Thoughts of a lifelong fan: Why did postponement take so long?

The New Years Day “almost a derby match” was frustratingly called off at the very last minute because of a waterlogged pitch, though why the officials took so long to come to that conclusion will forever be a mystery.

Following on from that we travelled to Barnsley and came up against a team who put us to the sword by three goals to nil, as they did back in August of last year. This time the goals came early in both halves, which unfortunately seems to be a common occurrence this season despite us being equal in nearly all the stats that, at the end of the day, don’t really matter.

I am hoping that the performance was of a fighting nature better than that witnessed in London on Boxing Day, with supporters accepting defeat against one of the better sides in our league so that the players appreciate that we will be behind them in two weeks' time when we face Burton Albion at the Broadfield. Only in England could a football club be scheduled to play five games in twelve days, albeit because of the Charlton postponement we only played four, for us then to have to wait fourteen until we face Danilo Orsi and the Brewers. Personally, I think the break should help Rob in his efforts to bed in any new players we might sign this week (Welcome to Ben Radcliffe, signed from Derby County) and to get the players in the right mindset for what looks like it might be a battle till the end of the season.

The prime objective being to score more goals than the opposition and also to prevent Danilo from using his trademark celebration against us on January 18th. Having to watch the scores come through on the Sky “Teleprinter” (showing my age there) because of a problem with Ifollow, made me wonder how ex Red Devil Max Watters celebrated against us!! How we miss a player of his promise. Over the Christmas period we have scored four goals in the four matches we have played and let in eleven. We obviously need to improve in defence, but I am a firm believer that it can be done by scoring more goals as well as by conceding fewer.

Fortunately, most of the teams above or below us in the bottom half of the table dropped points, with only Northampton and Bristol Rovers picking up maximum points against Burton and Cambridge (both below us) and Stevenage and Rotherham picking up a point a piece. To add to that, we have yet to play the three teams directly above us at the Broadfield Stadium, so how we perform as a fan base will be of vital importance as we seek to maintain our League 1 status.

Even more so, that support will be paramount throughout the rest of January and February as we face five of the top ten sides, three away in Stockport County, Mansfield Town and Bolton Wanderers and two at home in Wrexham and Wycombe Wanderers. The phrase “The darkest hour comes before dawn” springs to mind here, but as with other non-football related uses of this phrase, hopefully the dawn will be golden tinged with a reddish hue.