Well, it’s been a while! I imagine the four readers that regularly read my ramblings on this page were absolutely devastated at the lack of content over the last few months. Or should that be delighted? Or maybe they don’t care. Either way, it’s time I dusted off my keyboard and typed up a load of old cobblers about the last game I went to.
Last time, that was the standard Saturday afternoon slot as Chasetown got done in the penalty shootout on the slope that is Alvechurch Football Club. You can click here to view that, if you fancy. Moving back to this blog, though, I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon, recalling the events of Chesterfield’s clash with Doncaster Rovers last night at the SMH Group Stadium. On a Thursday. Who plays on a Thursday? Chesterfield did, and quite well, but we’ll come to that. Apparently it was played on Thursday because the Rovers are involved in the FA Cup, but the boffins in the TV gantries wanted to make the poor Donny fans trek down to South London to face Crystal Palace on Monday night at 8pm. What a move! Well done, lads. About as good as putting Cardiff v Sheffield United on a Thursday night or scheduling the Fifth Round draw to be completed in the middle of The One Show. Maybe it’s to drive up their own ratings, who knows?
So, Thursday Night Football it was, which seems more American than anything. I’d be making the journey with two BlogFootball debutants, and for some reason it’s become a thing that anyone I go to a game with that I never use their real name. So we’ll call one of them Belgian and the other one Nasal. None of us had been smart enough to pass a driving test yet so it was the rattler to Chesterfield station before the long old slog on foot to the ground at the other end. I severely underestimated the weather and only had one layer underneath my coat and got a deserved ridiculing for doing so. Rather than get a walk in, we decided to save our legs and grab the bus to the station, which took forever to arrive. We should be used to this in Britain by now as we have some of the worst public transport in the world. You’ll never sing that!
The station was where I had the wonderful idea of doing this blog in the first place, which is why there’s been a distinct lack of pictures so far as I came up with the idea while queuing for a Greggs sausage roll (as seen below). Isn’t that where everybody comes up with their best ideas? Once that had gone down the hatch, we went over to the platform and noticed something extremely unusual. It was a train. On time. In fact, it arrived four minutes early. I think everybody in the platform almost passed out with shock.
Chesterfield was only one stop away, so I stupidly tried to get some kip in, but that was never going to be possible on the short journey we had. Plus, as I did try to close my eyes, Nasal turned to me and asked me about Bob Marley. Fascinating. We have all sorts of conversations on the train and this one was no different. Five-a-side, slagging off some of our own teammates and discussion about Uni was then followed by the walk to the ground where more Bob Marley was discussed as well as Karaoke, park cricket and Uber before we finally got on to briefly discussing Chesterfield and Paul Cook.
The three of us reached the ground about 6pm and we had a lot of time to kill before kick-off. We were there as reporters, which I generally don’t tend to blog matches where that is the case, but I thought on this occasion it would be something different so would be a good thing to write about. While the other two chatted to the rest of the media guys, I flicked through the matchday programme and scrolled through my personal Twitter comments, which was an enjoyable read. Who knew it was that easy to trigger people? Turns out all you need to post an opinion and you’ll get called everything under the sun for daring to disagree with someone. What a world we live in.
Back to the real world though, we were awaiting team news, so what better thing to do than go and warm up with a Balti pie and Bovril? It looked pretty good, but there must’ve been some sort of shocking mix-up with the proportions. Structure? Good. Balti? Not really. Just chicken, and a bit of ‘balti’. Oh well, at least there was Bovril. I don’t understand when people say they’ve never had it or don’t like it. It’s one of the best drinks to have at the football. I tried to eat the pie with the fork provided but it was one of the plastic ones that have the worst structural integrity you’ve ever seen, so that broke pretty quickly and I had to finish it off eating out of my hands as if I was a goat on a farm.
At the same time, Belgian came back up the stairs and managed to knock a tripod over because he’s a clumsy bugger. Once that had been sorted, we looked at the team news where both sides made just one change.
Unfortunately, John Fleck was taken to hospital yesterday after he was taken ill in the pre-match warm up. He was attended to and stretchered off quite quickly, and while we don’t know the full details, it’s important to send best wishes and a speedy recovery to John. That meant that kick-off was pushed back by a further ten minutes. The crowd was filling up nicely, and it looked as if Doncaster had sold out their away end, which is fantastic for a cold Thursday night.
