Plans To Pay For Rubbish

But it was the actual headline which I found quite interesting.

'Plans To Pay For Rubbish'

This got me thinking and actually as Town fans, we have been paying for rubbish for far too long. So I decided to look back over some of the rubbish to grace the Shay pitch over the last decade or so.

We have usually done ok in the goalkeeping position. But our first season in the non-league back in the 1993/94 season, we had two goalkeepers lacking any sort of agility.

Nick Brown and Richard Wilmot managed just short of 25 games between them in what was a poor first season in the Conference. My memory of these two is pretty vague, which I think is mostly due to a memory block because they were so poor.

The selection of defenders who were pants is a tricky one. There have been so many over the years.

But looking back through the archives, one name that hit me straight away was Paul Futcher.

The brother of Ron who was a big hit at Turf Moor as a striker never made an impact on the Town fans. If he was a professional footballer then I was the Primer Minister of England, and his poor displays at the back did not help to boost the confidence of Jonathan Gould who was making the step into professional football. There was talk that Futcher was too good a player for the 4th division (as it was then), and maybe he proved that when he left Halifax Town for Grimsby Town who were then in the old 2nd division. Two seasons in a row he was player of the season and even now he is a hero of the Blundell Park faithful.

Midfield can not be an easy position to play. You need to have an eye for goal, be able to tackle and cover almost every blade of grass on the pitch.

Once again we have been quite lucky to have some decent midfielders over the years down at the Shay. But one of the biggest disappointments for me was Jimmy Case.

Everyone back in 1992 had heard of Jimmy Case. A legend for Liverpool after taking part in one of their most successful periods in their history. When it was announced by John McGrath that Case was signing, everyone thought that this was going to be the year for Halifax Town fans to have some success.

But come the end of the season it was to end in tears. Town were relegated. I suppose that it was a strange decision to sign Jimmy Case. After all, a player who wears a hearing aid cannot be too good for communicating with on the field of play.

In the strikers position I am spoilt for choice. We have had some right naff players leading the line for Town. Who can forget Godfrey Obebo, the supposed Nigerian international, who didn't even know the rules.

Carlisle fans thought they were getting the better end of the deal when they got Tony Fyfe back in a swap deal for Stevie Norris. Fyfe was terrible, and Norris turned into a legend, so I know who ended up at the better end of the deal.

But the one player who was supposed to be a striker that sticks in my mind is the one and only Nigel Greenwood.

The season that we got relegated was of course a disaster for the club. But, even now I still don't think our team was that bad.

In the season of 1992/93 there were 4 teams that conceded more goals than us.

Colchester who finished just below the play-offs conceded 8 goals more than us but finished 23 points ahead of us.

Now, you can either blame this on a poor midfield who was supposed to be providing the opportunities for the strikers. Or you can actually blame the strikers for not taking their chances.

This is something that Nigel Greenwood did not do. The last game of the season especially sticks in my mind when we played against Hereford. Greenwood had at least 4 good chances throughout the game, and the closest he came to scoring was hitting the roof of the packed Scircoat stand.

I suppose the person stood next to me summed it up best when I overheard him so to his mate:

"My Grandma could have done better than that!"