A Tale of Two Tuesdays

Well, wasn't that fun wasn't it.  Mostly anyway.  While it's always a treat to see your team run riot and give the opposition a thorough pasting, trousers down - six of the best, a curious, unfamiliar feeling stole over me on Tuesday.  Deep down, a part of me started to feel terribly sorry for AFC Sudbury.  They went from a team we had to beat into a bunch of shell-shocked young boys, far from home, dismally trying to get to the end of the game and escape further punishment.  A rare feeling indeed and one I've probably had no more than a handful of times in decades of watching the Poppies.

How different to the events and thoughts from the Tuesday before when we huffed and puffed to zero effect before meekly losing to Alvechurch.  Have consecutive Tuesday night games yielded such wildly different experiences?

Sudbury were utterly bamboozled by our infinite attacking options and possibilities.  Such was our unbridled variety,  at one point in the proceedings Mensah was playing as a tricky winger, twisting this way and that before whipping in a cross....Yet, seven days earlier we did nothing more to Alvechurch than lift EVERY ball over the flailing Panter as we aimed every single attack at the foreheads of the Alvechurch back four.

While I appreciate Alvechurch are a better team than Sudbury, both teams are flailing away in relegation trouble and should equally have been there for the taking.  We didn't trouble the Alvechurch goalkeeper, whereas the Sudbury 'keeper is looking at years of sleepless nights when he recalls his time at Latimer Park.

It's churlish to complain, given the good run we're on, but had we beaten Alvechurch we could now be in the last Play-Off spot.  How mad would that have been given the season we've had?  The Play-Offs aren't beyond us.  Sure, we've got a lot of crunch matches coming up against teams that are also eyeing up the end-of-season-lottery.  The last thing they will want to see is a resurgent Kettering Town gaining rapidly on them.  A Kettering Town gathering momentum and supporters as we make a burst for the tape.

I mean, how are they supposed to know how utterly awful we are in Play-Off situations?

Coyle lines up his 267th corner, and the closest one he took to the actual corner flag....