And finally, after eight paragraphs, I’m finally going to start talking about the match. If you’re new here, it’s probably something to get used to.
Chesterfield: Thompson, Sheckleford, Naylor, Grimes (Capt), Oldaker, Williams, Dobra, Duffy, Sparkes, Pepple, Olakigbe
Subs: Boot, Mandeville, Colclough, Jacobs, Metcalfe, Banks, Madden
Doncaster: Sharman-Lowe, Sterry, Maxwell, Olowu, Molyneux, Street, Bailey, Ironside, Kelly, McGrath, Crew
Subs: Lawlor, Anderson, Broadbent, Gibson, Sharp, Clifton, Ennis
The match started in lively fashion off the pitch as both sets of fans were in good voice, and it didn’t take long for Chesterfield to break through with the first chance as January signing Dylan Duffy, who seemed like one of the best players throughout the game, opened the scoring with his first goal, slotting an effort underneath the keeper.
There weren’t a great deal of chances until the Spireites doubled their lead in the 37th minute as Bim Pepple also grabbed his first goal for the club to try and put the game out of sight before half time.
However, Doncaster had other ideas, and as the ball fell to Luke Molyneux he forced an impressive triple save out of Chesterfield keeper Max Thompson before scoring in added time, striking his effort into the bottom right corner from outside the box.
Half time came, and everyone next to us disappeared into hospitality as they always do at half time and left the seats empty until just after the break, with some not returning to their posh padded seats until the 52nd minute. Prawn sandwich brigade etc etc. Oh well, as long as they enjoyed it.
Chesterfield fought back to get into their rhythm and did so with two quick-fire goals before the hour mark to put them 4-1 up. Armando Dobra played a ball through to Michael Olakigbe and he slotted his effort home at the near post before Pipple turned his first touch into the net from a cross.
Reporters never enjoy writing about a late goal as they have a tight deadline to meet, as sometimes a late goal can change the entire context of a result and the whole report has to be written, so to have both sides score in added time was not ideal, but at least it didn’t change the result overall.
Luck was on Doncaster’s side as Joe Ironside bundled in a second goal with a header, and then the luck disappeared straight from kick off as Ollie Banks lobbed a shot into the back of the net to send 7,665 Chesterfield fans on their way home absolutely delighted. If Chesterfield continue to play like that, there’s no reason they can’t push to be up there and challenge for the rest of the season, and their game away at Walsall in a week’s time will be very interesting to watch. If Doncaster are second in the league though, Chesterfield really aren’t very far off.
With that, we headed for the exit around 22:15 and a quick temperature check said the wind chill made it feel like -1 degree, which was lovely, but the dash back to the station would no doubt warm us back up, as we’d left it as late as possible to get back to our train in half an hour. Somehow, we managed to make it with nine minutes to spare. Once again, being focused on that, I didn’t grab any pictures for the way back, so you’ll have to forgive me. I’m sure it’s not a big deal.
As the train rolled in and we grabbed a table seat, we caught up on the latest scores on the doors, including looking again at Chesterfield keeper Max Thompson’s triple save, but also laughing a lot about Tottenham being ‘spursy’ and bottling their chance of a trophy once again as they lost 4-0 to Liverpool. Just imagine if they’d lost to Tamworth this season. They probably needed it, in all honesty, to show them the bare-faced truth about the state of the club.
Then we moved on to realise Nasal’s extensive knowledge of club nicknames and training grounds, which we never knew about before, so the majority of the journey was taken quizzing him on that before the ticket inspector ruined all of our fun and caught Nasal without a ticket. Thankfully, the bloke was lenient and just let him buy one instead of slapping him with a £100 fine. He would probably have had to pay in cash, too, or some nonsense like that. You know what inspectors are like.
We thundered into Derby station and split into separate taxis to trundle off home and get warm, and make me reflect on why I didn’t have more than one layer on. Oh well, I’ve been in worse conditions, so all things considered, it wasn’t too bad.
Thanks for reading. There might even be a second blog this weekend too, which is a real turn up for the books, as this is only the second blog in three months, but hey ho. It might even be a bit of non-league action as well to feast your eyes on.
Tom.
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