For the first time ever, I’m going to quote what someone said sitting behind me in the County Ground. It was a 6-year old child, banging on the seats and clapping with the chants, with the football knowledge of a small dog trapped in a bass drum it’s entire life.

He said: ‘I thought Swindon were rubbish. But now they’re good.’

A few days ago I said that Wisey taking away the day off from the players was a bad thing. But I saw it work today. The first 5 minutes, as in any game, were scrappy. But then we found our rock. And boy, did we dive from it.

The first goal (Oooh boy, when do I ever get to say that) came from the pure genius of Fola Onibuje, cutting through the Grimsby left-back like a warm knife through butter. A couple of step-overs in front of the keeper, then whipped it past him to the waiting Michael Pook on the far post. All he had to do was hot-wire the ball into the net.

Beautiful. Truly beautiful. I’ve been raving about Big Fola for a while now, but he’s starting to flourish with regular games. Every bit about the way he plays suggests an all-rounder with pace and power and a head which wins most 50-50’s. He’s a perfect lower-league player. This game he popped up all over the pitch. Wise must have recognised his potential so is letting him run free as a winger and striker, just behind Lee Peacock.

Then another piece of genius from Andy Monkhouse. He’d been quiet all day, as our left wing always seems to be. But he got the ball from the midfield, and rampaged from left to right, then performed open heart surgery as he scalpelled the ball into the opposite bottom corner. It came from absolutely nothing.

Personally, I’d never really seen Monkhouse play. I always thought he was a bog-standard left midfielder with some central value. Now I’m going to have to re-think my thoughts. A left mid with two cracking feet and a homing pigeon’s sense for goal? Nice one.

Half time came and went, and Wise started moving people around. He brought on Ricky Shakes for Royce Brownlie, who’d been quiet all day. And as Wise was getting into the swing of his managerial prowess, Peter Brezovan went down.

He’s been our best player this season. Voted August player of the month, and faultless for the entire day, he jumped up ? A perfect model of a gazelle ? to collect the ball. But he must have taken a knock on the way up because he landed perfectly horizontally on the ground, and didn’t get up.

We held our collective breath for almost two minutes, and the stadium was silent. All I could hear was an old lady screaming ?Vhat vill ve do vizzout Mr Brezovan? Waawaahhh?. Ok, that’s a lie.

And this is where Wise’s managering fell down a bit. He didn’t have a substitute keeper. Now surely, you take one to every game. You don’t call on Adie Williams to do it. Nope. Well that’s what he did. We had to suffer watching a central defender struggle to keep the ball out of the back of the net. Which was kind of funny, in the most sick, satirical way you can imagine.

Then Wise brought on our new loan player, Alex Rhodes. We’ve got him for a month from Brentford but please, dear god let him stay. What a genuinely exciting, speedy, Owen-like figure he presents on the field. It’s like he’s on a video tape running at double speed compared to the rest of the players. I saw the keeper actually nearly slip up because Alex was running at him. Unbelievable. He scored a goal which was given offside, but rightly so.

So it was up to Lee Peacock to finish the game. Running on from a long ball from defense, the centre back made a mistake and let the ball through. Peacock lobbed the keeper from outside the box. It rattled off the far post and dive-bombed into the hearts of the fans. The game was ours.

In retrospect, there were no bad performances. Jack Smith played out of not only his own skin, but out of his entire family’s skin, his most notable move running through the entire midfield to slot a perfect pass to Peacock. Curtis Weston put in another fantastic performance at centre mid, showing his true potential. Jerel Ifil and Adie Williams were truly perfect in their roles, and let nothing slip by. I can’t think of a single bad performance.

So finally, as you start to waver. You may want a drink now. You may want to celebrate. You may be a Grimsby fan, but who cares about you? We won 3-0. Finally, a good result to shout about. We’ve only moved up a place, but if we’d have lost we’d have only been fifth. But today represented more than a league table place. It represented a new beginning. A new start to the season. A new player on loan, and a new reason to buy the new home kit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 11:30 am and is filed under Swindon Town. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.