It was quite some Friday night for the Glovers who came from behind to grab a 2-1 win over recently relegated Barrow.
Ben was in the press box for the BBC and here are his five conclusions on a heady night in Cumbria.
Energy. Effort. Desire.
I’m knackered after the nearly six hours of driving to cover less than a 200-mile round trip – I can only imagine how the 80-plus people who got home at 5am on Saturday must feel! I’m was exhausted just watching at the energy, effort and desire from the Glovers.
It’s perfectly acceptable to give a good Barrow team the majority of the ball especially on their own turf, but the more I see of this side, the more convinced I am that you will not out work this new look Yeovil side.
It is world away from us even 12 months ago, it’s so refreshing to see that basic desire to run through brick walls for each other, for the manager and the fans.
We would have lost that game last season.
And the season before, and the one before and probably plenty of previous seasons before that!
But here’s the thing we would have shut up shop and taken the point after the equaliser in those campaigns too. We wouldn’t have sent the central defenders up for that late free-kick.
That’s a mentality thing. That was rolling dice and saying we can take the risk of losing a game to try and win it.
Replacing quality with quality.
Oh no, Ryan Jones is on a yellow card…that must mean we have to play someone else out of position to fill the gap… oh, wait. We have Mason Obeng and James Daly ready and raring to go!?
Oh no, I hope Joy Mukena has to be careful in the second half on a yellow. Actually let’s just bring on the vice captain, or a highly thought of loan signing in Ayina. Jack Kingdon and Dan Ellison aren’t even in the squad!
With all due respect, the days of putting square Finn Cousin-Dawson-shaped peg in a round hole because he can do a job, are behind us.
Unbeaten and confident.
I don’t think we’ll go 46 games unbeaten, although I’ve been wrong before. But if a new group with a 15 new faces could have hand-picked a start to the season, there would have been a lot of people choosing to keep a 0 in the L column for as long as possible.
What we’ve got is a group that is determined to keep it that way but, also a group learning how to stick together when (if?) the first defeat comes. That might be the biggest personality trait I’ve spotted. Together.
The Green does sometimes rub green.
You earn your own fortune, right?
Barrow had chances, plenty of them, but they probably will say Mukena was lucky to stay on the pitch – for what it’s worth, I think the distance he and Alex Reid were from goal puts enough doubt in the referee’s mind re: DOGSO. It wasn’t a free kick for our winning goal, but Amos committed half a dozen other cynical fouls and got pulled up on none through the game, so we might have earned one going our way.
These moments are the fine margins that haven’t gone our way in those first two games. For as much as we deserved something from the game, we deserved something going our way.
