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Terrific, battling performance by the lads tonight. It certainly wasn't pretty but that's to be expected with 10 men playing against a team like that, who were aided by a ref who was possibly the most biased I've ever seen and a lino who I'm pretty sure had Down's syndrome!

The penalty looked pretty clear cut, and there didn't seem to be many complaints from the home side (who contested EVERY other decision against them, not that there were many). Nicky Mac's sending off looked ridiculous at first sight, his foot was high but it looked like he won the ball first, and the rest of our team couldn't believe he'd seen red for it.

We defended superbly as a team, and Dale actually had little to do. They had one good chance late on that was dragged wide, but apart from that our goal wasn't really troubled.

Thanks to those that were there tonight for the summaries, as you can see from the pre-match predictions thread, I went for a narrow hard fought 0-1 and that's what it sounds like it was.

The table (after the Chester points are deducted) looks well good !!! 4th on merit and just a point behind York (albeit a game behind them), looking really, really good.

Just to echo what Dave said really, it was a teriffic win in very difficult circumstances. Their players badgered the ref from start to finish and went to ground so softly it was a joke. At full speed I thought Macca had made a fantastic tackle to take the ball, which he clearly did. The moot point was whether it was dangerous enough to warrant a red, personally I didn't think so and the ref bowed to the constant barrage of intimidation from HOOOFSTON's players. Several challenges on our players in the second half were just as bad IMO, but not a peep from a poor ref. We've must have had more players sent off against HOOOFSTON than any other team, and that's cos they get in the ref's head constantly.
Great stuff Diamonds, you put in a hell of a shift last night.

I think we missed P*** T**** badly last night - especially in the first half. When we played a more conventional 4 in midfield in the second half things improved somewhat, and I hope we stick with that approach on Saturday.

The officials had a dreadful game - although I think it was made worse by the approach of the Histon players / management - we'd had Mr Coote twice before this season and hadn't had an issue with him.

Glad to hear the reshuffled defence coped well.

I'd take another scraped win on Saturday, before the return of two key players from suspension. Then I just hope we can avoid any more suspensions and injuries before the run in. But that's obviously too much to ask. :lol:

Formic wrote:The officials had a dreadful game...

...and got some abuse for it! The lino gave as good as he got, though, telling us to "f*** off" while checking the nets at half-time :lol:

I didn't understand the utter tirade of abuse for Langston though??? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Apparently last nights attendance was 583 with 190 away. Not bad for a Wednesday night with England on.

DiamondsFan wrote:Apparently last nights attendance was 583 with 190 away. Not bad for Histon on a Wednesday night with England on.

Only 487 for their previous evening fixture against York City.

Makes you wonder how they're going to survive on those crowds though.

Steve wrote:Me and my cousin saw the pictures on one of the photographers laptops and it did look dangerous, a red card i think. Great to hold on for the win, very proud to be a Rushden fan atm. Lets just hope we can keep it up

Was that the picture in the ET tonight? If it was I'd like to see the ones where Macca actually made contact with the ball, before it flew up into the air as in that pic, just to see where the Histon player was in relation. It was difficult to tell at full speed whilst watching, but first impression from our end was that it was a great attempt to intercept the ball before the Histon player got to it.