Ah, a sorry tale of a small provincial town side playing in their Cup Final and losing.  Two early Dean Windass goals are sufficient to see off lowly Scunthorpe and propel the Tigers to three consecutive wins and the verge of the play-off zone.

Report by Mark Gretton.

We came, we saw, we grimaced at our surroundings and then we cuffed them about a bit and bogged off with the points. And so we now have three consecutive wins since, er, the last time we did that and can even move into the top 6 after Tuesday night. In addition, for those of us who like to see us play handsomely as well as effectively, we’re suddenly very easy on the eye, too. Showing us the equivalent of a well-turned ankle were:

Myhill
Ricketts Brown Turner Delaney
McPhee Marney Ashbee Hughes
Campbell Windass

So no change from the starting lineup that beat Preston on cruise control, though we needed the foot pressed down a lot harder to beat a Scunthorpe side who were, to someone who doesn’t trouble himself with Lincolnshire very much, surprisingly effective and keen to play proper football.

Not that we gave them much opportunity early on. After a Scunny attack from the kickoff we jumped all over them. Campbell was brought down as he advanced rapidly on the break and the Windass free kick was turned behind by keeper Murphy for a corner. From this the netman essayed a fairly panicky flap and the defence didn’t do much better. The ball fell for Turner who, as he can do, struck a nice volley that the Scunt keeper parried and got what he must have thought was enough distance from the goal. Not so. Deano was there to strike it first time, left-footed and acutely angled at the near post. 1-0, and great were the cavortings of the faithful.

We weren’t keen to take our foot of their neck anytime soon and Campbell ran at them again and lashed one that their custodian did well to tip over. We were controlling the game and Hughes cleverly released Delaney down the left. Damien galumphed happily after the ball and from the dead ball line essayed an excellent measured pullback. The only problem was a lack of striker to take advantage; Campbell for reasons unexplained had held back and Dean’s speed, generally conspicuous by its absence, has now declined to a level where the only difference between him jogging and him sprinting is the amount of facial contortion. But all was not lost as McPhee retrieved it and flicked back over for Dean to nonchalantly nod in. 2-0 inside the first 16 minutes.

I thought the Scunts might fold at this. Their support was mute and didn’t even seem to cheer up even when they were treated to Caleb Folan and Jay-Jay Okocha warming up in front of them. You’d think if you lived in Scunthorpe you’d be glad of the chance to see proper footballers keeping themselves loose and performing stretches, particularly when you consider how much these players cost and how much they are paid. We, helpfully I think, pointed this out to the Scunt fans nearby, but their response, frankly, did them little credit. A shame.

Fortunately for them, their team, once over its collective shellshock, showed that it can play. The fullbacks Logan and Williams were very comfortable on the ball and got forward frequently and Chelsea loanee Cork and Charlton loanee Youga also impressed as did ex-SheffU striker Forte who is tall, quick and skilful. Fortunately he was paired with Paul Hayes, who is chunky, slow and off whose boots the ball clangs noisily. Forte went close early on and Cork lashed one wide that looked like it was going in, but by and large, pretty though they were, our back four kept their shape and kept them out.

The looked like they had sprung us shortly before half-time as Hayes briefly found himself one-on-one with Myhill but chose to chip the ball straight into Bo’s gloves. We chose to hoot with derision, hoots that changed to groans of disappointment as Marney broke from the subsequent clearance, flicked the ball past the advancing keeper Murphy, but couldn’t quite catch it up and turn it in. The significance of this was not lost on us, as during injury time Forte got the hang of our high defensive line and was put through trailing a panting Wayne Brown in his wake. Forte never really looked like cocking this up and he duly didn’t, sliding the ball past Bo and making the half-time chat a bit more thoughtful than it might have been.

