There was never going to be a better chance than tonight to end out weeknight jinx. No Tuesday or Wednesday wins this term has been a a bit of a pain in the backside but the visit of bottom club Lincoln City gave us the opportunity to end the sequence. We did 2 - 1, and in turn took our points total to 35.
To say we did it comfortably would be wrong however because no matter how bad we were, our matchday official stole any awards for shite performance of the evening. Comfortably. The nob also has a bit of Saddlers previous and appears to have a penchant for sending off one particular type of player given that both Charlie Ntmark and Roger Boli had previously suffered red cards for incidents of laughable importance.
Charlie was dismissed as the ball rebounded off a post and onto his arm - the ball was therefore going in the away from the goal and the incident was adjudged to be a professional foul. Boli, last season, was kicked from pillar to post for seventy minutes without protection, eventually (inevitably) lost his rag and was dismissed for dissent.
Tonight saw Jason Brissett and Lincoln’s full back tOOK an early bath. In the red corner, Brissett was dismissed for reacting to an awful tackle with a right hook and his opponent in the blue corner walked for what was a ludicrously dangerous tackle. The nob also managed to find a reason to dismiss Lincoln boss Shane Westley in the second funniest incident of the night. Oh how I do enjoy seeing old wolves players struggle at Bescot.
The boys made this one very difficult for themselves by handing Lincoln a daft goal that gave the Imps something to fight for. And fight is essentially what they did given that bone crunching tackle followed bone crunching tackle followed bone crunching tackle as the visitors tried desperately to unsettle us.
It worked.
We fell more and more into the trap of hoisting high balls at Andy Rammell and that played straight into the hands of our visitors. The game seemed to have disappeared from us when Brissett was dismissed and we then lost Viveash with what appeared to be a knee injury. Physically ravaged and mentally rattled, we looked out on our feet in a game we really should have won and there seemed no way back.
We fell more and more into the trap of hoisting high balls at Andy Rammell and that played straight into the hands of our visitors. The game seemed to have disappeared from us when Brissett was dismissed and we then lost Viveash with what appeared to be a knee injury. Physically ravaged and mentally rattled, we looked out on our feet in a game we really should have won and there seemed no way back.
However this side is better than that. On seventy minutes Walter Otta crossed beautifully for Wrack to head his sixth goal of the season at the far post and at despite having 20 minutes to bombard our opponents I think that almost everyone would have taken a point there and then.
We then started to boss the game however and Roper’s introduction for Ada remarkably seemed to steady the back four. We created and missed two or three half chances to take the game after the equaliser but as we entered injury time the game took one final dramatic twist.
Tarka was fouled in the box (a clear dive), the ref gave a penalty and Andy Rammell, big bad Andy Rammell was presented with the opportunity to win it from 12 yards. Yeah! Well, no actually, as the visiting keeper guessed right (left actually) and turned Rammell’s spot kick around the post. Our third penalty miss of the season (four if you include GP at Leek) and this time it was a very costly one.
All wasn't lost however and as the resulting corner caused mayhem in the Lincoln box Otta stuck a leg out, poked the ball over the line and Bescot exploded into celebration as the goal lifted us up to third in the table.
The five minutes of stoppage time that followed our goal were as funny as fuck. Following Lincoln’s attempt to waste almost the entire ninety minutes we returned the favour quite magnificently, severly pissing them off with huge portions of time wasting. As the ball disappeared over the far side of the ground it took an age for a new ball to appear and when it did it was rolled onto the near side of the pitch it moved in virtual slow motion.
Make no mistake the return tie will be spicy as there are still scores to settle from this one. Pointon in particular took some major physical stick and will remember this one though, possibly, for the right reasons as he probably put in comfortably his strongest performance of the season. Now that, considering he hasn’t had a bad game, is some performance. Man of the Match by a mile.