Well, what a night Wednesday was. Ian, Ben and Dave try to unpack a bonkers finish to the match and answer a fair few of your questions.
Thanks to Tim Hubble and Former Gloverscast Quiz Champion, Rob Manley, for the voice notes.
On to Southport…
How’s your heart rate today? Ian’s is still pretty high after another Rowley Rollercoaster. Here are his Five Conclusions from Huish Park…
That was a bonkers finish. When the seven minutes of additional time went up there was a roar of hope rather than expectation but what unfolded in that stoppage time was unlike anything I can remember at Huish Park. Jack Sims in the Sutton United goal had barely been tested in open play all evening and somehow we managed to find the reserves to not only equalise, but go on and win it. No doubt there are early leavers who woke up this morning knowing they could have witnessed a remarkable finish.
James Daly was the fox in the box. It was a bit Dryden Experimental Experience seeing Daly through the middle but when it mattered most he was there. He was the sharpest to react to Sims’ spillage of Luke McCormick’s penalty spill and when Ryan Jones (who I thought worked tremendously hard all night) whipped a teasing cross in, Daly was there to lift the roof off Huish Park. The winger (…striker?) has boundless energy and may not score two more important goals this season.
It wasn’t a vintage performance. Plenty left Huish Park before 90 minutes last night and who could blame them? I thought struggled to create, looked like a team that hadn’t played a lot of football together and – in the second half in particular – were largely second best to Sutton. Passes were loose, Sutton disrupted us when they had to, and when they came down our left hand side it felt like there was something on every time.
But, a win is a win. You cant understate the importance of that result, no matter how it came about. Everything that needed to happen around us did, Braintree lost, Morecambe and Gateshead expended everything to draw 4-4 and we are now sitting pretty eight points clear of the bottom four, but who’s counting? It was not pretty by any stretch of the imagination but in terms of Huish Park moments, Brett McGavin’s penalty is up there. The relief, the joy, the trauma, all of it exploded in that moment and it was an unbelievable feeling. Who’d be a football fan eh?
I think it will be this way for the rest of the season. I’m not sure we’re going to see much identity shine through as the season draws to a close. As cliched as it is, each game will be it’s own cup final with varying levels of severity as we muddle through until the May. Until Billy Rowley has exactly what he needs to implement his vision of the team, In my opinion, we’re just seeing a patched up squad to get us through. This has undoubtedly been a baptism of fire for Rowley, and as he admitted last night he’s learnt a lot in his short time at the helm.
Yeovil fell to defeat at Carlisle on Saturday, Dave and Ben were there and Ian’s back after serving his ban. We discuss the match, the post-match, there’s a Sutton preview and we take your questions.
Thanks to Distant Glover for the voicenote.
Luke McCormick was left frustrated on one of the ‘proudest moments’ of his career as he skippered the Glovers on the 3-0 loss at Carlisle.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Josh Perkins, McCormick said: “[I’m] very frustrated probably one of the proudest moments in my career, on a personal note, wearing the armband today for this football club. Obviously tarnished by the result seeing the traveling fans and the numbers that they travelled in. Yeah, really disappointing day, gutted, very emotional. All I can say is, on behalf of me and all the boys, we can only apologise and try and put things right on Wednesday.”
Falling behind early was – clearly – not part of the plan and McCormick said he knows what to do in this situation. [I’m not sure what situation he’s referring to here, nothing to worry about all…]: “You go away from home, a lot of the messages up and down the country will be very similar. We had a game plan, and unfortunately, we didn’t execute that today. Yes, this is roll your sleeves up time. It’s not getting bogged down. I’ve been in these situations before. The only way out of this is to stick together. That’s everyone, that’s the whole football club and everyone involved, to help your mate out to do a little bit more if you can, because you can always do more. And yeah, like I said, go again Wednesday, and that, for me, is a must-win game of football.”
McCormick added that the defeat to the high-flyers didn’t dictate the mentality going into the Sutton United fixture at Huish Park on Wednesday.
“I don’t think that’s dictated by the result here today. I think to come here and and lose is obviously not what we wanted to do. We go to every ground to win the game of football, but it doesn’t always work out like that. Make no bones about it, these teams that are in around us, these are massive games. Yeovil is a massive football club for the division alone. We need to steer clear of this scrap, we need to steer clear of this fight. And I think there’s enough in this dressing room, and there’s enough of good people at this football club that we will.
“We’re in a business end of the calendar, so we need to pick up points, and like I say, we move on to Wednesday, we dust ourselves off. Thank you very much to the traveling fans, each and every one of them, the people that watch the home,” McCormick added.
Yeovil Town were put to the sword by promotion-chasing Carlisle United in a match that left Billy Rowley frustrated with the scoreline.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Josh Perkins, the manager said: “[I’m] Really frustrated with the result of the game. I’ll have to dive deeper into this in the next 24 hours. But, my gut tells me that we had some really decent spells in the game. At the moment, I think this is natural for when you’re at the the other end of the table. You tend to tense up when you’re around the other team’s box and you’re not in flow state, and you’re not loose, and you’re not finding the right pass.
