12/03 Boston Part 2

Boston United 1 Grimsby Town 1
12 Mar 2005, Coca Cola League 2

They could hardly stand up. Fenlanders fizzing, Mariners mauled. So, so bad the Town fans were reduced to shouting at their own feet in frustration. Our shoelaces were burning.

Crosses kneed away, headers lifted back to Noble and Charley Farley Rusk, patrolling space 25 yards out. Coldicott nut-megging himself with every tackle, missing the ball, missing the man, missing in action. Who’s the midfield enforcer? Pinault. Pinault the hard mad, the terrier, the last hanging thread by which the Town curtain remained up against the window. So this man can’t tackle? He was the only one who did.

Hello Gritton, hello Harrold. Seen the ball lately? Didn’t think so.

Wahey, a shot, finally. One of their identikit stubby midfielders wafted woefully wide after some pitiful ping pong. This is worse than the Grand Guignol at Glanford. A collection of furry animals representing Grimsby couldn’t have produced anything worse.

Good grief, a Town pass! Well, when I say pass Forbes lofted the ball over the top down the centre left. As things go these days, that’s a pass. Harrold chased, hassled, turned the defender and wriggled free inside the area. About 15 yards out he attempted to steer a lob across and over Abbey, who sailed into the sun, parrying the ball aside in unnecessarily spectacular fashion. About ten minutes had gone. It felt like a decade. Down here time goes even slower than a tractor on the A52.

Are they repairing the roof or is there a drummer hiding in the garden shed to our right?

More Boston attacks, more nothingness. Crosses and fiddling, but no efforts on goal. They busied themselves nibbling at the Town ankles, but Williams was unfazed. He watched wistfully as the ball floated by. Gritton had a shot. Drivelling, scribbling low without venom, without vim, straight to the bored Abbey.

More of the same from them. The suggestion of danger. Clare tricksy but typically ineffective, always looking to be likely. Yeah, I know he had scored, these things happen occasionally. A free kick to them, into the wall. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh". We’re losing the will to live.

Pinault tried to pull strings, but they weren’t attached to anything. There was a twenty minute period in which the ball was lost. Men were running around the field, barging into each other, but that inflatable thing was absent. Was this the half time entertainment - a modern dance interpretation of a football match. No, no, Forbes wasn’t wearing tights.

With about 5 minutes left the Boston centre back found the ball underneath a bag of parsnips and wellied it from one end of the pitch, straight down the middle, into Williams’ midriff. A huge cheer rose from the bowels of the Town support. It was irony on so many levels I haven’t got time to list them.

"I got two cheese-graters and a fork for Mothers' Day."
"Is their manager wearing mascara?"
"Her skin is the same colour as my mum’s sofa."
"That’s someone with a Macca mask, it can’t be the real thing."
"Is Boston market the hot bed of pet beds?"