[SaltergateBorn]

After the first game, I said that I could see us winning at Billericay and wouldn`t put it past us to beat Grimsby. It seems that I got at least the first half right and I`m still holding out hopes for the second – innocent, naive fool that I am. I know that it`s very ungracious to say “ I told you so” but being right about anything to do with this stupid bloody game is such a rare event for me that I hope nobody minds too much if I wallow in it just for a few minutes.

I thought long and hard about whether to make the trip, but in the end I did. I lived in west Essex for a while, many years ago, and one of my sons lives on the Herts / Essex border now, so the missus and I decided to combine a trip down memory lane with a family visit and a couple of nights` stay. As it turned out, I`m glad we did.

I haven`t seen any of the highlights but, yes, we played okay. Having said that, Billericay will undoubtedly be feeling this morning just like we`ve felt a few times this season; if only...... For a good 10 minutes before they equalised they had us on the rack and it really was only a matter of time. They missed one or two golden chances, helped by our defence being in full panic mode at times, and I think it was lucky for us that we got our second so quickly afterwards. (Credit to our lads for nor bottling it at that point though, as they might have done in the past, and for coming straight back at them; that suggests good spirit in the team.) That put them on the back foot again straightaway, made them come at us and gave us the chance to play on the counter more and more as time ran out. If we hadn`t got our noses back in front so quickly, they could easily have taken the game away from us, I reckon; as it was, we could well have scored a couple more on the break.

Billericay are a decent side, no doubt about it, and they have the confidence that comes from winning regularly – which we don`t as yet. Their midfield looked just as tidy as it was at the Proact and their forwards looked a lot more ‘co-ordinated’ than ours at times, I thought, particularly in that first 15 minutes or so after half-time. Apart from that spell, though, we looked just as threatening but ours threats seems to come more from individual pace than inter-play (if that makes any sort of sense).

Anyway, we made it through and we were all able to walk out of the ground without being pissed off as well as pissed on – it really did chuck it down all through the game. As I said to the bloke next to me after we got back in front , the way things have been going for us this season it would be just our luck if the ref abandoned it.

Didn`t happen, fortunately, so it`s Grimsby ahead. Somebody said it`s scheduled for Sunday afternoon so we get part-coverage by the BBC and earn £65k from it. Does anybody know whether that`s true?

[Devongone]

Yes it's true.

Yes you were right.

The strength of your feeling that we had every chance at Billericay after seeing the first game was one reason I wasn't surprised by the result.

I was surprised they didn't play O'Hara against us and that Emmanuel was sub, but if you start looking up their players' histories it should surprise no-one that they are doing well. If they were in our division they'd be aiming to do well.

The highlights I've seen we looked decent. Lee Shaw is a livewire, if we can get him scoring he'll make a real difference because the big thing was WE SCORED GOALS. It's a very obvious thing to say but if you think you can score a few it makes every aspect of the game easier. The reason you play desperate football is not because the manager orders it, but because you are actually desperate. Once you don't look like scoring you immediately start to panic about conceding.

[SaltergateBorn]

You clearly have more faith in my predictive abilities than I do, Dev, but it may evaporate fairly quickly after a weeks of my involvement in the Prediction League. It was nothing more than a hunch, really, as is my suspicion that we might get a result against Grimsby. I certainly wouldn`t recommend running down to the bookies on the back of it, though.

I really couldn`t pick a MoM; we were tucked away in a corner of the ground at low level, it rained non-stop and my eyesight isn`t what it was (I wasn`t even sure who got our first goal until half-time) so I really couldn`t be sure who was who at the far end of the ground at times. I certainly wouldn`t argue with Lee Shaw, though. He is agile, nippy and has a low centre of gravity, all of which were ideal for those skidpan conditions; defenders just couldn`t turn quick enough to keep up with him. It`s a shame he couldn`t put that chance away; I think it would have done his confidence the power of good.

To be honest, apart from his goals I though Tom Denton was fairly anonymous throughout. Still, you really can`t argue with a hat-trick I suppose. We`ve all been crying out for somebody to start sticking the ball in the net and he did it on Tuesday.

[Devongone]

I (and Dancing) have kept saying under Caldwell and surprisingly Jack Lester we seemed to forget about those things at either end of the pitch - the goals. If you can stop 'em and score 'em you'll win.

No it wasn't your supernatural predictive ability SGB, it was your considered conclusion that we were well in the first game throughout ....... and that you couldn't see a reason that shouldn't be the case in the replay too. And you were obviously right. Billericay could have won too and you were right about that, but in the end we did.
Sometimes what people say just rings true. (And sometimes we're whistling in the dark.)