Crewe Alexandra (H) - League 2 - 10th August 2024
Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Anticipatory emotions include fear, anxiety, hope and trust.
When the anticipated event fails to occur, it results in disappointment (for a positive event) or relief (for a negative one).
So sayeth Wikipedia. Between these two camps, we oscillate. We look forward to it. We worry about it. We are hopeful we can trust our team, our club, ourselves to shoot up the table, play good football in front of a roaring tide of togetherness as we scale the heights of promotion, shoving in a cup giant killing along the way.
Main Stand pensioners will embrace the black clad youth of the Holker Street End. The Popular Side a wave of positivity, happily clapping along. Glad all over.
It’s all too beautiful. Never has happened that way. For some, this provokes relief. These the folk who protect themselves from crushing heartbreak by cheerily predicting disaster and every pre-season moment as a harbringer of doom.
Signings have weakened the side. We are skint/in turmoil/sleepwalking to relegation. Our bubble will burst, Blood will flow and the town will subside back to the netherworld of non-league in a tide of recrimination, sackings and tears. Because nothing good can ever come of hope and it will die. Because we are Barrow and it never goes right- hardwired to suffer, since 1901.
Up first into the maelstrom of nonsense then is the rather more prosaic reality: Crewe at home. Usually technically OK, solid mid to upper L2 side with forays into the League above. Wembley heartbreak a few months ago, selling on but still with old warhorses such as Demetriou to the fore and Kane Hemmings in to provide a bit of dash and guile.
We looked solid in the blazing sunshine of colourful anticipation, in front of a slightly disappointing home crowd. In the Stand, unsettlingly hot. Niall Canavan’s addition a lovely pre match surprise for most. Children delighted in clappers provided as an incentive for their parents to move to Canada and a Maple Leaf added to the HSE.
What I have liked so far is the way we could see what Stephen Clemence is trying to do. The two sitters, Campbell and Spence, scurried hither and thither. Their job: cleaning up any messes and setting Mahoney and Co on their way. The full backs and wide attackers sat higher, pressed higher. We will likely get caught doing this a few times, but I guess the dynamic duo are there to sense the danger too.
They didn’t when a Hemmings header flicked the top of the bar. But we didn’t look over phased either and continued about our business.
A goal! From a set piece! Mahoney cross, defence a bit sleepy, and excellent aggressive foray from Vassell and the ball bundled into goal. Lovely stuff. We conceded lots of these over the last few seasons so it was great to be on the winning side of ‘defend your box properly’.
Crewe buzzed around, as they do, without dominating, and we were competent rather than earth shattering. Rory Feely runs towards a challenge as if he’s about to scatter pigeons but he’s got a big heart, stamina, physical presence and was much to the fore defensively.
The bar was hit again, this time more of a let off as skilful work by Tracey saw the ball hit the post with Farman rooted.
Half time brought a move out of the unbearably hot sunshine to the shade of The Steelworks End. I settled near the tunnel, looking wistfully at where the cage once was in simpler times.
On we went. Both sides laboured away. A slew of substitutions brought us a lively cameo from Neo Eccleston and Rory Feeley almost undid his excellent afternoon with a reckless moment. All was tidied away and we finished the game the stronger. Victory with a set piece, far from a classic, thanks for the three points.
Stephen Clemence, to no one’s surprise, is more on the side of enthusiastic clapping from towards the centre circle rather than the fist pumping, vein throbbing, screaming like a Druid sacrificing a goat celebrations of the Wildean regime. Less entertaining maybe, but job jobbed and a bit of a relief. Team looked OK.
He is in the ‘polite and wary’ school of interviewee. But he was happy and pleased with the team and had every right to be. We’ll have to wait for predictions, especially on future line-ups as he appears to subscribe to the David Dunn school of media training on that one. If Port Vale did have any spies there, we can sleep easy tonight.
Briefly on to various Radio Cumbria moments that ridiculously occupied the fans forum in the absence of glaring highs and lows on the pitch. James Phillips had been at the Kool Aid again. It appeared Carlisle had managed to win a game of football by scoring once and conceding four times. And this all without wizened gibberer-in-chief Lumie to pour even more slurry on the punditry. Hellfire.
If the managerial axe falls, Paul Simpson will flourish as a hand wringing apologist, somewhere like Thames Water perhaps, or Aviva, where a rueful range of increasingly unlikely excuses seems never to result in changes. They are much in a lather that we may have the temerity to get a result next week. Bless em.
Plenty of cause for anticipation then, but before we go up there, Port Vale. Great to be back.
*not actually a Crewe fan
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