One Game at a Time: Strawberry Town October 25th (H)
Although in the life cycle of the average flare carrier it was a lifetime ago, most Argyle fans will have looked at the end result on Saturday and, whilst rueing the missed opportunity of letting a two nil half time lead slip away, will remember the words of Luggyâs prayer, that every pointâs a prisoner.
Hopefully so will the morons that let off flares be all too soon as well.
In a match of missed opportunities the Barton inspired Gas will also think they too could have taken all three points, but all neutral reports suggest a contest that was in the end a fair share of the spoils.
Three well taken goals and a reward for aggressive endeavour in which Cooper the Keeper was unlucky with the fortunate rebound that nestled in the net. One wonders how much Finns beauty was a statement of âhereâs what you could have hadâ after Bartonâs bizarre pre match rant that encompassed a twenty five year personal petty grudge against our DOF Neil Dewsnip, and a claim that he tried to sign Azaz but didnât know where he would have fitted in the Rovers XI. Anywhere he liked was the only possible reply after his superb opening goal.
Barton at least showed some respect in his post-match comments, perhaps realising that a confrontation with Neil which most likely would have started with âShow us your medals,â would have ended with Neil producing his Olympic Gold one.
The final missed opportunity therefore was Barton having to postpone his Cowley beating launch of his range of blue and white spitting dummies, although he gets to go again live on Sky on Wednesday at Wednesday. Sadly we have to wish him well for this game.
With Ipswich scraping past a shot shy Derby on Friday, and Wednesday missing a chance to close the gap by drawing at current dark horse Lincoln City in the early game, things remain much as they were in the Tour de League One. The surprise result of the day saw Barnsley concede the only goal of the game to Del Boys Morecambe, perhaps geed up by the possibility of a Tyson Fury takeover. With the MK wheels very firmly coming off after a third consecutive home defeat they hit the bottom spot.
A full programme this week in midweek, with nine of the current top half teams at home, and Bartonâs Gas taking on The Wednesday at least gives him a realistic trophy hunters chance to mount an Owl over his mantlepiece after missing out on a Pilgrim at the weekend, followed by a Ram on Saturday.
Ipswich trek north to a hopefully Vale of tears, unsurprisingly missing their five times booked midfield enforcer Morsy, before heading into the capital for a resurgent Charlton.
Argyle of course have the weekend off as we await the arrival of dear friends and neighbours Exeter City, potentially with new manager in situ. Before that however we form the first leg of the South Coast Shrewsbury Town tour, before they amble along the cliffs to Pompous.
Now I know that some people struggle with the tongue in cheek naming conventions on this article series, but for once this week is not one of my own making. There is much debate as to the correct way to pronounce the name of the town from which Tuesdayâs opponents hail. Is it shrew like the small rodent (appealing image) or is it Shrow, like in Shrove Tuesday (mmmmâŚ..pancakesâŚ.an even more appealing image)? According to local tradition and history it is the latter not the former.
In 2014, however, the Shrews had a home League Cup game against the mighty Chelsea, who included on their bench Premier League winning Belgian Eden Hazard, who in a subsequent interview was certain he had been on the bench against a team called Strawberry. The Shropshire club took it in good part though, and indeed have a reputation for not taking themselves too seriously when the so-called giants of the game perhaps are a little condescending.
When Manchester United were recently drubbed 4-nil at Anfield, in the last embers of the Rangnick Old Trafford era, one of their fans took to social media saying their performance was so bad it was more reminiscent of Shrewsbury. The club then tweeted that they had in fact taken the lead at Anfield when they played there in the cup that season, before they also conceded four, ending the reply with a salty âLevels.â
Argyle first came across Shrewsbury shortly after their accession to the football League in 1950. Prior to that the club has a distinguished non-league heritage and have won the Shropshire Cup a record sixty-seven times. They are also the most successful English club in Welsh Cup history with six victories, the first in 1891 and the most recent in their mid-eightiesâ heyday.
They joined the League in 1950/1 but despite being the same level as Argyle at the time were not to play them until the following season, when geographic rebalancing meant they were moved from Division 3 North to Division 3 South. Unfortunately for the Shrews they met an Argyle side heading for promotion and the aggregate across the two league games was 9-2 to the Pilgrims.
Indeed, the fifties were a time where Shrewsbury and Argyle shared a common family theme, and that family was the Rowley brothers. Jack at Argyle ended his playing days at Manchester United and became Argyle player manager in 1955. His brother Arthur arrived at Shrewsbury where he became their leading scorer as player manager after being discarded by Leicester City eight goals short of becoming their record scorer. The two never managed against each other in an Argyle Shrewsbury clash, however.
