Old One-Eye's Match Report - Rams 3 v 2 Irons
Sunday, 21st Nov 2010 21:28 by Old One-Eye

A Derby team wracked by illness and suspension came out firing but only just hung on after going down to ten men.

Derby County 3 vs. 2 Scunthorpe United

Saturday 20th November 2010 15:00

Pride Park - Derby

Referee: James Linington (Baffled, Isle of Wight)

Crowd: 25,189

Teams:

Derby County:

Fielding, Green, Brayford, Leacock, Roberts, Savage, Pearson, Cywka, Commons (Moxey 76), Bueno (Pringle 63), Moore (Kuqi 87)

Unused Subs: Bywater, Doyle, Anderson

Goals: Cywka (3’), Commons (37’ Penalty), Moore (59’)

Red Cards: Roberts

Scunthorpe United:

Murphy, Byrne, Raynes (McLenahan 45), Jones, McNulty, Wright, O'Connor, MacDonald, Forte (Thompson 84), Sears, N'Guessan (Woolford 55)

Un-used Subs: Warner, Godden, Palmer, Dagnall

Goals: Forte (27’), O'Connor (74’ - Penalty)

Yellow Cards: Wright, Byrne

Old One Eye’s Match Report:

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 Tommy 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 Tommy 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?”

Old One-Eye's Man of the Match:

John Brayford – he just gets better and better.

Old One Eye’s Player Ratings:

Fielding(6); Green(6), Brayford(8), Leacock(6), Roberts(4); Savage(7), Pearson (5), Cywka (7) Commons(6), Bueno(7), Moore(6).

First Team Coach Reaction:

Johnny Metgod spoke to the press after the match:

"The ability to grind out a result was a magnificent effort, in football you need team performances, and if everyone is thinking about the team here then we have a good chance of finishing in the top half this season”.

"If players are on a personal triumph though, then we will be in trouble. We have to stay focused on that fact, and I am convinced if we do that we can have a successful season”.

"I think we made life difficult for ourselves at times though, and in all fairness we could have scored more than three goals. It is all about getting the points though, even if we didn't play as well as we have been".

"We scored early which was crucial, but all credit to Scunthorpe for coming back. You can see why they do so well away from home; they defend well and come forwards on the break very well”.

"It is difficult to play against them; they are hard to break down so from that point of view to score three and win is very pleasing. We knew even at 3-1 the game wasn't over, and that proved to be the case late on".

Double Figure Goal Scorer Reaction:

Kris Commons spoke to the Official Site after reaching 10 goals for the season:

"It was nerve-wracking towards then end, but I fancied us for the win, I had faith in the boys and it was great for everyone to get the win”.

"At home I don't think we should be hanging on to a lead, and it isn't something we've been used to this season. It was a throw-back to last season in many ways, but we did enough to win today even if we weren't at our complete best".

"My penalty miss against Middlesbrough was in my mind as I stepped up today, so I just went for power and luckily the goalkeeper went the other way".

"Sav spoke about alternating the taker, and I think it keeps goalkeepers and the like on their toes. We think it can put a spanner in the works in a way, so who knows will be next.”

"It is nice to be on 10 (goals) at this stage, but I have to keep working hard in training and games. It has been a good week personally, what with scoring for Scotland and carrying that on back at Derby but I know the hard work is still very much ahead of me."