I’m sure everybody was fully aware just how tough our introduction to League One was going to be. Away to Sheffield Wednesday is about as big as it gets, and in all reality we were never going to take three points away from Hillsborough. However, the Daggers were far from outclassed and it bodes well for the rest of the season.

Coming up against a strike force of Clinton Morrison and Marcus Tudgay, who both have proven Championship pedigree, with the likes of Neil Mellor and Paul Heffernan on the bench says it all. They have a squad full of very good players and will beat most visitors to their huge ground. Indeed, Morrison obliged with the Owls’ 2nd goal after Scott Doe had minutes earlier diverted a Coke effort into his own net.

Both goals were sloppy from our point of view, and you really can’t give gifts to these sort of teams. Coke was unmarked inside our area to side-foot the ball goalwards from a corner, and the game was over when Teale was afforded too much space to cross for Sedgewick, who in turn fed Morrison for a tap-in. Roberts then had to make a wonderful save from Tudgay’s header to keep us in the game. Dagenham came back into it though, and Vincelot really should have scored from just inside the box with a placed effort.

Josh Scott was introduced to give us more attacking impetus and most of the 2nd half play was in the Owls’ half. Nurse put a free header into the ground and over the bar, McCrory drove into Weaver’s arms and both Lewis and Vincelot screwed long-range efforts wide of the target. You sensed the home side had another gear, but it was encouraging nonetheless.

Midweek saw a League Cup visit to club-thieves MK Dons, and the Daggers built on their 2nd half showing in Sheffield by taking the lead. McCrory bent a lovely free-kick over the wall to give us the lead at the break, with Currie, Scott and Nurse making starts. However, a first win in the competition wasn’t to be and an Ibehre double put us out in the first round for the 4th consecutive season. A superb Easter pass sent the former Orient man clear of Doe to score the first, before Doe’s woefully short backpass put the same man in for the winner.

You have to feel sorry for Doey, who was immaculate at Hillsborough but found his name on the scoresheet for the wrong side, before his misjudgement put us out of the cup. I’m sure he will bounce back given his obvious ability, but we will certainly need to defend better after conceding 4 goals in our first 2 matches. Once Lewis and Vincelot’s fledgling partnership in front of the back 4 starts to bed in you would expect the defence to tighten up.

The sad death of Exeter striker Adam Stansfield meant we were without a game this weekend. To lose your life to cancer at 31 is something that shouldn’t happen to anybody let alone a fit sportsman, and our thoughts are with his family.

We will now be playing catch-up for a few weeks; Notts County are next up and they are currently bottom of the division after two defeats, so a point at Meadow Lane on Saturday would be very welcome. Easier said than done given the quality in their squad but we have the ability to take advantage. It remains to be seen whether we’ll have to do it without Josh Scott – a well-known rag has reported a rather unsavoury incident involving Josh although we will wait for more reliable information before discussing it. If he isn’t available, a lot of pressure will be on Gavin Tomlin after his ineffectual debut but his pre-season form was excellent so you would imagine goals are just around the corner for him.

Up the Daggers!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Reaction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.