Two games of two halves

Jekyll-and-Hyde have nothing on us

Exeter blogger Pete Martin confuses himself and about 10,000 others after a strange old week that ended superbly for City…

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since my last missive on here. A 1-1 draw with Norwich City, a 1-1 draw with Yeovil Town and the first win of the season away to Carlisle United last Saturday have all floated downstream.

The first two of those, well, talk about the old “game of two halves!”. In reality it was two games of two halves, but not the same two halves. Having probably now confused you to the point of losing the will to live, let me explain.

In the Norwich game the Canaries scored first, leaving us a small mountain to climb. With a few of our hitmen out injured and Barry Corr suspended for three games after his red card at Elland Road on the first day, it was not looking good. Overall our play was matching theirs and, whilst probably not quite “just like watching Brazil”, there was plenty to enjoy. The difference was, they had put the ball in the net and we hadn’t. Cue Logie. Richard Logie, supersub extraordinaire, hit the ground running by coming on and grabbing the equaliser within one minute of his appearance. Already something of a cult hero for getting the winning goal that saw us promoted to League One last term, here he pops up again with a great goal at an important moment. In this game we appeared lethargic and leggy in the first half but came out with all guns blazing in the second.

Against Yeovil it was the reverse, we were showing Yeovil a clean pair of heels in the first half and went in at the break 1-0 up, thanks to a stunning own goal by their captain, Stefan Stam. In the second period we really failed to turn up for the most part and they snatched a point with a cracker of a shot from Mason after we had contrived to put ourselves almost permanently in danger by faffing around too much at the back.

Finally

Last Saturday saw the long trek to Carlisle where our two previous, most recent, visits had resulted in two good 2-0 away wins, the latter of those being at the end of the season in which Carlisle won their way back to the league from the Conference. Could we do it again? Three times in succession? Well, yes, we could – and we did. Mostly it was backs-to-the wall stuff. Ninety plus minutes of avid concentrated defending with the odd foray into the Carlisle area. Fortunately, one of those few forays resulted in the world’s fittest veteran, Marcus Stewart, becoming vertically challenged in the penalty box and the reliable Stewart calmly slotted away to send the 266 City fans who made the 350-mile jaunt up to Cumbria all go “sucking menthol” in delirious excitement. Then it was back to backs-to-the-wall to wrap up the three points and carry them lovingly home to Devon.

The match seemed to have many similarities to that we played up at Bury last season in League Two. Then we grabbed a goal from Logie after just seven minutes and subsequently threw up the shutters, taking one hell of a battering from Bishop and his team-mates for the remainder of the game, before heading off south having completed a very professional smash-and-grab raid.

So, four games gone, two at home and two away, five points and tenth in the table. I’ll take that thank you very much!

Now for Milton Keynes this coming Saturday. I won’t say “Dons” because, for me, they are not the Dons. But that’s another story.