Laughing Hyena!

I drove up to the Showgrounds last Saturday and as it was lashing and I was early, I turned Radio Ulster to get a bit of pre-match craic. At that time every Saturday, unless there's something more important like rugby or tiddlywinks (I can't tell the difference, anyway), they usually have someone involved in football, past or present, to give few hints about his personal life. For instance, what's his favourite song, what's the most or least important number on his phone, in other words a load of crap. But occasionally you get a laugh and so it was on Saturday. The recipient was none other than retired referee, Alan 'I'm never right' Snoddy. I was flabbergasted, not only by the presenters who had the gall to ask the man who blighted every match he ever officiated in, but I was even more shocked that Snoddy had agreed to bare his soul, so to speak.

One of the things he was at pains to point out he said and I quote, 'managers only complain when their side loses', I never heard so much nonsense in my life. It was typical of the matches Alan was officiating in, that both managers were astounded by 90% of his decisions and both sets of spectators were dumbfounded. But I have to say that matches where he was officiating, were never dull, if they were threatening to be dull, he would drop a clanger, like awarding a team a goal when everybody in the ground could see it wasn't or sending somebody off for a questioning a decision or if he didn't like the colour of their eyes. He always seemed to me to have a secret smile on his face, perhaps he was smiling in the knowledge that he was going to influence the game one way or another and maybe he had a need to have everybody hate him and he generally succeeded.

But I digress here, as usual the Sky Blues showed promise in the 1st half against the Glens but didn't come out in the 2nd half and paid the price. But they created enough chances to win the game, but it would have been cruel luck on the opposition who at times played us off the park, but I usually say, football is a game about taking your chances. Guilty of this in the 1st half was Cush, when he shot straight at Glens keeper Morris, when he should've scored and only Captain Jenks knows how he missed from point-blank range when United were leading 1-0, crashing a shot against the crossbar when it looked easier to score. But the biggest miss of all came in 2nd half, when Liggie miskicked with the goal at his mercy. If we had been having summery weather, he could've blamed the firmness of the pitch, but he had no such excuses, it was a dreadful miss and would've made the score 3-3 and who knows what could've happened then.

As it was, the Glens broke down the pitch and scored another goal to tie up the points, what was the United defence thinking of to leave Ruddy (who had been getting a tanking all day), one-on-one with his tormentor, Glens 'man of match' Jordan Stewart, it was foolhardy in the extreme. Next up for United is a trip to Solitude to play the champions, Chickenville and United need to do something to stop the rot which has saw them concede 30 goals in 14 matches so far in the league campaign. Chickenville are not firing on all cylinders this term yet, but they have a couple of prolific strikers in Boyce and Gormely and their midfielders are no slouches when it comes to putting the ball in the net, so we need everybody on their game. We don't normally play well on artificial surfaces, but there's three of them in the league now and we best get used to them, where better to start than at Solitude on Saturday, COSB