If football matches were pop songs, this one wouldn't have been "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. As to the best of my knowledge he never released a song called "Totally boring shite", we'll have to go with "Bad" by the same artist. I should think we can console ourselves with the end maybe justifying the means, but in truth this was a brutal watch from start to finish.
Salford briefly threatened to be quite good during the first ten minutes (this was during Kofe Balmers comical "I've never seen a football before" period), but gradually with our ratting and rock solid defence, we snuffed out their creativity, dragging them to our level by their earholes. By the twenty minute mark, the trenches were dug and it was just a question of who would win out.
Would it be them if one of our defenders fell over it and presented them with a chance? or would it be us if one of Kofi's heat seeking throw-ins caused havoc? They almost got first blood when Ryan fell over it but Alex Bass saved our Danish with a good stop. Then, on throw number 107 our tactic (I use the word as a singular deliberately) eventually paid off. I was reminded of the 70's tennis player Vitus Gerrulitis. He lost 17 matches consecutively to Jimmy Connors, then unexpectedly triumphed against him in a small clay court event in Miami. He memorably said in an after match interview that "Nobody beats Vitus Gerrulitis eighteen times a row", and in this spirit our cunning throw in ploy was always going to win through in the end. Here it was thanks to Omar Bugiel, leaping like a kid who's been done with the old "drawing pin on the chair" schooldays prank, to head home expertly.
From there we huffed and we puffed (I'm talking us in the crowd) but nothing happened. There was just time for Jake Reeves to hilariously disrupt Salford's injury time free kick routine by booting the ball into the stands. In many ways, that launch into "anywhere will do" territory perfectly encapsulated the game.
Still, we won. The dream lives on, and as it's now finished the nightmare that was the game itself is over.
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