RateTheRef

The rail strike having rendered his ticket for the FA Cup tie at Clitheroe unusable, JCFC settled for the short bus ride to

Saturday 1st October 2022
Nation League
Halifax Town   0   v   4   Woking
Scott Simpson (Staffordshire); Ashley Royston, Matthew Bacon. 4thers Tom Wall.

It may be that JCFC has simply been unaware of officials from further South, but Mr Simpson has appeared to have made rapid progress through the ranks in the last few seasons. The assistants were well-known S&H officials, though from the back of the stand, the bright sun made it impossible to be certain which was which, while the 4th official was someone whose name had never registered at all.

A Halifax attacker was briefly free in the first 30 seconds - quickly gobbled up - and Woking took control. They missed a chance on 6 minutes, lifting the ball over the bar from 3 yards. Two minutes later, Woking lifted a free kick into the box; AR2 correctly withheld his flag for a player in an offside position, allowing a man to run from deeper; his effort was parried away, leaving a comfortable finish for the striker. The home left back was having a torrid time, his winger putting dangerous crosses into the area. One such on 17 minutes led to a scrambled block by the keeper, with a rebound off a defender  for an own goal. On 34 minutes, Halifax did manage a shot. Was it on target? Only if the target in question was the third advertising board to the right of the goal. Halifax came close to another o.g. a minute later, but they did end the half with a decent shot which skimmed the Woking crossbar. There were loud boos as the players left the field - and they were not aimed at Mr Simpson.

Halifax came to life - briefly - after the restart. A good cross from the right corner cleared the central attacker; his colleague waited for it to arrive, hoping to volley it into the net, but a retreating defender managed to nip in and put it out for a corner. Things continued uneventfully until the 75th minute when Woking added their third, with little opposition from the home defence. The crowd thinned considerably at this point, and even more so shortly afterwards, when the keeper could only parry a shot, leaving a simple tap-in. As in the first half, Halifax had a good shot as the game entered added time, but it rebounded off the post. Further boos came at the final whistle.

It was not an afternoon to test Mr Simpson's abilities, but he did the job pretty well. His whistling is brief, but imperious, and there was little for players to complain about. On a couple of occasions he made "Sieg heil" gestures when awarding a free-kick. JCFC could not see a card, but wondered if this had been another case of perfunctory carding technique, but decided not, as neither the referee, either assistant nor 4thers appeared to write anything down. JCFC was wrong, of course, as the NLP indicated that two Halifax players had been cautioned.

Any lower league club looking for an interesting tie when the FA Cup draw is made tomorrow could do worse than hope to be drawn against Halifax, though whether many of the Shaymen's supporters would be in attendance is open to question.