Rowley added: “I can think in the first half we got to the edge of their box, and we had a shot from 25 yards when you probably had two extra players on the outside, and you could probably work a better chance, but we’re just sort of snatching at efforts. And then the flip side, Carlisle are obviously at the the opposite end of the division. They’ve got some some really talented players that are obviously in good form and when they get in and around your box, they tend to look a bit more cutthroat with the final action and they were better in both boxes. But I thought from 18 [yard box] to 18 it was dead even, and I think we had some some decent spells.”
It took just five minutes for Carlisle to take the lead through Morgan Feeney and that annoyed Rowley: “The first goal comes really early, which is so, so annoying, so frustrating. And, it just comes from a poor clearance, and then a ball in the box, and then that’s it. And then the second goal is obviously a penalty, which is just really frustrating. If you’re getting carved open and you’re just miles off it, then you can kind of accept that. I do still feel in the first 25-30 minutes, I thought our organisation was okay, but I felt we could have got to the ball a little bit more, and we could have got in their faces a little bit more, which we changed at halftime, and I felt like we did that well in the second half.”
Ryan Galvin put the match to bed in the third minute of first half stoppage time, a goal which Rowley said made the mountain insurmoutable: “It was obviously a dagger to the heart when they go and score in the 45th minute, because you go in at two nil, and you think, you score in this game anywhere up to probably 80 minutes, and you got a chance, but you go in three-nil, and you’re looking for a miracle. The mountain was far too high for us at that point.”
The Glovers were without the suspended duo of Jake Wannell and Aaron Jarvis, although welcomed back Alex Whittle to the bench, but the manager felt they missed the influence of the experience.
“We’ve got a small squad at the moment. We’re just about filling benches every week. Whitts and Page, were on the bench today, but they haven’t really featured in weeks – Whitts in months – so we were bare bones to an extent on the bench. Naturally missing any players, Jake – Captain – and Jarvs – obviously a target man that can relieve pressure at times – are big misses,” Rowley said
“The message to the group has been, regardless, if you’re 31 years old or you’re 19 on loan, I think when you cross a white line on a football pitch you’ve got to man up, and you’ve got to stand up to be counted, and even small things like when you’re taking a thrown in, communicating with people. And it’s small, basic things which we have to improve on, and we have to find the one and two percents and if we do that, we’ll be fine.”
Yeovil held Carlisle, who admittedly took their foot off the gas, in the second half but did show improvements after the break and manager said he wanted his team to have more of the ball.
“We just spoke about getting the ball back more often. I felt like Macca [Luke McCormick] and Tav were sort of leading the press in the first half, and it’s difficult because they’re dealing with four players in how we were pressing today, but I felt like the intensity to get to the ball could have been better. So we adjusted that. We did it, and then we started to regain the ball more and when you regain the ball more, you have more of the ball yourself. I’m really annoyed to concede three goals because the score line looks bad. I don’t think it was. It was a dreadful performance by any means.”
Attention turns to Wednesday now with the visit of Sutton United – who beat Wealdstone 3-0 today – and the fixture is pivotal as the Glovers look to increase the five-point gap from the bottom four.
“We’re aware of the situation we’re in. We understand what we need to do. We need to stick together, we need to work hard, we need to train well. And there can be no blame. People need to take ownership, including myself. We know we’re approaching a big game on Wednesday, and every game is that, at the moment, we’re fighting for three points in every game, regardless of who we’re playing, and we’ve just got to reset and make sure we’re ready for Wednesday.”
Ian is joined by Nick May and Former Gloverscast Quiz Champion, Rob Manley, to chat through the 1-1 draw with Rochdale and take your GCQs.
Thanks for Gloverscast Chief Scout Luca Manley, Tim Hubble, Michael Stone and Andrew Foot for the voice notes.
It was a return to Huish Park after 35 days of postponements and away days and the Glovers showed they’re no slouches against promotion-chasers Rochdale. Here are Ian’s Five Conclusions…
We held our own against promotion hopefuls. Even the most optimistic of supporters must have gone into yesterday with massive apprehension going up against the – at the time – league leaders. Rochdale were in unbelievable form and had not dropped a single point from a winning position all season…until they came to Huish Park. We showed all the buzzwords yesterday: character, determination, spirit, camaraderie and played some good football before we were frustratingly reduced to 10 men.
Aaron Jarvis owes his teammates a Thatchers. When Jarvis replaced Campbell (who had one of his better games) the match was nicely poised, we’d enjoyed some decent chances and were holding our own but the first time we tossed the ball up for Jarvis to compete the worst happened. I thought it was sheer idiocy. We know how Jarvis competes and looks for contact but the way he led with his forearm, arm not looking at the ball gave the referee very little choice. I know he plays looking for contact and roughing up his opposing defenders, but I thought it was really poor and he let everyone down.
