Scunthorpe living up to their name

[David]

Keepers injured, attempts to throw the ball out of play, Scunthorpe player collects and sticks it in the net. Great finish to be fair, but come on, naughty that!

 

[Grimbeard]

Good, I'm glad. This putting the ball out of play is cobblers. Unless someone is in danger of imminent death, play on.

[David]

5 minutes ago, Grimbeard said:

Good, I'm glad. This putting the ball out of play is cobblers. Unless someone is in danger of imminent death, play on.

The keeper can’t exactly go off the pitch for treatment whilst they play on 

[GenBr]

Why didn't he just throw it behind the goal instead of trying to throw it all the way to the sideline? 

Also unless the ref is the one stopping the game you play on regardless. Its like putting your hand in the air and stopping defending because you think a player is offside - unless the ref says otherwise don't make any assumptions.

[Carnero]

55 minutes ago, David said:

The keeper can’t exactly go off the pitch for treatment whilst they play on 

Throw it out properly then, instead of straight to a Scunthorpe player.

[David]

1 minute ago, Carnero said:

Throw it out properly then, instead of straight to a Scunthorpe player.

He didn’t throw straight to the player! Click play

[Carnero]

Just now, David said:

He didn’t throw straight to the player! Click play

I did, he didn't throw it hard enough to get it out of play. Patrick Bamford could have thrown it harder even with his limp wrists.

[David]

4 minutes ago, Carnero said:

I did, he didn't throw it hard enough to get it out of play. Patrick Bamford could have thrown it harder even with his limp wrists.

Behave! 

[RadioactiveWaste]

17 minutes ago, GenBr said:

Its like putting your hand in the air and stopping defending because you think a player is offside - unless the ref says otherwise don't make any assumptions.

That was my signature move, whenever someone was fast, better or in a better place than me as a defender - arm of mercy was raised. It worked, almost never.

[MaltRam]

They're out of order. Glad it didn't benefit them or ultimately affect Plymouth.

It is time to play to the whistle though. All this controversy goes away. 

[ronnieronalde]

Can't believe a couple of posters are defending it and blaming the keeper. Christ on a bike.

I'd have waited for the next 50/50, 60/40 hell even 70/30 in his favour and I've booted him so far in the air he still wouldn't have landed in time for pre-season preparation for League 2. I'd then have expected my mates to do the same.

If the lad is so good he can finish from there, what has the show pony being doing all season?

Bang out of order.

 

[eddie]

I wrote a match report about Scunthorpe once. I was quite proud of it...

Things you never knew you never knew about Scunthorpe.

Another day, another feast of goals, another home victory for The Rams - the sixth in succession and the first against bogey side Scunthorpe United for almost half a century – ensured that Derby County continued to occupy the dizzy heights of fourth place in the Championship Table.

The referee on this occasion was no stranger to Scunthorpe fans, for it was none other than James Linington, the man who personally guaranteed their progress in the League Cup against Swansea last season by sending off three home players. When injury further reduced Swansea to just six in number – a figure that would normally ensure an abandonment – Linington dragged the rotting corpse of one Swansea player back onto the pitch crying “See? Seven. Play on, lads.”

Scunthorpe is currently twinned with the towns of Clam in the USA, Minge in Belgium and Wet Beaver Creek, Australia. A campaign to establish a twinning arrangement with Gobblers Knob in Pennsylvania was dismissed because Fanny Honeypott, the proprietor of local pub ‘The Watering Hole’, objected saying that the inevitable male-oriented sexual innuendo surrounding the name ‘Gobblers Knob’ would turn Scunthorpe into a laughing-stock by association.

The visitors did their best to disorient The Rams by winning the toss and kicking towards the South Stand in the first half. Kris Commons cleverly countered this by moving his shin pads around to the back of his legs before the referee set the game in motion. Derby started in familiar fashion with a series of passes that led to Tomasz Cywka thumping a drive straight at Joe Murphy, who clutched the ball to his chest.

With the clock showing just two minutes gone, Rams playmaker Alberto Bueno picked the ball up on the left and threaded an exquisite ball through to Cywka on the right hand side of the penalty area. A rasping drive into the far corner of the net gave Murphy no chance of denying the home side the lead.

