No Match last Saturday – how did our boys do elsewhere?

Morecambe is the only League Two club to have a sufficiently large complement of players called-up for international duty not to have had a competitive game last Saturday. So the scheduled fixture at home to Crawley Town had to be postponed. This is the second time this season that Derek Adams had had to twiddle his thumbs on a match day – the fixture against Barrow last month was postponed due to the call-ups of five Shrimps’ players by various international squads. These players were leading scorer Michael Mellon; Adam Mayor; Jacob Bedeau, Eli King and JJ McKiernan.

Eli – the Cardiff City loanee – was called-up and played for the Welsh Under-21 side last time out. Unfortunately, has had to return to his parent club as a result of a serious injury which means he will not to be able to play for either Morecambe or Wales for the next little while at least.

So what happened to our brave lads as a day-trip to Morecambe was replaced by adventures in such far-flung places as Slovakia and Suriname?

Michael Mellon joined-up with Scott Gemmill’s Scotland U21 side for the second match in a row. He not only trained with them leading up to last lucky Friday the Thirteenth’s home clash with Hungary; he was named in the starting squad, albeit on the bench. On Radio 5 Live, former Scottish international Charlie Adam suggested that if Michael had been on Liverpool’s books rather than Morecambe‘s via Burnley, he would have probably started the game. Before the match, Charlie insisted that the status of players’ employers often has more sway in an international manager’s mind than objective talent. He also suggested that this was the reason that the nod was given by Scott Gemmill to 17-year-old Ben Doak – the Liverpool Academy player who actually started the match – rather than our Mr Mellon. But young Ben scored twice as Scotland beat Hungary 3-1 at Fir Park last Friday. Last night, they beat Malta 2-1 at the same venue in Motherwell and Michael played the final third of a game which the Scots won with only eight minutes scheduled to play. Progression to the international stage almost certainly guarantees that this will be Michael’s only full season playing for the Shrimps – he is becoming a hot property which will certainly feature in his home club’s first team in due course – or somewhere else higher in the footballing pyramid than Morecambe currently are. Good luck to him.

Meanwhile, both JJ McKiernan (Northern Ireland Under-21s) and Adam Mayor (England Under 21’s) would have been interested in games against Serbia in Ulster and overseas in Slovakia against Ukraine last Monday night.

JJ played the full 90 minutes against Serbia’s Under 21’s at Glenavon’s Mourneview Park in Lurgan two nights ago. His team lost 1-2. Last Tuesday, they also lost; this time by the only goal of a game against Ukraine which was played in the Futbolovy Stadium in Poprat, Slovakia. This obviously hasn’t helped the Northern Ireland team’s hopes of progress in the competition but it won’t have harmed JJ’s growing reputation as an effective player.

On the other side of the world, Jacob Bedeau played for his national team against Jamaica on Friday Thirteenth. Grenada started this game bottom of the group of six which makes-up the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) League. The `Spiceboys’ lost at home by one goal to four but Jacob played all ninety minutes against a side which included former Morecambe team-mate Greg Lee. He was again in the team which faced Suriname away on the following Monday. He received a yellow card as the Spiceboys conceded four goals in the first half. There was no further scoring but Jacob’s national side remain bottom of the CONCACAF Nations League, Group B with a single point from four games so far.

Adam Mayor again wasn’t actually called-up to even train with the England Under-21 group as things turned out. But his time – as we mentioned during the last international break – will eventually come. For the record, without him, England hammered Serbia 9-1 at the City Ground in Nottingham on 12th October but then lost 3-2 in Slovakia against leaders Ukraine last Monday night; the winning goal being scored in the 94th minute.