It is so hard to predict what sort of game you are going to see whenever you watch Rovers these days. We may have turned over high-flyers Northampton the week before, yet the prospect of taking all the points off rock-bottom Cambridge seemed all the more daunting, judging by the performance we saw. Ryan Clarke once again emerged from the contest with most of the plaudits after a series of impressive stops, saving the best until last when, whilst diving the other way, he managed to flick his finger-tips to the ball and divert it just over the bar. He blocked a fair few one-on-one opportunities too and against a side without an away win all season, we really should not have needed such heroics from our goalkeeper to rescue us from defeat. We had been very fortunate to go in front in the first half, as Cambridge had already seen a goal disallowed and had other moments that made the home fans nervous early on. The opening goal came from yet another penalty, and a dubious one at that, given when Craig Disley surged into the box and appeared to fall on top of the defender, who was between him and the ball. We must be providing extra fluffy towels in the referee's room at the moment because we've been awarded five spot-kicks at home this season, missing just one of them when Jamie Forrester failed to convert his second of the match against Bury back in August. Some teams can go a whole year without getting one and strangely we had five penalties given to us last season as well, again all at the Mem. With Forrester (our most in-form striker) stranded on the bench for this game, top scorer Junior Agogo took responsibility for this particular twelve-yarder and finished well to give us an undeserved advantage. Our ascendancy lasted a matter of seconds though, as a swift attack at the other end resulted in an instant equaliser and but for Clarkey in goal, the Us could have gone on to score a few more. So why were we having such a hard time breaking down the worst team in the league? For a start, our two best midfielders going forward, Disley and Ali Gibb, were not at the height of their powers and Gibb in particular rarely got the better of experienced Cambridge left-back Stuart Bimson. Disley hit the post early on and won the penalty, so understandably there were jeers when his number flashed up on the substitution board but it emerged afterwards that he was only going to play half the game anyway due to his recent virus. Conversely, the withdrawal of Lee Thorpe met with sarcastic cheers from some parts of the ground, which I felt was a bit harsh. Nobody could deny that he'd just played his third stinker in a row, but it turns out that he too was suffering with illness and he has looked a bit washed-out of late. A question that has to be asked is why Thorpe was out there in the first place if the management knew he was so out-of-sorts. As the afternoon wore on, he was getting more and more flak from the crowd and this would not have helped his game. If Ian Atkins wanted to persevere with a target man, he could have utilised Richard Walker from the bench to inject a bit of freshness into our weary attack, instead of leaving Thorpe on to huff and puff. © Chris Chappell - Friday 14th January 2005 Back to Index