Deano Inspiration Not Enough

By A Fan At The Ground
February 11 2006

Dean Keates is back at Bescot. And we may not have won (well we didn’t did we?!) but at least with diminutive Deano back at the Bezzler there is hope. Deano was a hero, but in true story book fashion, there were villains too.

Mad Man Timm for one - he picked up the ball on the half way line around the twenty minute mark but felt a pain in his back… So down he went, in a crumpled heap, completely ignoring the ball. Seconds later Andy Keogh had smacked a twenty yarder past Oakes and in.

Captain Deano was everywhere though and ten minutes later the sponsors Man of the Match popped up on the edge of the Scunny box to fire majestically into the roof of the net.

But then Scunny struck again with one of those training ground set pieces, you know, where it looks like they’ve messed it up and run into each other?! That was just a decoy though ‘cos Neil MacKenzie hit a low drive into the net – Oakesy was fooled like the rest of us obviously.

Our keeper wasn’t having the best of games and we were wishing Joe Murphy, or dare I utter the words ‘Jimmy’ and ‘Walker’, were in between the sticks instead. Then all of a sudden Scunny were in only for Oakes to tip over a fizzing drive. Minutes later he could only parry a shot from Joe Blogs and his mate headed the rebound goalwards only for Oakes to claw it over the bar to gasps of amazement from the bloke next to me.

Villain number two rose to prominence after 69 minutes. Devlin challenged for a header, went up with his elbows and was shown a red card. Having not seen a video replay, the fan in me blames the exceptionally poor referee… Devlin doesn’t play many games does he?! His three game ban starts next week.

Managerless, in a relegation battle, down to ten men and losing at home… to Scunthorpe. Four thirty pm was not a good time to be a Saddler. Four thirty two pm was slightly better. Peady’s long ball wasn’t cut out by a Scunny defender (maybe he’d been watching too much of Mark Wright?! Stop playing him in defence Mr Manager, perrrrlease!) and Andrew Barrowman lobbed home the equaliser.

Two – two it ended, but we could have won it. Keatesy’s cross looped onto the bar before a Chelsea-esque break involving Deano, Ishy and Barrowman allowed Nicholl’s a shot on goal. Alas, his strike was blocked and the dream comeback was just that…a dream.