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What a difference forty-eight hours can make. Wayne Carlisle must have wondered what had happened to him after going from match winner on Saturday to being substituted embarrassingly early on the Monday. Another brilliant free-kick and an opportunist piece of poaching won the spoils against his namesake opponents Carlisle United, and it just shows what a goalscoring midfielder can do for a team whose strikers had not registered in any of the opening three games. The winger from Lisburn in Northern Ireland banged in eight goals last year, which placed him joint second in the scoring charts for all competitions. Two of those were pinpoint free-kicks that won vital matches in the run-in, and after warming up this season with another beauty up at Ayr in July, he added one more to the fast-growing collection at Brunton Park when he curled his shot in at the near post. Many puns have been made about Carlisle scoring the goals that beat Carlisle, so perhaps Rovers should seek out other players with the same names as our rivals. There's a Brazilian who was recently playing for German side Kaiserslautern called Lincoln, while we could sign Cardiff defender Leyton Maxwell for our games with Orient; it is a pity too that Rod Hull is no longer around. Unfortunately our Wayne came crashing back to earth against Macclesfield on Monday afternoon where everything he tried went wrong. Almost all of his passes went astray and his crossing was beginning to trouble the residents in Alton Road when Ray Graydon called in his number after just 25 minutes. It always seems a bit harsh to haul someone off so early, as you feel that the victim of such a subbing has had no time to make amends. It could rock a player's confidence, especially to do so in front of a big home crowd, and for a manager it is a big gamble. Carlisle's Bank Holiday failings were not the only reasons Rovers were struggling, as Kevin Miller had been wrong-footed by a simple Macclesfield free-kick just two minutes in and then Ijah Anderson had volleyed the visitors two-up a little later, and it was hardly as if we were under siege. While it may have appeared a substitution primarily to get Wayne Carlisle off the pitch, perhaps Graydon was itching for a chance to get Graham Hyde on the field as soon as possible. Having been forced to pair Dave Savage with Rob Quinn in central midfield due to the injury situation at the start of the season, Hyde's recovery now meant that there was a more subtle option for the middle of the park, and what a performance he gave when he was introduced. By no means a spectacular player, Hyde anchors the midfield and sprays the ball around, hardly ever giving away possession. His speed of thought and positioning show the hallmarks of someone who has played at the top level for several years, and this made such a difference on Monday. Within ten minutes of his arrival, we had forced our way back to 2-2 with a tidy strike from Paul Tait and a brave close-range header from the more abrasive Quinn, and with the wind now firmly at our backs only a home win looked plausible. Calum Willock ran from one box to the other in an exciting climax to the game, but with a wonder-goal on the cards, his shot somehow found the outstretched limb of a desperate defender and we had to settle for a draw. On reflection, Graydon's decision to remove Carlisle turned out to be a good call, if a slightly fortunate one, but in this game you make your own luck and on this occasion he came up smelling of roses.
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