It could easily have been two a few minutes later when Commons shot low from distance and Murphy, at full stretch, turned the ball around the post to keep The Iron in the contest. Incidentally, Scunthorpe United obtained their nickname ‘The Iron’, not because of the huge deposits of Ironstone to be found in the area or to the number of smelting works and blast furnaces that were built to take advantage of the local geology, but because of the historical tendency for a large proportion of the local population to be clapped in pairs of them most Saturday nights.

Scunthorpe have no fears about playing away from home this season – they have picked up 15 of their 20 points amassed this season so far on the road and are currently rated the fourth-best side in The Championship on their travels. At Glanford Park though, it is quite another matter. It is difficult to fathom the reasons for this, but perhaps it is Seismophobia. At home, the memories of terrible events of yesteryear are just too close to the surface, and I apologise for reminding Scunny fans of that awful day when their world was turned upside-down.

The epicentre of one of Britain’s most powerful earthquakes of the last century was located just outside Scunthorpe. The quake, which measured a tooth-rattling 5.2, occurred in February, 2008 and caused approximately £21.97p’s worth of damage and frightened a cat, according to insurance underwriters. At first, residents explained the earthquake as “God’s punishment for allowing the Oldroyds, a Yorkshire family from Kingston-upon-Hull, to settle on Lincolnshire’s hallowed ground”. A local geologist dismissed the idea as ridiculous and unscientific, pointing out that the “…voices in his head told him that a coven of witches from Grimsby did it.”

Meanwhile, back at the more geologically stable Pride Park, The Iron gradually gained a foothold in the match. After 18 minutes, Rob Jones’s head met a corner powerfully, and only Frank Fielding’s foot alliteratively kept The Rams in front. Ten minutes later, Rams full back Gareth Roberts made the first of his four significant contributions to the match.

A Derby corner was cleared and the ball was thumped forward towards Jonathan Forte, who proceeded to show Derby’s defence a clean pair of heels. Roberts raced across to try to deal with the danger and promptly bounced off Forte. It was as if the north poles of two bar magnets had been brought into close proximity – the players touched and Roberts went spinning off in the opposite direction. Forte chipped the ball superbly into the far corner and Scunthorpe were level.

A Cywka volley following another sublime Bueno pass was turned away by the over-worked Murphy before Derby regained the lead in controversial circumstances. Bueno skipped past one defender before appearing to over-run the ball near the corner of the six yard box. Michael O’Connor made little contact, if any, but the Derby midfielder crashed to the ground. Mr Linington, realising that he had done Scunthorpe enough favours for one lifetime, redressed the balance by pointing to the spot and Commons made no mistake with the penalty.

Derby continued to pile forward as the clock ran down and Scunthorpe seemed mightily relieved to head off for their half time cup of tea just one goal in arrears. Tea is a touchy subject to some, I know. Because the good people of Scunthorpe got so fed up of hearing the joke which started with the line “If Typhoo put the ‘T’ in Britain...” during the early 1980’s, a by-law was passed by the Town Council banning the sale of all tea in the locality. To this day, the only way of obtaining tea leaves in the area is from illegal street-corner dealers who sell it disguised as cannabis.

The second half started as the first finished – with Derby enjoying a period of supremacy - and only a superb block by Murphy prevented Stephen Pearson from putting the home side two goals clear. A few minutes later, Freddie Sears should have punished The Rams but he dallied with only Fielding to beat, and Dean Leacock thundered in to rob him with a superbly timed challenge.

Shortly before the hour mark, Derby appeared to have made the game safe at 3-1. Roberts and Cywka combined to find Luke Moore free on the edge of the box and the West Brom loanee swivelled and fired an absolute screamer into the top right-hand corner of the goal to increase the Scunthorpe fans’ gloom. Incidentally, Scunthorpe tied with Middlesbrough recently in the ‘Britain’s Gloomiest Town’ competition.

Between 1963 and 1998, the sun shone in Scunthorpe for an average of three days per year, usually during the hours of darkness. Because of this, no children’s colouring books were permitted to be sold containing a pictorial representation of a rainbow for fear of sparking a mass emigration to Grimsby, although representations of rain were positively encouraged. ‘Painting by numbers’ was allowed though, but only if the pictures were restricted to the use of Ash Grey, Battleship Grey, Platinum and Silver. After 1998, Taupe and Bistre were added to the approved list of colours, provided the pigments were made from local soot.