Finn Cousin Dawson stepped up. It’s often been a case of always the bridesmaid never the bride for FCD. He’s not one of the first choice centre backs and he’s been shoe-horned into the floating wingback role, so it was nice to see him get his flowers yesterday. His header to bring us back level was pinpoint perfection and he had a solid game in at right centre back. For me, he’s more dependable than Ferguson.
Mafico made another mark. What a find Dakarai Mafico is. (Hat tip to Declan Skura too) The Cardiff youngster was in centre midfield yesterday – or number 6 as the cool kids say – and he was fantastic. Brave on the ball, forward-thinking, confident to play through the lines. He did his defensive work and got us attacking too. We may only get to enjoy him this season, (although with Cardiff chasing promotion to the Championship they might let us have him back next season, right?) but the way he knits everything together between defence and attack is well beyond his years.
It was a great game of football. Billy Rowley described it as ‘cat and mouse’ whilst admitting modern football can be a bit boring (hear, hear) but I thought it was an entertaining game. We played some nice football and after 35 days since we were last at Huish Park, I could see an improvement and the style beginning to come through. In the moments when we played out from the back it looked more instinctive than it has done. We did the dogged stuff for the last 20 minutes and the players deserved their standing ovation from the supporters at full time.
We were up, we were down, we were level, we had it taken away at the end – life is a Rowley-coaster! Heartbreak and frustration, pride and disappointment, just a regular Wednesday night in the life of a Yeovil Town fan.
Ed Turnbull was in the away end with 124 other hardy Glovers, here are his Five Conclusions from the defeat to Boreham Wood.
The first hour showed we’ve got a long way to go
I know we went in at the break level, but that was a complete steal. I really enjoyed the way we used the ball at Telford and Altrincham, but in the first half against a stronger opposition we didn’t have any of the ball to use. And when we did get it our quality on the ball wasn’t good enough as we were suffocated by the Boreham Wood press. Right from the first whistle it felt like we were in for a long evening of bus-parking under the cosh, a still all-too-familiar feeling from 2025.
But the last half hour showed how far we’ve come
A goal and a man down away at a top 6 team in a game we’ve been on the back foot thus far, I think even the optimists amongst the hardy travelling contingent were struggling to see a way back into the game. But Billy Rowley did, it seemed. He decided attack was the best form of defence, and so it very nearly proved to be. This was epitomised by James Daly, who scored an excellent goal and very nearly topped it with a goal that would’ve induced comparisons to Gareth Bale’s against Barcelona in the Copa del Rey, albeit from the other side of the pitch (someone out there knows what I’m on about, right?!). It was very refreshing (and long overdue) to see a Yeovil side come out of their shells when up against it, rather than curling up into a ball of damage limitation with minimal success as we’ve become all too accustomed to.
We shot ourselves in the foot
The first 2 goals felt preventable, as did the red card (although I’m not sure I should complain about that, because it seemed to make us better!) – frustrating mistakes, made all the more annoying by the fact they ultimately undid all the aforementioned positives. I’ve generally been a fan of Kyle Ferguson, and still am, but I make that 3 key mistakes he’s made this season which have directly led to goals conceded (after Scunthorpe and Brackley away). Unfortunately for him, they’ve all come in games where we’ve lost by 1 goal.
Credit to Boreham Wood though
Yeovil made mistakes, but Boreham Wood were clinical enough to punish them. And then I have to (through gritted teeth) accept Aaron Henry’s free-kick was worthy of winning the game, especially one where Boreham Wood deserved to win on the balance of chances, territory, possession and probably just about every other metric. How Abdul Abdulmalik isn’t playing in a higher league I am now even more perplexed than I was after the reverse fixture back in October. Mind you, I’m equally perplexed by how the atmosphere at a club pushing for promotion to the EFL can be so non-existent!
We can hold our heads high after that
Maybe it says something about the home support too (sorry, I’ll stop with the needless digs now), but the fact the team that had just conceded a stoppage time winner was the team whose fans clapped them for longer after the full time whistle was a telling reflection of the pride I and many Yeovil fans felt after witnessing that display once we went down to ten. That said, football’s about picking up points not being proud of how you lose. It’s not going to get easier when we welcome table-topping Rochdale 65-and-a-bit hours after the end of this match, and I worry how our smallish squad will cope with the upcoming onslaught of fixtures, but at least I feel we’ve got a team that can give us plenty of excitement (and more importantly enough points to steer clear of danger) along the Rowleycoaster that the next 3 months will be.
Three vital points were acquired at Altrincham on Saturday thanks to Terrell Works late goal. Ed Turnbull was in amongst the away fans on Saturday and he caught Ian up on the match and we answer your GCQs.
Thanks to Tim Hubble for the voice note.
We’re on our way to Altrincham!
Ben’s caught up with Erin from Golf Road Goals about the host’s season.
