A disastrous week started to feel a little bit better with the news that Sanderson may possibly be back before the end of the season and that Maguire will at least travel with the squad for today’s game. When Northampton equalised last night, I hoped that they might restrict Peterborough’s lead over us but it wasn’t to be and now we’re eight points behind them. It would take a collapse of great proportions for us to miss out on the play-offs so it’s looking very like we’ll have to reconcile ourselves to them again. A minor aspect of the upside down life we’ve all had for the last year or so is that we haven’t played Blackpool yet this season but it’s entirely possible that we may end up playing them four times in about a month. The whole team has gone right off the boil but the defensive errors are the ones that have struck me most. I’m not a great fan of Wright as he’s prone to too many mistakes in my view but I certainly hope he has one of his better games this afternoon. Blackpool have been on a strong late run though at least Embleton won’t be playing for them. I’m back in London and will be listening to the game on SAFSEE. If we win and Fleetwood do us a favour by beating Hull, I won’t be able to stop fantasising that we can catch them rather than Peterborough after all but I doubt that we’ll win. Match prediction 1-1.
I got the team-news at 11.45 and there were the usual changes with Leadbitter, McFadzean and O’Brien all starting and Hume and Diamond on the bench with of course Sanderson out injured. I was pleased to see Maguire on the bench too.
I tuned into SAFSEE but after a minute or so of pre-match chat, during which I heard that the pitch was in great condition, the signal went off and didn’t return till just before kick-off. I then had to pay a visit and when I returned to the room, I thought the signal had gone again but it was the minute’s silence. O’Nien took a knock in the opening exchanges but thankfully managed to run it off. Commentator Benno noticed early on that in Kaikai especially Blackpool had a bit of pace and that wasn’t good news. Blackpool had the best of the early play and Wright conceded the first corner but we weathered that and started getting up their end more around the tenth minute. McFadzean got the first yellow-card of the match for a tug on Mitchell conceding a free kick about thirty yards out but Power cleared it and it eventually went for a goal-kick. We didn’t manage a goalscoring attempt till right on the midway point when a good McGeady pass found Jones but he couldn’t get a decent connection and Maxwell in goal grabbed it. We promptly won our first corner so things seemed to be looking up. Things elsewhere were definitely looking up as Fleetwood went 1-0 up against Hull. Dougall made it 1-1 on cards for a bad tackle on Leadbitter. Just after the half-hour mark Wyke went down injured and everyone had a slurp while he recovered. We’d started to play a bit and get behind their defence on occasions and I felt a goal coming. We won a second corner but wasted it and in the process Leadbitter picked up a yellow. It remained goalless at the break and after a worrying start we’d gradually got the better of a fairly uneventful game. Hull were still behind so just one goal for us could make it a great day.
It was going to be a tense second period but of course an early goal for us would soothe my fears. We hadn’t made any changes as we kicked off again even though we’d had a few men on the ground earlier. We won a corner eight minutes in but this only resulted in a Blackpool counter-attack, which we managed to deal with. Four minutes later I thought we were ahead but McGeady’s shot had come off the inside of the post. Next thing we were behind and it started with a bad back-pass by Leadbitter which was hit goalwards by Garbutt and flicked in by Simms. Burge should’ve had it but it squirmed past him and into the net. There was still half an hour to go but I didn’t think we had two goals in us. No doubt LJ would make another mass-substitution in an effort to get those goals. Hull were still losing so we had a real chance to make a significant improvement. McFadzean escaped a second yellow for a foul and he sounded lucky. Hume promptly replaced McFadzean. It was all getting very tense so I started pacing around the room in the time-honoured manner. With twenty minutes on the clock there still hadn’t been any more changes. I imagined Maguire coming on and lashing one in. Elsewhere Hull had equalised. Diamond and Stewart came on for Jones and O’Brien Jones with fifteen minutes to go but with a lengthy injury to Gretassson there was bound to be a good deal of stoppage-time. Then Hull took a 2-1 lead and everything was going wrong but could things turn around dramatically? Scowen had a great shot that Maxwell turned out for a corner and we were having a go at any rate. Time was slipping away and even one goal seemed to be unlikely and when the stream started slipping off and on, I think I preferred the periods when it was off. Seven minutes of stoppage-time were announced and we replaced Scowen with Gooch while ex-Sunderland Ethan Robson came on for them. It ended 0-1.
