Left Pie-On: April

County home shirt 2013-14. illustration: Adam Poole

Saturday, Match 15. Up on the Wirral, a sad final whistle echoes out. A fifth defeat in six fixtures – this time against a relegation-threatened rival – has left Notts County seven points adrift of safety, rock bottom of SkyBet League One. Derry and Abbott’s side have gone toe to toe for ninety minutes at the last-chance saloon in Birkenhead. Two dreadful defences, a game full of drama, but ultimately for nothing. The Notts players drop to their knees in desolation. For the first time this season you can sense they’ve come to terms with our impending relegation. For all of Derry and Abbott’s best intentions, given the tools (for want of a better word) at their disposal and the paucity of time on their hands, the task at hand was ultimately too big.

Did Shaun himself admit as much in his post-match interview? Not exactly. We got the spiel about fat ladies singing, but she wasn’t just yet. In his words, however, she was warming up. It’s as close as he had come all season to sounding like he had considered throwing the towel in, accepting relegation, resigning himself to failure in the first task of his fledgling managerial career.

Yet fast-forward five games later and something quite miraculous has happened. A turn of events that’s barely explicable, unfathomable, and so not in keeping with the months of the season that had come to pass before it.

Just how had things gotten so desperate before that, though? Seven points adrift, and on top of that a plethora of clubs still with a number of fixtures in hand over us. The speed at which things had unravelled was terrifying. Yet for all the doom and gloom enveloping Meadow Lane at the time, you only needed read back to January’s Left PieOn to recall a run of three straight victories lifting County to the dizzying heights of a season’s best position of sixteenth.

Notts' season in mid-March

Mind you, the five defeats in six in the here and now offered little hope, little to draw optimism from. A 2-0 belly tickling from eventually-promoted Wolves at Molineux and defeat by six unanswered goals at Rotherham must be allowed to pass into the annals of time without further comment, whilst a kid barely out of school hammered in a hat-trick for MK Dons at Meadow Lane in a 3-1 reversal. A surrendering of a 2-0 lead at home to Shrewsbury was merely another coffin nail. Certainly, a goalless draw at home to Leyton Orient was promising; certainly given a 5-1 pasting earlier in the season by the same team which appeared to move manager of the time Chris Kiwomya to tears. Throw into the mix the aforementioned Rotherham hammering a week previous and you’d have been brave to picture a clean sheet in this one for County.

By the time we travelled to Birkenhead for another defeat, there was a sense that this was it – do or die time. It was the game that sparked Ronan Murray into life, as he bagged the first of five goals in four games for his richest vein of form yet for Notts. Tranmere would score twice in three minutes to swing matters their way, ahead of a waggle of Alan Sheehan’s wand from 30 yards into the top corner. A Steve Jennings screamer put the seal on matters. The sight of the players on the ground at full time was the most disheartening spectacle of a season that had done little other than constantly kick us in the proverbials.

That was it. Nobody could be convinced otherwise. We were destined for League Two and the post mortems that had lingered for so long could be finalised. Who was to the blame: Derry? The board? Abbott? Everyone had their own answer, of course, each with its own differing set of variations along the way. The blame game stretched as far back as you could imagine, few stones left unturned in the hunt for a throat to strangle in anger.

Yet what was to follow in the immediate aftermath has been quite sensational – not least the home win against Port Vale this past weekend, quite easily the most satisfying result of the season on so many levels. The three points at the end of it lifted County out of the bottom four. Such scenes!

it would be a grim welcome in the Potteries for Port Vale

Three wins in four games had brought us back to the dance. While the 4-1 dispatching of Carlisle United on home soil might appear to tell a story, you’d be mistaken for thinking so. This game was about the growth of a group of players into a team over the course of 90 minutes. We were fortunate to find ourselves two goals up at half time in spite of being rather flaccid for large periods of the game. By the full-time whistle, you’d have backed us to beat anyone in the division, such was the level of improvement, a turnaround that has stood us in good stead ever since and leaves us with the very real chance of survival that we have today. Granted, Carlisle themselves are hardly in better form than Notts this year and currently occupy the fourth relegation spot, but let that take nothing away from the performance. Haydn Hollis scored twice, his first goals in professional football, sandwiching a Murray strike, but Gary Liddle’s fourth is a cert to go into the Meadow Lane Hall Of Fame, a spectacular bicycle kick connecting with Mustapha Dumbuya’s perfectly weighted cross.

