Another emotional day at the Academy.

Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Mike says –

“The sight of David cheered us all up before the game and the sad news about Jim Martin brought a reality check to our “hard done by” feelings after it.

David is on the mend but it will be a slow process. He rightly got a great ovation when he limped into the dressing room and his return home has given everyone a lift.

Wheelie Jim as Craig said last night, did a lot of unselfish work for the club. He saved us a fortune in legal fees and was generous to a fault. He was as bright as a button, a master of the keyboard and although Jim and I had our run-ins, there was a mutual respect between us. He’ll be sadly missed by all at the club and by many on the P&B Forums.

I was really down after the defeats to Whitehill and Tynecastle earlier in the season. We played poorly in both games and deserved what we got. I wasn’t down after our defeat to Forfar in the Scottish and I wasn’t down after the game yesterday until I heard the sad news about Jim.

The Vale are a good side, a very good side and they like to get the ball down and pass it around at pace. They started more brightly than us and caused us problems in the wide areas early on. For more than an hour though we dominated possession and dominated the game. We passed the ball well and created enough chances to win the game in 90 minutes far less take the game into extra time.

The Vale defended valiantly and on the day got the rub of the green. They would argue the effort and fighting qualities they showed deserved the result and who am I to disagree. I only know our players were gutted as they know they should have and could have been looking forward to a final.

In Aaron Somerville the Vale have unearthed a genuine quality striker. When I’m asked at work tomorrow “what happened” I’ll say this young lad hit a side foot volley with his favoured left foot from the edge of the box through a crowded box into the top left hand corner. He then controlled the ball and hit one with his “swinger” into the right hand corner from 30 yards. I’ve only seen him twice so “swinger” may be a bit cruel but he’s scoring goals for fun and must have a real chance of stepping upstairs.

There were post mortems in the pub last night on the lines of “If Stewart had be there to do this – if Danny had been there to do that – if we had Deano’s left peg etc, etc.” I was having none of it. As we watched Man U dominate a game they weren’t going to win I was happy with the team we put out and happy with their performance for the last hour and more. They all got pass marks and they all work as hard as they could.

Sometimes in football it’s just not meant to be. Last week we scored six goals in under fifteen second half minutes against our biggest city rival. As they were sailing in from everywhere I was thinking “I wonder if we should be saving one or two of these for next week?”.  How right I was.”

Mike