Matt Pocock is State of the Game’s new Swindon Town columnist

Swindon Town, after losing bitterly to Wrexham, needed to bounce back. Good old Wisey was no doubt piling on the stories and the dressing room pep talks, like an army ready to take back the trenches. There are only so many words you can use to describe that Swindon game. Pessimism, Pressure, Power, Problems and Progress.

First, Pessimism. All around the ground, the air was clear, there were no signs of riots and the breeze was blowing. Nice. Calm. Quiet. So I start talking to a Swindon fan.
‘Yep. We’ve lost. Beginning of the end. Conference next year.’
And I just thought ‘Why?’. Why all the pessimism? Its so easy to get caught up in this media nonsense and forget about all the plus signs. We’ve got Ince, a talisman for a new future, on the teamsheet. We’ve got a cracking manager. We’ll crush MK Dons.

Now to the game. Pressure. The game was full of it. MK Dons cut through us like a knife through butter, and I was starting to think we’d been shot down and the grumpy soul outside might have been right. It seemed so wrong that we should go down, when we’ve made the best start to the season in a long time.

And we kicked back. Jerel Ifil was magnificent in defence, a credit to the team and to the manager, though sadly lacking in his clearances. Weston and Roberts were making a formidable double act down the right wing, and Bresovan was solid as always, though barely having to make a save all game.

Now to Power. Ince, though flashes of governor brilliance flashed through the Swindon sky, never got into the swing and never seemed to receive the ball enough from the other players. Though it was his first game in only he knows how long, so we can’t blame him. From the optimist’s view, he’s got dynamite up his sleeves. From the pessimist’s view, he’s like Ozzy Osbourne on the telly. He’s too old and no-one knows how the hell he got there.

Problems. Well we were lacklustre in the central midfield. It was poor to watch as they passed the ball around the two in the centre and got plenty of crosses in; occasionally, on their part, Argentinian-like presence around the box. Christian Roberts, God help him, dived horrifically on the edge of the manager’s box, causing almost a scrum around the referee in a desperate attempt to sway the decision. Though the rest of the game was fair play, we can’t be doing with that. Especially not in a league 2 team in the first 10 minutes.

And finally, Progress. Wrexham was a bad mistake left best forgotten, and the Swindon guys are on the way back up. Now our next table placing depends not on us, but the other two rivals in the automatic promotion spots. If we lose at Peteboro, we could very easily slip desperately needed places for a place in the play-offs, and could find it really tough to make our way back up. Now for the average incurably pessimistic football fan, this is obviously the way we are going, but I say that Wise came here to make changes, and getting us to the top has more than proved his battle plan.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 10:00 am and is filed under Swindon Town. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.