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The Sweetness Of 90+4
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Barnet's A Shithole...?
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By:
Eric Hitchmo
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17/08/2011
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More On Gillingham
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"In the scheme of things, it was most certainly a case of a point gained an Izale McLeod equaliser in the fourth minute of injury time earned us a point against Gillingham. For me, it was no less than we deserved after an excellent battle in the second half, following a poor first half showing which carried on precisely from where we had left off on Saturday.
Shooting downhill in the first half, contrary to the title of this very site, we struggled to make any impact on the game. Having fallen behind to what can only be described as schoolboy defending, we did not react as well as we may have hoped. A long throw in was allowed to drop into the six yard box where Danny Spiller had the simple task of tapping past a helpless Dean Brill. It reinforced my belief that without Dennehy and Leach, our back four is extremely exposed, despite what we have seen in our opening away games at Portsmouth and Morecambe. We've bought in Exodus Geohaghon following his release from Peterborough, and one can only assume that he will be very much involved in the next few weeks.
Encouraging though, on the other hand, was the performance of Izale McLeod up front. You know what you're going to get from him, but he looked like a different man last night. He chased, he harried, he won headers. Add that to his clear ability to score goals, and you've got a menace on your hands. He was doing the running for two as his strike partner Jason Price was clearly struggling, provoking a ""frustrated"" response from the Underhill crowd. However in the first half, much of our endeavour was comfortably repelled by the visiting back four, and we failed to test Ross Flitney who after a lengthy stint in Non-League following his release from Barnet, has found himself back in the Football League. This came as a surprise to many, I would imagine!
Max Bygraves has more or less summed up my view on Price's showing last night in his piece. He has shown that he can be an utter nuisance up front, winning niggly free kicks and holding the ball up. Unfortunately, none of this was on show last night, and to be replaced by Charlie Taylor only served to further antagonise a frustrated home support. Like Max, surely it's too soon to be giving players this much of a rough time?
The second half was a huge improvement once we equalised. A half-cleared cross found its way to Tommy Fraser who dipped the ball onto the head of Izale McLeod, who placed his header past the oncoming Flitney into the North Terrace net to open his account for the 2011-2012 season. A big relief. From this point we were full of fight, vigour and attacking impetus, as if we'd done something as simple as flick a lightswitch. Attacks flowed towards the opposing goal, with little to trouble our own back four. Price endured a large slice of bad luck as his low shot hit one post, rolled across the goalline and hit the other. From the resulting corner, Anwar Uddin's header hit the top of the crossbar. Mark Byrne then hit another screamer from outside the box but the referee had already blown for an earlier indiscretion. At this rate, it was only a matter of time.
Then came the sucker punch.
For the second time in three days, we were to go behind to an absolute stunner. Brill could only throw himself desperately in the direction of a ball that flew into the South Stand net from all of thirty yards. Jack Payne's reward for such a strike was to be substituted straight away, though it appeared that his job was done and the three points would be going to Kent. For all intensive purposes, it did appear that way. We were knocked for six, the aforementioned lightswitch had been switched off and all the attacking flow we had shown was nowhere to be seen, despite that later introduction of Taylor and Ricky Holmes.
The Barnet supporters slowly ambled for the exits as the four minutes of injury time were signalled. I was more or less out of the ground when we got a corner, and you've got to stay to watch those haven't you? It was cleared, and I very nearly turned away before we won a free kick on the halfway line. Guess I better stay for this as well! It was a good job I did, as Danny Senda's frantic gesturing for Clovis Kamdjo to head to the back post reaped wonderful rewards as he towered above everybody to power a header into the path of Izale McLeod, unmarked, who smashed the ball into the back of the net. Beautiful. Unrelenting joy around the ground. A point had been salvaged, well earned and well deserved.
It was made all the more sweeter for me as I have come to dislike Gillingham a little bit in recent years. A sizeable contingent journeyed, many of them milling around the local pubs. Some stood outside the Red Lion, declaring Barnet to be a shithole, and wanting to go home (we all know the tune). I smiled to myself and for a moment was prepared to give the handful of chanters the benefit of the doubt for the outstanding showing of irony and wit that English supporters are capable of displaying. It occurred to me though that this most likely wasn't the case. I'm going to make the assumption that they are from the town of Gillingham, and I will also assume that they suffer from acute blindness, as to declare Barnet a 'shithole' when considering the aesthetic value of this particular area of Kent demonstrates severe ignorance, at best. It's just the people that put me off. I'm sure a vast majority of Gills fans are perfectly normal, rational individuals, but the minority are, put simply, annoying. From my distant view in the South Stand, they did look awfully unsavoury characters.
With that little rant over and done with, I must turn my attention to four away trips, to areas of the world which also have little appeal. Rotherham, Burnley, Bradford and Colchester. The things we do, eh?"
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