Win a mixed bag for fans to digest
IF the opening game of the season is an example of how things are going to be over the next eight months, then I think there’s going to be some fraught times ahead.
A 4-3 home win, to a neutral, sounds like entertainment and value for money but for me and those around me it was an afternoon of mixed emotions.
We started in the best possible way, Danny Lloyd getting the honour of scoring the first goal of the campaign as early as the fifth minute.
When John Marsden doubled our lead ten minutes later you’d have been forgiven if you thought the flood gates would open, everything at EP was rosy and that this was going to be “our” season.
Even when the reds scored late in the first half, there was no need to panic as we’d been by far the better team throughout the game up to that moment and when Big K rose, salmon like, to restore our two goal advantage I thought we thoroughly deserved everything we had, no worries.
However, the saying that football is a game of “two halves” was proved again.
Over the years County have, on so many times, been caught napping when in a comfortable lead. We’ve sat back and allowed the opposition to come at us, they get a goal and we can’t raise our game and they get a second and we either snatch a draw from a game we were winning or, even worse, a defeat.
It happened too often last season under both Neil Young and Jim Gannon’s leadership which meant we had one of the worse home records in the division.
Things might now have changed.
Whether it was our fitness levels, our new team’s commitment or the fact that the visitors had been reduced to ten men, we threw away the lead but still managed to take all three points as in the last ten minutes we laid siege to Alfretons half of the pitch.
That pressure paid off as Gary Stopforth scored an absolute belter in the dying seconds to send the County faithful home in raptures.
To add another dimension to the afternoon we had the local pop-beat combo “Blossoms” and Peggy the pig on the pitch, it was hard to see which was more in demand for the half time photo opportunists.
By the time you read this we will have played local thugs Stalybridge on Tuesday night, fingers crossed we can keep our 100 per cent start going and we have no serious injuries!