Brigg Town 1 v Scunthorpe United 5 - Friendly

Wednesday 14th July 2010

Pre Season Friendly
At the Hawthorns, Brigg

Brigg Town (1) 1 Jason Maxwell 10 (ish)
Scunthorpe United (2) 5 Matt Godden 31, Michael Rayne 43, Rob Jones 50, 65, Adam Boyes 76
Admission £6 Programme £1 (for a piece of A4 paper folded in half, not likely!)

Actually Brigg is quite modern these days, even the one eyed banjo plucker
that serenades you as you enter uses an electric amplifier circa 2010

To date, I've already seen loads of football this season, but none that I could actually officially tick off and count as an official game under the ever more picky Groundhoppers convention rules and regulations.
The red bibs v yellow bibs training games on the Manton Athletic Ground have been a joy to watch and without giving too much away, the Worksop Town Under 19's are going to be well prepared and ready to go when the season starts for real.
Tonight the lure of the liniment, the roar of the grease paint and the smell of the crowd got the better of me and for my sins I got six goals and a completely one sided, Non League home side completely being outclassed by their local Championship side mismatch, by way of a 'reward' for caving in to my match attending addiction.

Woo hoo! The first 'Ave it!' caption of 2010-11

It was a very last minute decision to even go to the Hawthorns for this 7pm kick off, but each and every journey needs a starting point and with Pontefract Collieries v Scarborough Athletic having fallen by the wayside, Brigg is as good a place to begin as any.

Scunthorpe started like they fully intended to make the obvious gulf in class between the two sides count tonight and they could've already been four goals to the good if their forwards hadn't taken on the persona of one legged men competing in a bum kicking competition during the opening exchanges.
However following yet another vainglorious attack by the Iron, Brigg's keeper cleared the ball up-field and Dan Barrett knocked a slide rule pass into the path of Jason Maxwell who ran on, waited for the Scunthorpe keeper to come charging out in an attempt to narrow the angles and then neatly slotted the ball home into the visitors goal on ten minutes.

For the next 20 minutes Scunny kept attacking in waves, but Brigg cut through them on the counter attack several times and though the score wasn't a true reflection of United's dominance, the Zebras were getting closer and closer to adding to their slender lead as the game went on.

Brigg line up to play the 'pump it over the council houses' game

But on 31 minutes Scunthorpe finally set about nailing the lid on their neighbours resistance when Matt Godden either 1) took his time to find his spot to drill home the equaliser or, 2) scuffed his shot slightly which deceived the Brigg defence and the ball nestled fortuitously in the back of the net, depending on which side of the M180 you happen to come from.

As a complete neutral, I would say Godden didn't strike it cleanly, but it went in anyway and they all count.

Former Mansfield Town and Sheffield Wednesday keeper Kevin Pressman
puts Scunny's substitute keeper through his paces during the break.
I think the KP on his tracksuit top are his initials, not his sponsors, probably.
Left click all photographs for full size image

Just beforeefore the break the Iron were in front, when Michael Raynes punished the Brigg defence for not dealing with a corner ... it was as simple a tap in effort as he'll ever get.

Half time 1-2

As is the norm in these games, there was virtually a complete personnel change for the second half. In a moment of uncharacteristic rage, I acted completely out of character and actually shouted out something VERY rude at one of the Scunthorpe subs as he was coming on, because of his Hibs connections.
But my abusive gusto probably fell on deaf hideous comedy sticky out ears, because he isn't entirely flavour of the month with the SUFC fans and several of them weren't exactly being shy about letting him know how unpopular the decision to send him out on the pitch was.

Of course Rob Jones, the substitute in question, scored not once, but twice, both headers from corners, the second one with an impressive amount of precision and power and the fickle element of the crowd all of a sudden had forgotten his completely useless 2009-10 campaign and were cheering their little socks off.

I wasn't!

In fact I was dreading him getting on the end of another cross to complete his hat trick.

He didn't!

But he did drop back into defence as Scunny shut up shop as the game disappeared into the distance and beyond Brigg's reach.

Rob Jones (5) warming up at half time

Adam Boyes netted a fifth goal for the visitors on 76 minutes by which time Brigg Town had adopted an 'if we don't kick them and just let them steamroller us they might come back for another money spinning friendly next year' approach to what was left of the game.
The Championship side spotting how polite their hosts were being reciprocated by not totting up too much of an embarrassing winning margin.

Pre season football, though not entirely meaningless, isn't meant to be taken too seriously either ... and for my part I knew that before I even headed to the Hawthorns tonight and it's my own fault if sometimes the excitement factor is somewhat lacking.

So as regards going to friendlies in future, I probably won't be watching any more ever again ... until this weekend at the very least.

Are you sure lads!? A slight typo vis the score on the Scunny fans forum.

You didn't think nobody had noticed before you amended it did you?