Another nail was well and truly driven into our coffin in another ineffective performance at Plymouth.
Apart from a brief flurry of pressure in the second half, when Paul Baker had a shot cleared of the line by Mick Heathcote and a Steve Soley shot hitting the bar we were never at the races.
Plymouth dominated the first half, without really breaking sweat, with left wing back Jon Beswetherick causing us constant problems. It was his good movement and cross that provided Craig Middleton with a free header, to plant past Luke Weaver for Argyles first goal after 6 minutes. Again the feeling amongst the 100 travelling Blue Army (or should that now be reduced to Blue Platoon) was, where was the goal going to come from to get us back into the match. The rest of the half had only a Paul Harries strike from the edge of the box, straight at the keeper, to show for our attacking efforts. Pretty dismal stuff.
Although Argyle had plenty of possession they didn't put the Carlisle defence under an enormous amount of pressure. Shaun Teale looked very competent and comfortable on the ball and young Paul Reid made some good telling tackles. The closest Argyle came to adding to their lead was a Mick Heathcote shot cleared off the line by Matthew Pitts.
The second half started very much as the first , with Plymouth calling the tune. Only when Paul Baker came on for Paul Harries after 60 minutes did we start to come into the game for a brief spell. Richard Tracey came on to replace Richard Prokas with around 15 minutes to go, much to the disgust of the travelling few. Damon Searle came on for Billy Barr with 5 minutes to go, but it was too little too late.
With only a few minutes to go Plymouth secured the points when Martin Gritten scored a fine solo goal in front of the Carlisle fans.
I had left Newton Aycliffe at 06:15, to meet up with the Supporters Club coach at Tebay, finally arriving back home at 24:45 the following morning. As a supporter I (we) surely deserve better than this.
Coming home on the coach the favourite pass time was identifying motorway signs to Nationwide Conference venues. We can only hope this is not the case, but it is difficult to see where our next win is going to come from. We are 10 points worse off than at this stage last season and but for the grace of Chester we would just about be relegated by now.
They say hope springs eternal and that is all we have left now.
Incidentally there was no sign of this guy Bloom, probably just another figment of our imagination.
Mike Corry
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