Over bar the shouting

Poor end to season cost dreams of promotion via playoffs

The Northampton fan who described our end of season form as “thoroughly deflating” couldn’t have put it any better.

In fact, the sight of the Michelin Man hot air balloon, filled with suicidal emo teenagers, punctured and ditching into the North Sea in mid winter would have been a more buoyant image than watching Northampton and Bury going through the motions on Saturday.

I don’t know what the saddest thing was – watching two sides who had severely mucked up their promotion pushes or the reaction of the Bury fans when they took the lead. You’d think they had equalised in the last minute of the F.A Cup final rather than scoring against the run of play in a game which, even if they had won 10-0 was not going to get them into the playoffs.

It was an embarrassing sight to see a bald Bury supporter with glasses jumping around like mad after Ryan Lowe had capitalised on a Craig Hinton slip. The disturbed fan was put in his place by the Northampton supporters, who chanted “Check the scores you’re staying down!” to the tune of “Tom Hark” at him.

Breakdown

Maybe he hadn’t seen the score line in Darlington, where Dagenham had gone one-nil up to cement their place in the playoffs, or perhaps he was having a nervous breakdown at the realisation that Bury had slipped out of the promotion frame at precisely the worst time. Nevertheless, he was given a brutal (verbal) pasting by the Northampton singers in the West Stand and cut a forlorn figure for the rest of the game, as Darlington showed no sign of scoring.

Northampton dominated against a poor Bury side – as they had done in the previous six or seven matches – but couldn’t turn possession into goals. The Shakers, who brought a fair away following of delusional fans who believed they could still go up, got on the scoresheet first – totally against the run of play – thanks entirely to a Craig Hinton clanger.

Hinton, who is somehow captain, has cost Northampton at least 12 points this season and blew another two points up into the ether by lamely attempting a bicycle kick clearance, only for the ball to fall for Bury’s top scorer.

As I’ve said, by this point the Shakers fans were jumping around like they’d been served up the winning Euromillions ticket, but they were soon back in their seats in fright when Billy McKay attempted to take advantage of Bury’s defensive indecision by taking the ball round the keeper, only to slice the ball agonisingly wide.

Lunging

Things went from bad to worse for Bury in the 66th-minute when James Poole was sent of for a studs-up challenge on John Johnson. The funny thing was that up until that moment, every one of Johnson’s tackles had been lunging and Johnson managed to recover pretty quickly from the challenge, which saw Poole disappear into the dressing room with his tail between his legs.

God only knows how the Bury fans were feeling by this point, down to 10 men with Dagenham resolutely holding off dangerous Darlington; it was probably enough to make grown men cry.

The Northampton fans on the other hand, being well versed in this League Two soul destruction, were more annoyed with the fact that we could just not get the ball in the net.

With Bury down to 10 men on the last day of the season you’d think Ian Sampson would throw caution to the wind and put three or four players up front. After all, the Shakers were not going to score in a month of Sundays (having only one shot on target all game incidentally) but no, Sammo takes off a striker to bring one on and leaves four players to marshal Bury’s lone substitute striker, whose name escapes me.

Last-gasp

It was Sod’s law that as many Cobblers fans made their way out of the ground at the sight of attacking midfielder Kevin Thornton playing libero in a defensive back five with seconds remaining, Bayo Akinfenwa scored a last-gasp equaliser.

To this very moment I don’t know what he did to score. Maybe he did a flamboyant ‘lollypop’ before ‘megging’ the final defender and flicking the ball with his heel over the despairing keeper, a la Ossie Ardiles in Escape to Victory.

Maybe Craig Hinton surged upfield before tripping over himself in this style of Inspector Clouseau while the ball rolled and stopped on the goal line, and Bayo wafted it in with a blow football straw. Alas we’ll never know.

I’ll sign off here. Thanks to the Bury fans, Steve Staunton, Seb Harris (go team!) and everyone else that has entertained me over the course of the season.

And one final thing: STAY BAYO STAY!