A Pox on You, George Taft!

Of all the elements of Project Non Park which are crumbling before our eyes, from Morrell's lack of footballing acumen through to the club shop not accepting those pesky new fangled things called credit cards, it was interesting on Saturday how much terrace-venom was being reserved for George Taft and his long throws!

People close to me were screaming themselves into a purple-faced, spittle-fest.  They were baying for him not to take the throws, or throw it short, or just basically never pollute their footballing enjoyment with his presence ever again!  This was perhaps fair enough during the first half when Moses and JP were routinely being out jumped by the Fleetwood defence, but less so during the second half when we had Cunnington's big blonde bonce to aim for!  But no, the terrace moaners absolutely did not want him to hurl the ball into the dangerous area around the 6-yard box.  They would much rather we fiddled and farted with a short throw, which would have bobbled off Sol's ankles, and soon had our flagging back four trailing in the wake of their strikers as they broke down field again.

Taft lines up another throw, trying his best to
ignore the increasingly ugly Poppies crowd!

Taft's throws may not be as dangerous as Rory Delap's exocets, but they are a damn sight better than Big X's tame floaters (!) which we watched harmlessly drifting into goalkeepers hands for more than a season.  And yet, no-one ever screamed for X to stop taking these harmless back pass throws.  A couple of games of Taft's weird spinning throws and we are ready to rip his arms off if he ever does it again!

One thing that was plainly obvious to us, and several hundred Cambridge fans last week, was the fact that more often than not both George's feet were on the pitch as he let the ball go.  How the linesman has failed to spot these obvious transgressions is beyond us.  Except, of course, we are talking about non-league linesmen, so it shouldn't be too much of a mystery.