For those of you who have never been to Glanford Park, it’s impossible not to compliment you on your inherent taste and good sense. ‘Unimpressive’ is a word that suggests itself, as does ‘tiny.’ The stadium is constructed in 1980s neo-rubbishist style, sub-10,000 capacity, no pleasing shapes anywhere, plenty of iron strut supports to restrict your view. Think Chester’s dreadful Deva or, closer to home, Hull Kingston Rovers’ ‘New’ Craven Park and then think quickly of something more pleasant. The ground is situated well out of the town, no bad thing you might think if you’ve ever been to Scunthorpe, but there has been no effort to integrate it with the retail park now plonked next to it or with the road system that ‘feeds’ it. Parking is a choice of a car park which I have not been able to face after once being stuck in it for 90 minutes some years ago after a fourth division game that we lost, or abandoning your vehicle along a roadside verge and then deciding, after you have tramped through the mud, whether you want to access the ground across a footbridge that leads you down a mudslide, or whether you want to run across the start of the M181. In the ground you are greeted on the crappy PA by the strains of Hi, Ho, Silver Lining with the sound turned down for the crowd to sing the chorus, prompting one of my companions to wonder if the compere was normally hired as a DJ for evening celebrations after weddings. Everything is small and cheap, the bogs are claustrophobic, it screams small town and small time and so is, in fairness, entirely fit for purpose.

After the break the Scunts came out presumably having been instructed not to let us get the grip we had established at the start of the game and they put us back on our heels early on. They also seemed to have been told to do it in more direct style too, as intricate passing gave way to lumping it forward. We dealt with this either by Brown or Turner doing a lot of heading or by Myhill falling over under challenges and waiting for referee Uriah Rennie to give him the free kick, which he duly did. I’m not complaining, but I would have been had it kept happening to us. For all their pressure they didn’t actually come that close, though they should have done better with a volley well wide and another scrabbling Myhill dropped effort from a corner.

The best chances were falling to us, Marney found Windass who slid one of his ‘these passes you have loved’ perfectly into the path of McPhee who had plenty of time to take aim and blooter it horribly over – bloody rubbish, frankly. More surprisingly, miss of the match fell to the People’s Dean as the ball fell to him 2 yards out from a Marney corner and as we were already aerial celebrating the hat trick he somehow manage to kick it no further than on to his other leg. We were operating largely on the break now and were none the worse for it as the excellent Marney continued to turn them round. He broke well, held off the challenge and refused to play the easy ball until Campbell was free and then played a much better and more difficult pass that was only stopped when Campbell was wrestled over at the cost of a yellow card. He did the same thing minutes later for Caleb Folan, on for a late gallop, who could only screw the ball wide and was still doing it in injury time, this time charging forwards after a one-two to run down the clock by taking the ball to the corner.

And so we survived, not without alarms, but not in any real discomfort. And we look in good shape too, Turner and Brown grow in authority, Marney had his best game for us since his arrival last year and the ageing warrior Dean continues to do it where it’s needed. All very pleasing. The manager talked before the game about it being important that our fans have the ‘bragging rights’ after the fixture was over. Now I’m sure he means well here and is probably trying to say what he thinks we want to hear, but it really does make him sound like a middle-aged man trying to be embarrassingly down with the kids. Aside from the fact that it makes no sense (What are ‘bragging rights?’ Why do you need them? If we had lost would lives in Hull have been made a misery by Scunts coming over the bridge to taunt us?) it’s really not important to me that we beat such titchy opponents just because they happen to be fairly close by. But it is important that we keep winning and keep developing and, without doubt, we’re doing that at the moment.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Ricketts, Turner, Brown, Delaney; McPhee, Ashbee, Marney, Hughes; Windass, Campbell.  Subs: Garcia (for Windass, 67), Folan (for Campbell, 79), Dawson (for McPhee, 84), Okocha, Duke.

Goals: Windass 4, 16

Booked: Ashbee, Ricketts, Turner

Sent Off: None

SCUNTHORPE UNITED: Murphy, Cook, Crosby, Butler, Youga, Forte, Sparrow, Williams, Hurst, Logan, Hayes.  Subs: Paterson (for Williams, 55), Ameobi (for Hayes, 76), Lillis, Baraclough, Taylor.

Goals: Forte 45

Booked: Youga

Sent Off: None

REFEREE:  U Rennie

ATTENDANCE: 8,633