With the glass half fulls and the glass half empties still banging heads about Monday's result, the Lads and the spring sunshine welcomed the Pussycat 'Ulls to SR5 with a sense of "let's put it right" in their minds. Let's just say that with great deal of huffing and puffing, we spectacularly failed to do so, being outdone by a mix of our ineffectual play and Hull's version of game management - both of which were extremely frustrating but got the job done for the visitors. Gut what we deserved, basically.
Naturally, much of the chat on the way through concerned the effective use of substitutes, as it had the previous evening at Brandon Cricket Club in the company of messrs Pitt and Horswill. Results of the "heads or tails" game will become apparent in a future report, but well done Judith.
Not even Monty the Bishop bus dog reached the "send him back to France" level set by some since Monday, mind. An early arrival in town meant some bait at Spoons before team news arrived at the Isis.
Patterson
Hume O'Nien Ballard Cirkin
Neil (c) Bellingham
Roberts Rigg Le Fee
Isidor
... and a cracking bench of Moore, Mepham, Mayenda, Poveda, Hjelde, Samed, Mundle, Aleksic, and Browne.
With Geldhardt and Burstow in their squad some folks thought there was always the potential for disaster, but ha'way... not really. Not even the Dutch lads in ALS thought so.
Well, we faced south and Hull just kicked off, with us winning possession and Le Fee moved it inside for us to have a shot blocked as the noisy Hull contingent made their presence heard. Despite winning an early corner we were allowing the visitors far too much space to get forward and Patto had to make a decent save after we lost the ball again in the quarter hour. We had another corner, but when it was cleared Luke gave away a bit of a funny one at our end. Guess what happened. Aye, we bumped into each other at the near post and the ball was in the net. Can any team these days not just put a man on either post and defend properly?
Apparently not. 0-1.
Five minutes later it was nearly a second, but Luke thankfully put his challenge past Patto's left hand post for a corner our keeper punched away. O9 was in action at the other end soon after as we swung in a free that ended in the net- but he was called offside.
A lot of lying down by Hull then followed, and persisted for the remainder of the game - I'm not sure how happy I'd been to see us employing those tactics for so long (probably ecstatic, actually) but it got right on my bits today, with the ref seemingly reluctant to book the keeper as he knew he'd have to do it later. Which he did. With Hull having dealt well with our wide men, the added six were no problem for the visitors and we went in for the break deservedly behind.
What to do? Change summat, and on came Mundle for the injured Le Fee. Having made one unusually early substitution, we had to make another within a minute when Ballard's banjo string went and on came Mepham. There was some grand battling down the right that ended when Issy shot wide, then Roberts, of all people, headed over a Mundle cross. For all our forward play, we failed to really trouble their keeper, and on came Mayenda for Rigg. He battled away gamely, Mundle tried to outfox their defence, but they got bodies in the way and looked more of a threat on the break than we did when pressing
There was an eventual yellow for the keeper (telt yet it would happen), more Hull players had a lie down, and Issy looped one high and wide on 85. Add another extra six minutes, and we still couldn't trouble the keeper.
Seventeen times we'd tried, and only twice had we got a shot through. Not once had we fired in a hard low cross, and not once had we outnumbered their defence. Let's hope that's just a bad day at the office and we find a way to liven things up at Sheffield on Friday.
Man of the Match? Dan Neil by a mile - the only one who stayed calm and consistent throughout.