Shrewsburyâs rich heritage also encompassed their badge, which today features a lion but, in the past, carried the local tradition of three Loggerheads, defined as leopards, and which stayed on the badge until a brief flirtation with a comic style Shrew in a commercial rebranding of the club. The club reverted to the Loggerheads until they were replaced by a lion on the basis that the Loggerheads could not be copyrighted. It was therefore somewhat ironic when the chosen lion image was subsequently discovered to be a generic clip art image itself.
The club, having moved around in its early formative years settled at the iconicly named Gay Meadow (christened in a more innocent era no doubt), next to the Severn River. This also brought about one of the staples of Football Focus and other cup-based coverage where the local coracle builder Fred Davies would be wheeled (or rowed) in front of the cameras to discuss his role as ball rescuer for the club in one of his own coracles. There are no records for the greatest number of balls launched into the Severn but I for one would like to think Argyle Stalwart Mick âHoofâ Heathcote gained his nickname in part by having one hand on that particular trophy from his time at the Town either side of his stints at Cambridge and Argyle.
Apart from one single season plummet into non-league obscurity, The Shrews have mainly existed in the lower tiers, and so their rivalries have tended towards the similar local clubs of the area, who gradually have one by one disappeared into a more permanent oblivion. Chester and Wrexham have featured but the fiercest one was against Hereford before the club imploded and is now slowly fighting its way back up the leagues. Wrexham may be rekindled more quickly as the Hollywood impact of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny skyrockets them back to Football league membership. One of Shrewsburyâs only celebrity fans is a Reynolds co-star Jason Bateman, whose mother hailed from Shrewsbury and so he was, with some bemusement, presented with a blue and amber shirt during a breakfast TV appearance.
There is however one undoubted celebrity fan that has been corroborated, in the form of bassist for Spinal Tap, Nigel Smalls who is clearly depicted wearing a Shrews shirt in the film âThis is Spinal Tapâ. The image is slightly spoiled by the fact he also later sports a West Ham baseball cap in the movie, but League One is building a tidy âSupergroupâ, with drummer Woody from Bastille and Argyle and Ed Sheeran from Ipswich. I suppose we might have to let Mike Oldfield from Pompous do the keyboards until Brentford sink back to their correct level and we can get Rick Wakeman in. If we think Ed Sheeran might be problematic with his penchant for nicking song snippets Shrewsbury can also offer us Carol Decker from TâPau on vocals.
Probably the most famous Shrewsbury resident was Charles Darwin, who left Plymouth on the Beagle to travel the world and formulate his Origin of the Species, theory which postulated that life was about survival of the fittest. That probably wasnât what the boss Paul Hurst had in mind when he took the Town players to Dublin and a Christmas bonding session in 2016. On loan striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake did not exactly bond with teammate Jim OâBrien who spent his evening having fifteen stitches in a head wound after an altercation with the ex-Argyle striker. Given Ebanks-Blake had form for such outbursts any defence of âhandbagsâ was probably not acceptable, but in any case his loan from Chesterfield was not extended.
Shrewsbury are currently under the stewardship of Steve Cotterill, now mercifully recovered from a close shave with Covid which left him on the brink. Cotterill was recently also the victim of a Barton rant, when a recent game left Barton moaning that he would rather stay in and watch Sky than watch a Cotterill side. This resulted in an hilarious spoof Eminem style Tik Tok rap produced by Shrewsbury about being in Bartonâs head.
The club does have history with Bristol Rovers, as the games at Shrewsbury have the bizarre restriction of being the only game in the country that has a ban on breakfast cereal being taken into the ground. Legend has it a hungover and none too bright Gashead was sent to buy âfoodâ from a local store when the coachload of fans needed sobering up. He spent all the money gathered on the special offer at the shop and arrived, to the amazement of his fellow travellers, with about seventy-five quids worth of Weetabix. As he had neglected to buy milk the food became first bird food, and then cannon fodder at the ground, and so the âWeetabixâ derby was born, with more and more cereal products being flung around whenever Rovers visited. Hence the ban.
One can only assume a sending off in these games is greeted with chants of âCheerios, Cheerios, Cheerios.â
So, Argyle will attempt to tame the Shrews and maintain their lead atop the League, before turning their attention to the Devon Expressway Derby, on All Hallows Eve. The good news is Argyle will be well rested after the weekend off. Thatâs well rested, not arrested.
