THE VERDICT: MILLWALL 4 TOWN 1 Town play out final day after oddest of seasons
TERRIERS SIGN OFF WITH DEFEAT AT MILLWALL BUT CAN LOOK FORWARD TO A BRIGHT NEW FUTURE
AFTER putting in an extraordinary effort over the season to haul themselves out of one of the worst starts in Championship history, an under-strength Huddersfield Town side could be forgiven for playing out a much less than whole-hearted defeat on the final day of this long, strange, difficult Championship season.
Everything about the game had the feeling of a summer training camp – the experimental team selections for both sides, the relaxed and easy atmosphere on a warm July evening.
That was amplified as Lewis
O’Brien took the captain’s armband for the very first time after Christopher Schindler dropped out of the side with illness in the warm-up, wrecking Town’s only remaining ever-present Championship record at the last.
The chatter among the assembled press was not on the game before them, but on the various remarkable scorelines unfolding around the country elsewhere in the Championship.
After the season Town have had, it was a thorough pleasure not to be involved in that conversation whatsoever.
Which is just as well as Town fell behind in just the fourth minute, with Connor Mahoney ploughing a firm low strike past Joel Coleman after going by both Richard Stearman and Demeaco Duhaney with ease.
Town tried to play crisp, sharp football, but there was an overall lack of bite in the tackle – understandable, given that the last thing anyone wanted was for key players to pick up needless injuries on the last game of the season with nothing on the line for either side and a truncated pre-season just minutes away.
To that end Fraizer Campbell and Juninho Bacuna were both rested from caretaker boss Danny Schofield’s matchday squad altogether, with the out-of-contract Jon Gorenc Stankovic, Collin Quaner and Elias Kachunga also curiously omitted.
Usual starters Jonas Lossl, Jonathan Hogg, Chris Willock and Emile Smith Rowe were all benched, too, with winger Aaron Rowe the biggest surprise in the starting line-up and fellow
Bialkowski, Brown, Hutchinson, Cooper, Wallace, Molumby, Thompson, Williams, Mahoney, Smith, Ferguson SUBS: Bradshaw, Steele, Leonard, Bodvarsson, Skalak, Tiensia, Burey, Mitchell, Muller
youngsters Scott High, Jaden Brown, Matty Daly and Micah Obiero joining them in the dugout. Top scorer Karlan Grant did start, however, and he looked determined to get the two goals he need to take his tally for the season to 20.
He only got halfway there, scoring an equaliser on 34 minutes with a first-time finish off a lovely Alex Pritchard through ball. But that was still enough to give him the outright best goals