...How long until Hockaday resigns?
Today was the biggest pointer so far that this club under the tenure of Colin Gordon, Rob Brown and Dave Hockaday have resigned themselves to relegation from the top echelon of non league football and are now looking forward eagerly to life at a lower level than we have been in thirty three years. We were warned by Forest Green fans that Hockaday was tactically inept and so it proved today.
Then again the referee was also inept!
I won't bother going into a blow by blow account because we didn't really have any blows to remember. We began the game with a couple of changes from the Cheltenham game a few days ago with Elton N'Gwatala starting for the first time in place of Lathaniel Rowe-Turner and Jordan Jones coming in for Luke Maxwell. Hockaday had obviously learnt from Saturday that we needed a creative player on the pitch with Dino Fazlić out suspended hence N'Gwatala coming in and we started off ok with two teams that looked equally matched in terms of ability.
That went to pot when the referee inexplicably awarded Forest Green a penalty after Matt Young was caught the wrong side of Elliot Frear in the penalty area. Young barely touched Frear and the ex Salisbury winger didn't fall forwards in the slightest or fall/dive to the ground but he did attempt to handle the ball has it struck him on the chest. The ref ignored that and pointed to the spot before booking Young for the offence.
Jon Parkin despatched the gift easily and put his side an un-deserved 1-0 up. Minutes later Frear and Young tangled again out on the touch line with Frear going down a little too easily under the challenge and the ref couldn't wait to pull out a second yellow followed by the red. Down to ten men we needed to re-group and Jones moved to the full back position.
Obviously we needed to get the goal back, even with ten men, and that was going to be hard but we continued to give FGR a game. Chances were hard to come by for both sides and we had the first real chance when N'Gwatala fired just wide of the upright. For FGR Brett Williams came the closest when he put one just past the post too.
So far we looked good enough to maybe get a goal back with ten men after Hockaday had spoken to the team at half time and tweaked a bit here and tweaked a bit there.