COYG!
Although in the life cycle of the average flare carrier it was a lifetime ago, most Argyle fans will have looked at the end result on Saturday and, whilst rueing the missed opportunity of letting a two nil half time lead slip away, will remember the words of Luggyâs prayer, that every pointâs a prisoner.
Hopefully so will the morons that let off flares be all too soon as well.
In a match of missed opportunities the Barton inspired Gas will also think they too could have taken all three points, but all neutral reports suggest a contest that was in the end a fair share of the spoils.
Three well taken goals and a reward for aggressive endeavour in which Cooper the Keeper was unlucky with the fortunate rebound that nestled in the net. One wonders how much Finns beauty was a statement of âhereâs what you could have hadâ after Bartonâs bizarre pre match rant that encompassed a twenty five year personal petty grudge against our DOF Neil Dewsnip, and a claim that he tried to sign Azaz but didnât know where he would have fitted in the Rovers XI. Anywhere he liked was the only possible reply after his superb opening goal.
Barton at least showed some respect in his post-match comments, perhaps realising that a confrontation with Neil which most likely would have started with âShow us your medals,â would have ended with Neil producing his Olympic Gold one.
The final missed opportunity therefore was Barton having to postpone his Cowley beating launch of his range of blue and white spitting dummies, although he gets to go again live on Sky on Wednesday at Wednesday. Sadly we have to wish him well for this game.
With Ipswich scraping past a shot shy Derby on Friday, and Wednesday missing a chance to close the gap by drawing at current dark horse Lincoln City in the early game, things remain much as they were in the Tour de League One. The surprise result of the day saw Barnsley concede the only goal of the game to Del Boys Morecambe, perhaps geed up by the possibility of a Tyson Fury takeover. With the MK wheels very firmly coming off after a third consecutive home defeat they hit the bottom spot.
A full programme this week in midweek, with nine of the current top half teams at home, and Bartonâs Gas taking on The Wednesday at least gives him a realistic trophy hunters chance to mount an Owl over his mantlepiece after missing out on a Pilgrim at the weekend, followed by a Ram on Saturday.
Ipswich trek north to a hopefully Vale of tears, unsurprisingly missing their five times booked midfield enforcer Morsy, before heading into the capital for a resurgent Charlton.
Argyle of course have the weekend off as we await the arrival of dear friends and neighbours Exeter City, potentially with new manager in situ. Before that however we form the first leg of the South Coast Shrewsbury Town tour, before they amble along the cliffs to Pompous.
Now I know that some people struggle with the tongue in cheek naming conventions on this article series, but for once this week is not one of my own making. There is much debate as to the correct way to pronounce the name of the town from which Tuesdayâs opponents hail. Is it shrew like the small rodent (appealing image) or is it Shrow, like in Shrove Tuesday (mmmmâŚ..pancakesâŚ.an even more appealing image)? According to local tradition and history it is the latter not the former.
In 2014, however, the Shrews had a home League Cup game against the mighty Chelsea, who included on their bench Premier League winning Belgian Eden Hazard, who in a subsequent interview was certain he had been on the bench against a team called Strawberry. The Shropshire club took it in good part though, and indeed have a reputation for not taking themselves too seriously when the so-called giants of the game perhaps are a little condescending.
When Manchester United were recently drubbed 4-nil at Anfield, in the last embers of the Rangnick Old Trafford era, one of their fans took to social media saying their performance was so bad it was more reminiscent of Shrewsbury. The club then tweeted that they had in fact taken the lead at Anfield when they played there in the cup that season, before they also conceded four, ending the reply with a salty âLevels.â
Argyle first came across Shrewsbury shortly after their accession to the football League in 1950. Prior to that the club has a distinguished non-league heritage and have won the Shropshire Cup a record sixty-seven times. They are also the most successful English club in Welsh Cup history with six victories, the first in 1891 and the most recent in their mid-eightiesâ heyday.
They joined the League in 1950/1 but despite being the same level as Argyle at the time were not to play them until the following season, when geographic rebalancing meant they were moved from Division 3 North to Division 3 South. Unfortunately for the Shrews they met an Argyle side heading for promotion and the aggregate across the two league games was 9-2 to the Pilgrims.
Indeed, the fifties were a time where Shrewsbury and Argyle shared a common family theme, and that family was the Rowley brothers. Jack at Argyle ended his playing days at Manchester United and became Argyle player manager in 1955. His brother Arthur arrived at Shrewsbury where he became their leading scorer as player manager after being discarded by Leicester City eight goals short of becoming their record scorer. The two never managed against each other in an Argyle Shrewsbury clash, however.
