DPL v Swindon T

Prompted by Swindon’s past I started to write about the rather poor fortunes of the Railway towns, but got somewhat bogged down in the detail of West Ham’s location and proximity to Stratford, railway works of the Great Eastern Railway and the fact that Eastleigh is no longer separated by green fields from Southampton - they do have their own NL football team though, so perhaps we can exclude the Saints.

Anyway, Swindon have had a troubled time recently off the pitch and poor fortunes on it. They’ve had a sequence of more away matches than home ones and have been in very inconsistent form. They had a 4-0 win over “weakened-by-injury" Newport and have also had some disappointing results including a home defeat by Carlisle. So it’s difficult to know what to expect.

I must say that I think Rovers performances have not been as intense as they could be. We took it too easy against Crewe. Wins need effort and Rovers often play as though they can coast to victory and they really do not have that skill. A lot of the less talented players need to do a good deal more hard work if we are going to sustain a challenge for promotion. And it is ironic that the more skilful players put in more effort than the others! At the moment there is only a point or two between the top 12 or so clubs and we could be down to mid table in the space of a couple of matches.

If we put ourselves out we ought to win, but I’m not convinced the team will exert themselves. Complacency is in danger of drifting in all the time. We need Kelly back and to give Hurst a start too. We’ve become too predictable, Molyneux down the right and Sterry down the left and the hopeful punt up the middle to Sharp, the midfield gets outnumbered by the lazy ineffectual passing amongst the back 3. Sorry to be gloomy,

I’ll say 1-1 (Sharp/Molyneux)