Bueno was replaced by Ben Pringle shortly after the hour mark, and ten minutes later, Roberts ‘enjoyed’ a two minute period of madness. Firstly he fouled Sears on the halfway line, an offence for which he was booked, then proceeded to remonstrate with the referee just to ensure that his face was duly registered in Mr Linington’s memory. Moments later, the early bath was his reward for felling Martyn Woolford in the box. There could be no argument, and O’Connor smacked the resultant penalty home with some aplomb.

Derby dug deep – something which builders were doing recently before work had to be immediately halted on the construction of a new Lidl store in Scunthorpe High Street. The area was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest by local palaeontologists following the discovery of the world’s only living colony of Trilobites, previously thought to have been extinct for over 150 million years. Later it transpired that what had actually been discovered were half a dozen woodlice underneath a sheet of tarpaulin.

Nigel Clough immediately shored up the defence by sacrificing Commons and bringing on Dean Moxey. Scunthorpe piled forward in search of a point that at one time had seemed far beyond their expectations. John Brayford stood firm, putting life and limb on the line and receiving a painful whack on the head for his troubles. As Brayford lay prostrate in the goalmouth, play continued with the referee’s blessing to the orchestrated chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing”. Perhaps it’s a requirement of the job nowadays.

Five minutes of stoppage time became six before the final whistle brought relief and delight to home fans and players alike. It had been an excellent match with Derby deservedly coming out on top, but there is little doubt that if Scunthorpe play with the same enterprise for the rest of the season, they will finish much higher in the league table than their current 20th position, and it is fitting that they should, because no-one ever has a bad word to say about the town, the team or their fans. I leave you with two further examples of why the good folk of Scunthorpe are held in such high esteem in the One-Eye household.

Scunthorpe Market used to be home to the world’s largest reptile shop specialising in tortoises, turtles and terrapins until 2007 when a devastating fire swept through the basement of the building, killing the entire stock and wiping out many years of what had been a ‘labour of love’ according to the owner, Cedric Peabody. Two days later, The Pie Store, also run by the enterprising Mr Peabody, took over the premises and proceeded to do a roaring trade. Customers declared that the pies were “...delicious and somewhat exotic, but the crusts are a bit crunchy”.

When Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath was a boy, his mother and father planned to take him to Cleethorpes for the day as a special treat. Their car overheated and they broke down in Scunthorpe, where they had to wait two hours until the man from the RAC arrived to fit a new radiator hose.

So impressed was little Tony with the place that he was inspired to write the opening lines of ‘Iron Man’ – a song dedicated to the people of Scunthorpe - immediately after Mr Iommi Senior had said “Let’s spend the day here instead”.

The immortal words were, of course, “Has he lost his mind? Can he see or is he blind?”

[ronnieronalde]

I hope I liked that at the time you posted it. Brilliant effort.

I doubt it would have gone down well with the lads who don't like to read posts of more than 6 words but I personally love it.

You should get your reporters pad and pen back out my friend, that's a talent.

[eddie]

18 minutes ago, ronnieronalde said:

I hope I liked that at the time you posted it. Brilliant effort.

I doubt it would have gone down well with the lads who don't like to read posts of more than 6 words but I personally love it.

You should get your reporters pad and pen back out my friend, that's a talent.

Cheers, mate.

It was when Ian Cripps and I both wrote for RamZone about 10 years ago.

[Mucker1884]

@eddie, I think that's the finest match report I've ever read.  You should take it up as a profession (As in, @David should pay you to do one for every game next season!).

 

Yeah, they were out of order for doing what they did here, but I totally agree with the sentiments re putting a stop to all this kicking the ball out for an injury... even for keepers.  Put the onus on the ref to stop the game... or not.

All this "gentlemanly conduct" is no longer apt for football, as the game is riddled with cheats, slyness and extravagant rewards for the victors.  Players can no longer be trusted!

[Sith Happens]

Doesn't look great on the face of it, and the fact the keeper had to go off makes it worse. What you don't know is what else was going on. For both clubs a win could have been enough to stay up depending on results elsewhere.

Plymouth leading, had the keeper already been time wasting? If so you can understand people thinking it was just another time wasting ploy.

 

 

[Phoenix]

The goalie didn't seem that badly injured when he was protesting.