Amy's windhouse
- Andrew McMenemy
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Shrewsbury Town (H) - EFL League 2 - 4th October 2025
The afternoon started with a family Coast Road picnic which somehow turned into a conversation assessing how gulls would survive should the human race die out. It was with the same spirit of impending apocalypse that I approached the afternoon's grim commitment.
The long-trailed Storm Amy arrived as advertised, clouds pregnant with chaos painting the Furness sky. It's somewhat paradoxical that, whilst games are rightly called off for excess rain or frozen pitches (players' safety trumping all), nothing ruins a game of association football like high winds. Anything over 40mph and matches become nightmarish parodies of the sport; players of culture such as MJ Williams and Connor Mahoney rendered figures of flailing comedy.
My evaluation of Shrewsbury at home was that it felt more like a must-not-lose than a must-win; crucial not to give struggling teams our customary leg-up, and the last couple of games have given us a nice cushion. We kicked off against the wind and the first 15 minutes of the match more or less happened to us, the Shrews finding it quite easy to feed the ball out wide and attempt raids on the penalty area, rather than cross. But every time the move broke down, the lottery once again began; Guinevere spewing randomness, the ball leaving Stanway's boot, hovering above the centre circle for roughly 5 minutes, plopping off the shin of a hapless Williams or Gordon, before eventually a Shrewsbury midfielder smuggled the ball back to the wide men. We went again. We did not let it slip.
It soon became clear the first half just had to be endured, weathered, experienced. It lasted for around a year. The referee went out of his way to ensure we were down to 10 men for longer than we had 11, after a long series of knocks necessitated minor interventions on the touchline. Newby must have had a nosebleed; Barkhuizen had to go off, then back on, before finally making way; war wounds forced Raglan to go down then off. But the away team couldn't take advantage. The conditions make it unreasonable to single out individuals for criticism or praise, but when Shrewsbury did let a shot veer on target, Stanway made one marvellous tip over the bar, which probably earned him the man of the match award.
In amongst the torture was a slight sense that, if we could just make it to half-time, rewards would surely come in the second half with Amy at our backs. Such licking of lips is rarely justified and the second period didn't prove that much easier to watch, and Barrow attacks weren't significantly more frequent. Again, the ball pinged haphazardly around the midfield for long portions. Jackson's first corner of the half went high, wide, and was far from handsome; Mahoney had scarcely better luck from the left. Any impetus we might have had was neutered by the loss of Barkhuizen just before half time, although the addition of Harper did introduce some more bravery, both in terms of tackling and passing. Our wide areas failed to flower, nonetheless. The mess in the middle of the park was such that even our physios found themselves pulled out of shape: the referee waving them on from the bench to treat Earing, only for them to emerge from in front of the Popular Side, marooned after tending to Harper just a moment earlier.
As the game stretched, as the home side pushed, gaps opened up for Shrewsbury too, but they didn't have the capacity to really do any damage. On a calmer day, Shrewsbury - much in the same style as Crewe and Crawley - would have been ideal opponents: desirous of the ball yet impotent of any ability to hurt our solid enough defence. A late flurry led to some vociferous (from me) calls for a penalty but I think your man in the Shrewsbury defence kind of played it back to the keeper with his Adam's apple, having seen the replay on someone's phone.
A good clean sheet then; we avoided the worst-case scenario, but we didn't deserve any more than we got. The kids wisely opted against coming to the game this time, preferring an indoor climbing centre in Ulverston. On days like this, and specifically League 2 football through the lens of Beaufort Scale 8, could put you off for life. I want to see the sunshine after the rain. On to Oldham.
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