Walsall blog: Against All Odds

Walsall blogger Mark Jones salutes the nine-man army, fumes at referee Mike Thorpe and sees a turning point ahead of the weekend.

Determined, hardworking, honest, the bravest.

Not my words, but those of Jimmy Mullen after Saturday’s astounding nine-man win for Walsall at Brighton. Jimmy was spot on.

To play with ten men for 75 minutes, then for over an hour with nine and go on to win what was on paper at least a difficult away fixture was absolutely sensational.

When you support a club like Walsall, you know there aren’t going to be megabucks spent on players, so you want your team to play with pride in the shirt.

That’s exactly what we got at the Withdean. In the face of adversity everyone stuck together and displayed a steely determination to succeed.

What was also clear was that what was said in the dressing room at half time was taken on board by the players.

Whilst Dicky Dosh’s teams showed a lot of character, its been a long time (too long) since I’ve had faith in a Walsall team that can go out and play like supporters would, if we were lucky enough to put on the shirts.

The bulk of the credit for this goes to the manager. Jimmy’s appointment was greeted with cynicism in some quarters and I certainly expressed my doubts at the time.

I am starting to think that he is building something good at the Banks’s. It would be good to hear his name chanted in the next few games.

As for the actual match action, there was a certain irony that the nine men were able to keep our first clean sheet in 19 games and record successive wins for the first time since the back end of last season.

TV footage of the sendings-off shows that it was a very dangerous (and out of character) tackle by Rhys Weston that only a very lenient official would have let go.

Unfortunately Mike Thorpe of Suffolk (remember the name) is from the hardline school of refereeing, hence the ridiculous decision to send off Netan Sansara, who was apparently inconsolable afterwards, for what was a yellow card offence at the very worst.

Mr Thorpe is also from the ‘I’m on a powertrip so I’m gonna pretend I’m in charge but actually the glaring inconsistencies in my performance just make me look sad and incompetent’ school, so we were always up against it.

Blog writing etiquette and the laws of libel prevent me from calling referees cheats. I’ll leave it at that.

There may have been some mileage in appealing against Netan’s dismissal, but the club have decided not to bother. This was probably because we cannot acquire a millionaire owner and Premier League status before the end of the week. One rule for one!

There are always pivotal moments in a season, games that are more than just about the points, where what has gone on before is consigned to history and the rest of the campaign goes off in a very different direction.

The 3-2 win at Doncaster was a perfect example of this last season, the team seemed to grow in confidence after that Tuesday night. We may well look back at Brighton away on September 20 as the point where things really took off.

Clayton, Chris, Richard, Steve, Anthony, Dwayne, Stephen, Alex, Marco, Jabo, Paul and Troy – you are most definitely fit to wear those shirts.

Good on you!