Pathetic

Last updated : 30 October 2004 By Alex Dale
As the team lined up for the kick-off in the sound vacuum that is Nene Park, the away end had their share of questions. Why was Matt Gill at right-back? What with David Pipe on the bench, it seemed a truly bizarre decision by Notts manager Gary Mills.

Would it prove to be a masterstroke? After all, he surely couldn’t play any worse than he has been in midfield, could he? Thirteen seconds later, our questions were immediately answered.

Straight from kick-off, Diamonds on-loan striker Drewe Broughton charged through our wafer-thin defence, ghosting through Kelvin Wilson and volleyed past Saul Deeney to give the Northamptonshire side the lead after just 17 seconds. We didn’t know it then (although it was strongly suspected), but Notts had began as they meant to carry on.

Mills: Clueless
With eighty-nine minutes still on the clock, it should have been a wake-up call for the Pies, and with the crowd roaring them on, Notts County went in search for an equaliser.

Chris Palmer first had a shot blocked by Allen, followed by Hurst shooting wide. Whilst Notts had enough possession in the middle of the park, it was a return to the dark days of the Cheltenham and Northampton games; they just didn’t have any creativity in midfield.

Moreover, the defence offered nothing; the Rushden attack, toothless for so long this season, relished playing against the traffic cone-esque pairing of Wilson and Whitlow, and terrorised them all game by the cunning and devious tactic of simply running at them.

It became not a question of if, but when the home side added a second. And, to the surprise of no-one, Diamonds doubled their advantage in the tenth minute.

The Diamonds winger encountering more resistance from the air pressure than from the chronically ineffective Gill, before crossing for Broughton to head home the second goal unchallenged.

Notts continued to play something loosely resembling football, but continued to struggle against a very ordinary League Two side. The almost-inert Whitlow was often left marooned as the last man in defence, with catastrophic consequences, whilst even when the Magpies had the ball, the players showed the kind of skill and control which made you wonder if they weren’t playing on the Nottingham Panthers’ playing surface.

Captain fantastic
Indeed, it took until the nineteenth minute for Notts to carve out a reasonable chance, Oakes drilling a shot from thirty-five yards which was easily parried out by home stopper Billy Turley.
Don’t panic though; Scully wasted the resulting corner.

The bad vibes continued to grow. The usually dependable Deeney fumbled a routine cross from Gier, and County seemed to have no answers other than to hoof the ball out of the stadium.

With half-time looming, any chance of a comeback was dead in the water. The Notts defence parted like the Red Sea to kindly let Craig Dove in to curl the ball past the reach of Saul Deeney.

3-0 down to Rushden before half-time. A side that didn’t even exist when Notts County defeated Luton in their last top-flight game in 1992. At that time, the two teams that now comprise R & D were either struggling in the United County League (Irthlingborough), or getting relegated from the Southern League (Rushden). Every time you think you’ve hit rock bottom, Gary Mills throws you a shovel.

The sizable away support turned on their team in dramatic fashion, leading a chant of ‘Mills Out’ coupled with ‘what a load of rubbish’. As half-time came and went, the ever-suffering supporters wondered what changes would be made.

Pipe: Consolation
Gill, who played like the last kid to be picked at school, needed to be substituted and hopefully fired out of a cannon, whilst the rest of the defence needed serious tweaking, or at least someone in midfield to cover them for when they invariably messed-up.

Instead, nothing happened. Notts soldiered in the same incapable manner as they had in the first, and within seven minutes of the restart, Craig Dove, who must have had more pressurised Afternoons in Aromatherapy class, strolled through what we like to call our defence and struck a fourth. Cue mass exodus of fans, and amplitude of those ‘Mills Out’ chants.

The fans chanted his name, we needed him and finally Mills conceded defeat; David Pipe came on. Bizarrely though, it was at the expense of Chris Palmer, so Pipe could operate on the right wing and Scully could revert from being useless on the right wing to being disastrous on the left.

Pipe did make an instant impact, Bolland serendipitously managing a cross which found Pipe in the area to drill home a consolation with near-enough his first touch.

This led to County’s best patch of the game, a period in which the players were able to kick the ball in such a manner that it found players in the same coloured kit, showed mild inventiveness and even threatened the goal, Oakes coming close with a low free-kick that shot just left of Turley’s goal, and Scully missing a free header from Pipe’s cross.

Alas, it all went to pot when Rushden found their feet and went on the attack, Whitlow clipping down Broughton, who had to take the resulting penalty twice. He scored both times, unfortunately, and Notts found themselves 5-1 down with twenty-five minutes to play.

With the team getting ripped apart, now, it seemed, was the right time to blood the youngsters, with Emmet Friars replacing Ullathorne (just to leave us even more imbalanced) and McFaul making an appearance, replacing the shocking Gill to the approval of the crowd.

Gill: Claims to be a footballer
It made little difference, though, as Rushden continued to outplay the Magpies in embarrassing fashion, carving out chance after chance merely by playing standard football. We couldn’t even blame the referee; he gave us almost everything.

One thing he got wrong, however, was Rushden’s second penalty, floppy haired Diamonds striker Mulligan pathetically belly-flopping on the floor to win the decision. However, Deeney made a diving save to his right to prevent Love earning the second Rushden hat-trick of the day.

The game meandered to a close with the Rushden forwards meandering through our defence as the County fans meandered back to the car park. Will it get any worse than this? These days, is the best we can look forward the occasional scrappy win over teams like Boston, playing in the Northern Premier half a decade ago?

Any hope of Mansfield being the turning point of the season were banished in deepest, darkest Northamptonshire today. The performances against Darlington and Boston are without a doubt the exception, not the rule.

The centre-backs were so useless in thwarting attacks that we may as well have played a packet of crisps and a load of Soreen there; Gill has consistently proved how bad he is, yet hung on to his right-back spot for two-thirds of the game without making a single tackle; the tactics, which were shown to be worthless in under twenty seconds, remained untouched for the entire first half.

Is Mills trying to make us the only former FA Cup winners to play non-league football?

You know, now that I mull it over, I really rather think he is.