Plymouth Argyle are back upto 8th in the Championship and are on the accent after the disappointment of losing 0 – 1 to Hull City a couple of weeks back. Argyle beat visitors Barnsley 3 – 0 last night at Home Park with a lot of positives to be taken from the game. Barnsley did have Lewin Nyatanga sent off only four minutes into the game for bringing down Jermaine Easter while clear on goal. Argyle then had the man over and they made that advantage count 30 seconds later with Steve MacLean whipping the resulting free kick straight into the top right of goal from 20 yards out. Plymouth pushed forward and peppered the Barnsley goal with shots but Barnsley keeper Tony Warner did an excellent job to deny Argyle until the 75th minute when the man everyone wanted to see, Jamie Mackie came on as a substitute and made an immediate impact. Mackie slipped in behind the Barnsley defence and was in the right place to slot home Peter Halmosi’s pin-point pass to make it 2 – 0 to the home team. Mackie made it 3 – 0 ten minutes later with a low drive from the edge of the penalty area converting Paul Connolly’s pass. It was good to see skipper Paul Wotton come on even if he only played for five minutes at the end of the game. Paul Wotton is an inspirational player in the centre of the park and has been sorely missed by the Argyle faithful. Hopefully he will be eased back into the starting XI again and will be playing 90 minutes very soon. Jamie Mackie seems to be the real deal even if his passing is a little to be desired right now but he has the key ingredient that Plymouth needed, the ability to find the back of the net with regularity, two goals on debut is something that is rare in any league. It seems that the step up into the Championship hasn’t fazed him at all! And to top it off; Leicester City lost again last night away at league leaders Watford which leaves Leicester just two points off the drop zone. So Mr. Holloway; still think that moving to a ‘bigger’ club was a good idea? The rumour mill has it that Holloway will be on his way if he doesn’t get results soon, although a big part of me wants him to stay and take Leicester down to League One while Argyle are playing at Wembley in the play-off’s. How sweet would that be? Karma will always come back to get you … what goes around … comes around!
Now for the other side of the coin. A painful defeat for the English cricketers in New Zealand. The early signs were good with England rattled off 41 runs by the end of the 6th over. Then suddenly two quick wickets fell, but England appeared to regroup building a total of 85 – 2 after 15 overs; then the rain came pouring down causing a 2 1/2 hour delay and the loss of 14 overs per side. Then it was normal service as the English middle order did their usual dominoes act with six wickets falling for 52 runs. Stuart Broad put up a valiant rear-guard action but it was too little too late as England were bowled out for 158 in 35.1 overs. Then the home team came out in confident mood hitting the ball around the park with Jesse Ryder and Brendon McCullum finding the boundary on a regular basis. Ryder hit 2 sixes and 11 fours on his way to an unbeaten 79 runs while McCullum hit 5 sixes and 8 fours on his way to an unbeaten 80 runs. Frankly England were rubbish in the field as well dropping three catches, Ryder was dropped twice during the innings including being dropped on 8 runs and McCullum was dropped on nought. Ryder and McCullum only needed 18.1 overs to overhaul England’s total in what was more like Twenty20 scoring. So the tourists are now 2 – 0 down and looking like a lost cause in the one day series as nothing less than a miracle will help England to avoid a series defeat now, lot’s of praying to be done!