There are bad days at the office and there is what we witnessed on Saturday, a supposed ‘must win’ that far from slightly easing our relegation anxieties has sent them off the scale. Did the players expect Long Eaton to simply roll over? Long before the visitors had the temerity to actually score, we were merrily fluffing chances like it was all going to be a walk in the park – until suddenly crumbling at the first setback.
At half time it was still possible - just - to believe that fired up and attacking the Tin Hat, a win, however narrow, would still be scraped. As opposed to the bottom of the barrel, which was tunnelled through after about another 20 minutes, followed by about ten feet of Latimer Park clay until finally hitting bed rock.
Pretty much without exception the players out there looked like they’d given up. Against a team that only we seem to have any trouble in beating. A team whose noisy little band of fans were so unused to seeing them dominate a game, one of them forgot to take his flag when changing ends. In front of a crowd mostly stunned into silence, rather than ripping their heads off in fury like many a Kettering crowd of old.
Where on earth do we go from here? Afterwards, Jim seemed to have no better idea than the rest of us. His post-match interview was part WTFery, part disaster victim being encouraged to relive events as the first stage in rehab.
The frustrating, maddening thing is the same group of players are capable, not of so much better, but at least looking like they possibly could care less. We have seen this, on occasions. They are even capable of putting in a good collective 45 minutes. But if they think they are too good to go down, think again.
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