Injury-hit Grantham Had No Answer To Denaby

Denaby United 6 Grantham 0

As the tumult and the shouting died at Tickhill Square on Saturday at Denaby, a supporter called across to me, “you see what happens when a team loses its centre half – almost like taking half the side away”

This was Grantham’s unhappy experience. This Midland league side who had ushered in 1957 some disastrously for Denaby by beating them 11-10 at Grantham, lost Coulbeck 15 minutes before half-time. He sustained a badly wrenched leg after kicking the ground and Grantham played those last 60 minutes with 10 men. The score when Coulbeck was carried off was Denaby United 1-Gratham 0; the score after 90 minutes was Denaby United 6 Grantham 0

There was little incident in the first half and indeed the games seem to take a long time to produce any real excitement. Grantham made the first probing sorties to produce tentative shots from an elusive Bosnell, from Gaskell and from left half Sewll, but constant prompting from Denaby inside left Lambert brought the first goal. Duggan was fouled near the corner flag. He took the freekick himself and Egan tried to hook the ball in over his shoulder. It was a good attempt which nearly came off, but as the ball ran loose Duggan lifted it back into the goalmouth and Holmes was there to score in the seventh minute.

The remainder of the half was notable for several narrow escapes involving Grantham goalkeeper Brown, a most gallant fearless goalkeeper, he was lucky on occasion, but by and large 1-0 fairly represented the run of tunes in this half.

Felt The Handicap

Clearly, in the second half. Grantham felt this handicap of 10 men and when Denaby again began to pursue that all-out attacking policy which kept them leading Midland league goalscorers for so many weeks (and which even now finds only four Midland league teams who have scored more goals this season) it was clear that they were going to wipe out that January misfortune – with some relish! After 51 minutes leading goalscorer Cliff Martin got the first of his trio of goals which made him Denaby’s first hat-trick scorer this season. The other goals came after 82 and after 88 minutes.

A 69^th minute goal was scored by Egan and a 66^th minute goal by Holmes completed the total. Holmes goal was a gem, scored with a header from a long crossfield centre from Egan which might have been marked out with a textbook dotted line.

And in the big push Denaby were operating with virtually six forwards for the converted Markwell was always having his own bids to score, even from the halfback line.

Martin was unlucky not to have had four goas, for Brown dropped one shot from him which bounced against the post and was only very luckily cleared by a defender.

This was indeed the forward lines day out and after remembering the three scorers one must not forget the two who did not get among the goals – Duggan and Lambert. Lambert contributed a tremendous amount with his accurately placed long plopping shots. And Duggan, who is always worth his place in this Denaby side, had another splendid game, he was extremely unlucky not to have scored but he had ample consolation in the ground work he put in to make the running for his colleagues.