After an extended break we drifted back to the SCL, collectively curious to see what Leam Richardson had sculpted during those 16 days without football. The answer, sadly, was akin to the weather: a bit damp. The early tempo from the Stevenage fixture never showed up, the flanks offered little incision and everyone looked as if their energy was as soaked as their shirts.
And here comes the contradiction: they need to be worked harder to build the fitness that has been clearly absent. That lack of
conditioning seeped into every passage of play, where any semblance of zip seemed reserved solely for the pitch. Maybe the instruction was to conserve energy after the late fitness collapse in the previous match, but the result was an opening half that jogged rather than sprinted.
This muted work rate produced a performance that spluttered throughout. In midfield, Lewis Wing and Charlie Savage appeared to play within themselves. Wing managed the neat trick of being both good and bad in the same half-hour spell, like a footballing Schrödinger’s cat.
We repeatedly fell into the old Noel Hunt loop of passing the ball around the back with no forward progress, only for it to return to Wing, who had started the whole sequence in the first place.
I know this may not be the popular stance, but the quarterback act is wearing thin. It slows everything, allows the opposition to assemble their deckchairs and leaves us hoping the low-percentage ping upfield actually behaves itself.
But the lack of urgency is not Wing’s alone. Time after time we shifted the ball quickly to Kelvin Abrefa, only to stall, hesitate and give Rotherham time to rebuild their human wall. The appetite for risk was missing, replaced by a sort of tactical thumb-twiddling.
The man in the middle
The unwanted main event though was the referee, Alan Young, and his travelling troupe of interpretive rule-makers. I try not to go after officials because it feels like shouting into a stiff breeze, but this was a display of such bewildering inconsistency that one wondered whether the laws of the game had been replaced by rules drawn from cloth bag.
A sliding tackle worthy of a yellow ended with a free-kick taken several postal codes away. A handball in the box was missed by all three officials. Kamari Doyle was bundled over in the area in a manner that would be a foul absolutely anywhere except, apparently, inside the box – where football’s version of diplomatic immunity applies.
We even saw an offside given against Rotherham despite Paudie O’Connor being the last player to head the ball. Their goalkeeper, Cam Dawson, was warned for time-wasting in the first half – a charming piece of theatre that changed nothing, because he continued to dawdle like a man late for absolutely nothing.
Free-kicks were awarded when the team already had possession for a good few seconds. The whole affair was so staccato that it was no wonder the match never breathed properly.
Rant over. I solemnly swear not to talk about a referee again this season. Probably. Potentially. No promises.
Teething issues
Beyond the officiating circus, it’s obvious we’re still in the early chapters of The Richardson Project. The shape is better and suits the squad, but we need more variety. Randell Williams seemed to be the unlucky victim of the lopsided setup where the right-hand side is miles higher than the left. Play funnels into Abrefa and Matt Ritchie, the latter drifting inside to complete the box midfield.
Doyle’s inexperience shows when he opts for the safe backwards pass, rather than lifting his gaze. But he’s hardly alone. On several occasions we manoeuvred ourselves into promising pockets, only for the ball to bounce back to the centre-backs or Wing, as if obeying some gravitational pull towards the middle.
These are teething issues, though, and there’s no magic trick to fix them. Unless Savage’s right foot counts – and it just might.
His goal of the season contender was an outrageous thunderping that somehow sucked the air out of the stadium while refilling it at the same time. The technique, the flight, the sense that time slowed out of respect – it was pure joy.
A strike worthy of winning any match, but not this one. Instead, this was a task failing successfully: progress wrapped in frustration and one unforgettable wallop from Savage that offered a glimpse of something brighter.