Another side deep in the relegation mire are Crewe Alexandra, the destination one Tuesday night in another of what felt like a never-ending series of six pointers. Ronan Murray again shone with a second-half brace to spur Notts on just as they appeared to be tiring. That first away win in nearly two months – and only a third of the season – took us into a 2-0 victory against Colchester, much improved from the side we made look like a pub team en route to a 4-0 back in mid-December. There was a resoluteness in our play. Even when not at our best, we were back to having players who wanted to run through walls for the gaffer and his backroom staff – Murray started the show, Hollis finished it.

A week later, defeat at second-placed Brentford was always going to be about damage limitation. A Jimmy Spencer consolation in a 3-1 loss brought some cheer for the travelling County fans making the most of what could be their last trip to Griffin Park. Gone will be visits to the drinking establishments on each corner that for many a year fuelled this most fun of away days. Fair to say we ended things in style, singing the Great Escape theme tune all the way to our respective trains and buses. Well played indeed to all involved.

a pub at each corner: the perfect football ground

Which brings us bang up to date. To the events of Saturday 12 April. It’s difficult to pinpoint quite where to begin with the game against Port Vale. We fell behind to a Curtis Thompson own goal, a lad from the club’s youth programme, and he was heavily involved in their second – his attempted clearance was charged down (handled) by Myrie-Williams who bundled his way into the area, squaring the ball to Gavin Tomlin who somehow directed the ball towards goal. Alan Sheehan’s desperate attempt to get back on his goal line to clear was timed to perfection – there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind – yet the referee’s assistant jobsworth on the far side disagreed. The match official Darren Drysdale appeared to take great pleasure in awarding the goal as part of another comedic afternoon of officiating. I’ll toss out the usual disclaimer that we don’t blame referees for our downfalls this season – but we’d certainly love to lock plenty of them in a cage together with a pack of rabid wolves. So, 2-0.

Now, mere weeks ago this would’ve been the signal for a batting collapse of the most rancid, most tasteless variety. But something has changed, somewhere. That resoluteness remains and how it steered us home was, like I say, most satisfying. Jimmy Spencer scored just two minutes after the second Vale strike, then slotting home the equaliser seven minutes later. Such turnarounds are rare beasts at Meadow Lane just lately. But then so too is Spencer. I’m struggling to remember a footballer at this level who I’ve seen a football stick to like it does big Jimmy. Quite the asset, the type we’ve craved so dearly since achieving promotion so spectacularly in 2010.

No player embodies this recently-found spirit more than Jamal Campbell-Ryce, a player unrecognisable from then one we tired of pre-Derry. His two assists, and two goals in the second half, capped his best display in Notts colours. The first, minutes after the interval, came thanks to the trickery of Jack Grealish down the left, delaying a cross just long enough to fool everyone but Jamma. His second of the day, again thanks to Grealish, came after a period in which Notts had sat back and invited just a little bit too much pressure. The roar of jubilation with five minute remaining – probably with a fair dollop of relief in there – nearly brought the roof off Meadow Lane.

Again: satisfaction. No better word to sum up the result, the performance, everything about it, to be quite honest.

Gaffer

It all leaves us, of course, with one Left Pie-On to follow this season. That we’re approaching it still in a position to maintain our League One status is testament enough to the work put in by Abbott and Derry. We’ve seemingly been dead and buried on more than one occasion, and with four games remaining we still have a fighting chance. To be writing these words after the bleak acceptance of a return to League Two in the aftermath of Tranmere just feels unreal.

Our Easter Weekend double-header takes us to Bristol City this Friday for another meeting with Steve Cotterill – what joys that brought last time, with Greg Cunningham’s tackle on Gary Liddle wiping nearly three months from his campaign. Easter Monday sees Crawley at home for potentially the biggest home attendance of the season, certainly the case if supporters get behind the £12 ticket offer! Swindon Town is potentially the toughest remaining fixture, again at home.

And we end at Boundary Park, Oldham on Saturday 3 May – a place we’ve already been hammered 5-1 this year on a night when Derry must have wondered what crimes he had committed in a past life to inherit the squad he had. Yet here we are five months on, without one player in Saturday’s starting XI who you’d dare consider dropping for the trip to Bristol.

There’s life in this old dog yet, even if most of us would have had it put to sleep several times already this season!

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