Shrewsburyâs rich heritage also encompassed their badge, which today features a lion but, in the past, carried the local tradition of three Loggerheads, defined as leopards, and which stayed on the badge until a brief flirtation with a comic style Shrew in a commercial rebranding of the club. The club reverted to the Loggerheads until they were replaced by a lion on the basis that the Loggerheads could not be copyrighted. It was therefore somewhat ironic when the chosen lion image was subsequently discovered to be a generic clip art image itself.
The club, having moved around in its early formative years settled at the iconicly named Gay Meadow (christened in a more innocent era no doubt), next to the Severn River. This also brought about one of the staples of Football Focus and other cup-based coverage where the local coracle builder Fred Davies would be wheeled (or rowed) in front of the cameras to discuss his role as ball rescuer for the club in one of his own coracles. There are no records for the greatest number of balls launched into the Severn but I for one would like to think Argyle Stalwart Mick âHoofâ Heathcote gained his nickname in part by having one hand on that particular trophy from his time at the Town either side of his stints at Cambridge and Argyle.
Apart from one single season plummet into non-league obscurity, The Shrews have mainly existed in the lower tiers, and so their rivalries have tended towards the similar local clubs of the area, who gradually have one by one disappeared into a more permanent oblivion. Chester and Wrexham have featured but the fiercest one was against Hereford before the club imploded and is now slowly fighting its way back up the leagues. Wrexham may be rekindled more quickly as the Hollywood impact of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny skyrockets them back to Football league membership. One of Shrewsburyâs only celebrity fans is a Reynolds co-star Jason Bateman, whose mother hailed from Shrewsbury and so he was, with some bemusement, presented with a blue and amber shirt during a breakfast TV appearance.
There is however one undoubted celebrity fan that has been corroborated, in the form of bassist for Spinal Tap, Nigel Smalls who is clearly depicted wearing a Shrews shirt in the film âThis is Spinal Tapâ. The image is slightly spoiled by the fact he also later sports a West Ham baseball cap in the movie, but League One is building a tidy âSupergroupâ, with drummer Woody from Bastille and Argyle and Ed Sheeran from Ipswich. I suppose we might have to let Mike Oldfield from Pompous do the keyboards until Brentford sink back to their correct level and we can get Rick Wakeman in. If we think Ed Sheeran might be problematic with his penchant for nicking song snippets Shrewsbury can also offer us Carol Decker from TâPau on vocals.
Probably the most famous Shrewsbury resident was Charles Darwin, who left Plymouth on the Beagle to travel the world and formulate his Origin of the Species, theory which postulated that life was about survival of the fittest. That probably wasnât what the boss Paul Hurst had in mind when he took the Town players to Dublin and a Christmas bonding session in 2016. On loan striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake did not exactly bond with teammate Jim OâBrien who spent his evening having fifteen stitches in a head wound after an altercation with the ex-Argyle striker. Given Ebanks-Blake had form for such outbursts any defence of âhandbagsâ was probably not acceptable, but in any case his loan from Chesterfield was not extended.
Shrewsbury are currently under the stewardship of Steve Cotterill, now mercifully recovered from a close shave with Covid which left him on the brink. Cotterill was recently also the victim of a Barton rant, when a recent game left Barton moaning that he would rather stay in and watch Sky than watch a Cotterill side. This resulted in an hilarious spoof Eminem style Tik Tok rap produced by Shrewsbury about being in Bartonâs head.
The club does have history with Bristol Rovers, as the games at Shrewsbury have the bizarre restriction of being the only game in the country that has a ban on breakfast cereal being taken into the ground. Legend has it a hungover and none too bright Gashead was sent to buy âfoodâ from a local store when the coachload of fans needed sobering up. He spent all the money gathered on the special offer at the shop and arrived, to the amazement of his fellow travellers, with about seventy-five quids worth of Weetabix. As he had neglected to buy milk the food became first bird food, and then cannon fodder at the ground, and so the âWeetabixâ derby was born, with more and more cereal products being flung around whenever Rovers visited. Hence the ban.
One can only assume a sending off in these games is greeted with chants of âCheerios, Cheerios, Cheerios.â
So, Argyle will attempt to tame the Shrews and maintain their lead atop the League, before turning their attention to the Devon Expressway Derby, on All Hallows Eve. The good news is Argyle will be well rested after the weekend off. Thatâs well rested, not arrested.
COYG!
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