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So Saturday dawned and everyone had agreed to put the Mansfield match behind them. Had we lost 2-1 at Mansfield there might have been more of a post mortem but the performance was SO bad there was really only one way forward and that was to draw a veil over it and approach the Torquay game with a clean slate. What we all saw was a performance that lacked any confidence or cohesion. When their comedy goal went in everyone looked at each other, players included, as if to admit that it was bound to happen at some point.
Hayes for me seemed injured, or at least not fully fit, but to his credit kept fighting. Torps laboured away with little effect. Kell was OK, Kilford indifferent.. And at the back – awful. I don’t think you can blame McCoombe for being the player he is though. Against the likes of Alsop and Gritten he is OK, a little raw but with potential. Against smaller quicker forwards? It isn’t ever going to happen. What our back four need is for all of them to be available (Sharp, Jackson, Byrne and Stanton) and then for them to get their act together. There is nothing wrong with that line up on an individual basis but as a unit it doesn’t seem to be gelling just yet. A job for Captain Jackson I think.
Into the second half and Graves is off. I thought there seemed to be contact and he does not strike me as the sort of player to do that. But it happened and by his own admission he was having a very poor game. So fast forward to twenty to five and it is looking bloody dire. Then Mclean gets a goal. Not a beautiful goal but a poacher's goal, scored by a lad who is confident about his own undoubted talents and who refuses to consider any cause lost.
And then it happened. To say Alex should have been playing from the start is an understatement. Ian Kilford has not impressed this season at all and Alex should have been playing since August 9. For me he has the workrate you need in the middle but he also has that spark of ingenuity that sets him apart and that can make a difference when a match starts to get bogged down.
So four minutes into injury time Mclean lays the ball off to Alex and he buries it in the top corner. Fantasy stuff. The timing, the run up to the goal, Mansfield, injuries, suspensions – all of it now seems like it was planned all along to set up this glorious moment. In ten or twenty years or thirty years time we will still be a lower division side from a small Lincolnshire town but that goal will still be with us, relived over a thousand pints across Scunthorpe and far beyond.
And it had to be Alex of course, that is what puts it on a higher plane. Let us not forget that this is the season the club didn’t want to give him, and that he had to come off the bench to do it. As far as I know this is going to be his last season and he’s going back to Spain at the end of it. What is the club going to do for this magnificent servant? I don’t know exactly how the rules on testimonials work but if Alex isn not getting one then I for one want to know why not. He deserves a proper send off and we should be given the chance to show our appreciation for what he has done.