Dobie at the death
Last updated 12:03, Monday, 07 April 2008
Carlisle 2 Yeovil 1: Sleet, then sun. The ache of frustration, then a rush of Cumbrian ecstasy.
“That’s a season in one afternoon,” chuckled John Ward, who might have been referring to the weather but was more likely interpreting a bewildering spring day of all the emotions at Brunton Park.
From 3pm to 4.45pm, the elements lurched from winter to summer, and Ward’s United delivered themselves from damaging defeat to improbable victory. Now the sun will probably refuse to go back in.
These are the defining days when events whack you over the head like a cartoon mallet. Grand National day supplied all the imagery we needed as Carlisle ploughed over League One’s 41st fence while Doncaster stumbled and Swansea fell. Result: the Championship becomes almost touchable, the winning post now a short gallop away.
No apologies here for repeating the essential facts of the day. Carlisle, in shooting five points clear of Doncaster, have put their padlock on second place. Should they knock Swansea over in their game in hand tomorrow, the gap to the leaders will be a paltry point. Now take a seat before absorbing the next bit: should events fall Carlisle’s way this week, they could be promoted at Elland Road in five days’ time.
Even though it’s his birthday today, Ward is still going around placing his hand over our glasses. “Over four or five games, so many different things can happen to tip the balance in the other direction,” came his sober warning. That’s probably the blast of cold air we all need. A fixture list which still obliges Carlisle to tackle Swansea, Leeds, Southend, Millwall and Bournemouth contains too many traps and landmines to be dismissed as a sequence of formalities.
Nonetheless, this was plainly the day when Carlisle’s season went through a door into a place where automatic promotion is no longer hoped for but expected.
They secured a play-off place on Saturday, incidentally, but that scrap of information almost got lost among the more exciting thoughts and feelings that sparked up when Scott Dobie met Gary Madine’s calm chested pass with his blistering injury-time winner.
As this old ground abandoned itself to delirium, the mind’s eye saw Michael Bridges ramming home a spookily similar goal against Notts County two years ago, to put Carlisle on the precipice of League Two promotion. Also at the Warwick Road End, also in a 2-1 victory in April, Dobie’s winner might be remembered as the day United leapt towards yet another era.
“You don’t get as far as we have by being lucky,” said Ward, who was perfectly entitled to challenge the presumption that last-minute winners are in some way ill-deserved. “We’ve worked very hard to achieve it and it’s taken a lot of guts to stick to the task. That applies to this game as much as the season so far.”
Fair point. At times in the opening stages, however, it took a fair jump of faith for most of us to reconcile this bobbly, unsatisfying squabble with a possible promotion campaign. United, quite properly, made most of the early advances, but Marc Bridge-Wilkinson’s saved shot, Danny Livesey’s header which Terrell Forbes repelled, and then a golden volleyed chance which the big defender squandered at the far post, were fleeting moments of promise indeed in the first half hour.
As Russell Slade, Yeovil’s green-capped manager, sped back and forth from his bench to encourage his troops, United’s weary struggle for inspiration then snapped back in their faces. There was a persistent push down the left by the visitors, before the ball was worked to Marcus Stewart, 30 yards from goal.
“Marcus is quality,” warned Ward of his old Bristol Rovers protégé on the eve of battle. Words evidently unheeded, as the 35-year-old was allowed to stroll away from Grant Smith’s attention and whip in a dangerous shot which flicked off Livesey and soared into the top corner of Keiren Westwood’s net. United in general, and Simon Hackney in particular, were searching unconvincingly for a decisive final ball, even as they pressed back at Yeovil. One cleared cross saw Bridge-Wilkinson blast a volley against Marc Bircham, then the midfielder bent a left-wing ball onto Murphy’s head, only for the imposing Begovic to save.
Dobie’s entrance for Smith at the onset of the second half brought an instant addition of urgency as Ward reverted hopefully to 4-4-2. Carlisle began to pin Yeovil in their own half, but the Glovers were still able to counter-attack with a degree of menace. On the hour, the meaty Lloyd Owusu set up Marvin Williams, who scuffed a decent chance at Westwood.
At the other end, Chris Lumsdon nimbly worked his way into shooting space but lifted his effort inches over Begovic’s bar. Then the giant Bosnian denied Graham after the striker got himself onto Lumsdon’s high ball into the box. Then, praise be, Carlisle equalised: a brace of corners from Bridge-Wilkinson, and from the second, a stooping header from Peter Murphy which ricocheted off Stewart and rolled over the line.
The moment Yeovil’s back door went off its hinges? Not quite. Seven minutes from time, they almost won the game for themselves, when Aiden Downes embarked on an arrowing run and dinked a cross into perfect territory for fellow sub Andy Kirk. But Westwood, perfectly placed, met Kirk’s smashed volley with a fine reflex save.
Cue the glorious finale. Not when Graham audaciously robbed the dozing Begovic and then lost his balance at the moment of truth, but a couple of minutes later, when Bridge-Wilkinson lofted a final ball into the box, 17-year-old Madine displayed composure beyond his years by chesting his first touch of the game into Dobie’s path, and the Cumbrian pummelled the chance low into the net.
After such a troublesome duet with one of the division’s also-rans (an occasion tainted a touch by Scott Mathieson’s haughty refereeing), it was the kind of moment which got you thinking that the season must have something glittering in store for United after all. Dobie concurred.
“When I got promoted with West Brom a few years ago, the results of the other teams just seemed to go for us and we tended to get things in the last minute of games,” said the striker.
“Everything is going for us like it’s meant to be. Hopefully it will keep happening.”
Experience tells you that Carlisle never motor smoothly from A to B when there might be a darker, more thorny path available. Even now, instinct warns of traumas and complications still to come – as, quite sensibly, does Ward. Still, with spring in the air and Swansea on the road north, what is there not to enjoy?
