Kick it in the Rezza
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Chesterfield (H) - EFL League 2 - 6th April 2026
When you watch BBC Breakfast long enough, you start to see patterns. Not in a Twitter conspiracy theorist off their meds type of way, a formula if you will. War, death and destruction, cut to a man raising money for gout survivors by climbing Blencathra 86 times with Paul Chuckle on his back whilst eating hard-boiled eggs, cut to Heston Blumenthal on the couch promoting Tantric Sex: The Musical at the Lyric Theatre Goole. Sometimes something will interrupt the script and make you choke on your Sugar Puffs, like when you spy Roger Johnson covering whilst Charlie Stayt is away getting his bikini line waxed. You know the drill, though: the same sh*te recycled every hour before the nightmarish Morning Live does its pale impersonation of That's Life, minus the Doc Cox knob gags.
After a run of performances that left you wanting to try heroin, patterns were starting to recur at Holker St. The steadfast, season-long obsession with 3-5-2, a defence leaking like a five-week-old cucumber at the back of the fridge, and an attack about as potent as the rose petal perfume you used to make as a kid (we love you, Peter). We were sinking faster than a cigarette boat in an ashtray half full of spilled Madri. Sing me a lullaby so intense I don't wake up until the end of May, right?
But wait. The players have listened; their synapses have started sparking and crackling into life. Long-repressed memories of how to play football have flooded back, and we have started to look like a team again. They've pulled their fingers out. We are on a run of two games unbeaten. F**k my elbow!
With all this in mind, it is with a renewed sense of optimism that I've finally started to feel a long-forgotten rustling in my Barrow AFC briefs. It's Easter Monday. I haven't had a drink all weekend, the lurcher has been launching itself at my head at four o'clock every morning for the past week, and I have bags under my eyes big enough to carry the kit and all the protein shakes. But there it is: a soupçon of excitement in my gut. Whether it's misplaced or otherwise remains to be seen.
As I take my place on the newly renamed Give 'em Beans End, the crowd looks slightly more engorged than usual. Recent results, a bank holiday and a weekend of excess has swollen the Popular Side, and there's a decent away following installed under the fresh away end bed linen roof.
The referee looks like he's just stepped away from presenting a seminar on buy-to-let mortgages, or perhaps a motivational speaking engagement about crypto. More on him later. After a rousing minute's applause for club legend Ray Maguire (RIP), the game gets underway.
We line up with four at the rear: Shippers, Jacko, Canavan and old McDonald. Two up top, two in the middle and a pair of wingers. It's a nostalgia trip, a back-to-basics, prawn cocktail, meat and potatoes and a Black Forest gateau of a formation. Keep 'em out and nick a goal. Forget the flourishes; we'll just take a belt sander to the league. Pouring concrete on the pitch like Le Corbusier at his most brutal. You get the picture.
Chesterfield are hoping to secure a second consecutive play-off place and are, ergo, a better side than us. We need to pull another Bromley, another MK Dons, to get anything from this one. We're gifting them plenty of possession, with the lively Berry looking the most likely to create something. Rose and Gordon are tirelessly feeding off scraps in the final third, but we are once again struggling to manufacture anything of note. We're furtling along: long ball after long ball, sprinkled with the odd diagonal, and it makes for an attritional watch.
Two key moments define this game. Here comes the first. The ball breaks to an unmarked Rose just inside the area; he rounds Boot and hits the deck. The ball trickles across the byline and the referee blows up. A penalty. Cue the Chesterfield players emoting like an overwrought scene from Coronation Street, throwing their hands in the air like a Walney am-dram Society production of Raging Bull. The referee consults via the medium of Bluetooth headset with the linesman at the far end of the pitch and awards a...drop ball. I'm not sure why he chose today to take his first trip, but, spoilers, it's going to prove costly.
It feels as though we've arrived at the conclusion that, at this stage of the season with so few games remaining, we could probably draw our way out of this. Or at least draw our way to a showdown with Newport on the final day. We should have got a draw today. We didn't. There's no merit in digging anyone out over their second-half goal, the one that would ultimately win the game. Suffice to say it was a real Kick It in the Rezza moment. We all saw it, either at the ground or on the box, and it doesn't require further description. Chesterfield had just enough about them to hold on. Whitfield came on for a ten-minute cameo and showed flashes of what we might achieve by keeping the ball on the floor. Fletcher was chucked up front again, which remains frankly baffling. I wouldn't call it a bad performance as such, we were second best but good enough for a point, and we didn't get one. With optimism slightly dented after back-to-back positive results, it was the familiar lugubrious trudge toward the exit.
Somehow we are still in this, but it feels like when you try to clump someone in a dream. It's right there in front of us but we can't quite land the blow. I remain optimistic , we have just enough quality in this squad to squeak clear. But it's not doing my nerves any good whatsoever. We all want to book our Jet2 all inclusives, lads.
Barnet up next. I still haven't forgiven them for signing Kenny Lowe.
Let's play for a win, eh?