ENTERPRISE NATIONAL LEAGUE. SATURDAY, 22nd NOVEMBER 2025.

Appalling Ref; Dreadful Match; poor result (again)…

Yeovil Town made the long trip from Somerset today to re-acquaint themselves with a Morecambe side for the first time in over six years. This is what I wrote about the club in my analysis of fellow National League members earlier this year:

Yeovil Town is one of those non-league clubs which was certainly better organised – and more skilful – than many poor football clubs whose mediocrity was protected – season after pointless season – by the Closed Shop of the Football League for most of the Twentieth Century. They hit the national headlines as long ago as 1949, when they defeated the mighty First Division Sunderland 2–1 at Huish in the FA Cup Fourth Round: a seismic shock at the time. Next round, they played Manchester United at Old Trafford in front of more than eighty thousand people. But Somerset is a long way from the centre of England, where most EFL clubs are situated. And – if only because of the distances involved (their Huish Stadium is 278 miles from the Mazuma Mobile Stadium, for example) the Glovers were never likely to be elected into the Football League. So they had to wait until the MiIlennium had come and gone – 2003 – before finally winning a place in the elite of English football on merit. They won the then Football Conference by an astonishing 17-point margin, accumulating an incredible 100 points. But we get ahead of ourselves…

Yeovil Town FC was founded in 1895 and initially played at a ground simply called Huish. This was famous (notorious?) for the slope of its pitch: it dropped a whole 2.4 metres (eight feet) from one sideline to the other. They bobbed in and out of the Western League and the Southern League (English or Western or Central Divisions) – often winning them – until the 1940s.  After the Second World War, The Glovers joined the Southern League, ending up, firstly, in its South Eastern Section in 1959 and then the Southern League Premier Division as from 1960 following re-arrangements of the competition. During 1976, Yeovil came within a few votes of being elected to the Football League – but the Old Boy’s Network closed ranks again and they would have to wait more than a quarter century more before they could finally replace some of the dross which had been clogging the bottom of the Football League for decades. In 1980, the club became founder-members of the new Alliance Premier League and stayed there until 1979, when they were relegated to the Isthmian League Premier Division, which they won after three seasons to return to the re-named Football Conference in 1988. Another relegation followed in 1995 but Yeovil were back in the Conference as Isthmian Champions in 1997. As we have seen, they ran away with this during 2003 and then won League Two as well two years later. By this time, they had been playing at newly-built Huish Park, to which they moved during 1990. The Glovers reached their current Zenith – the Championship – in 2013 but only lasted a year there. By 2015, they were back in League Two and in 2019 came bottom of the entire EFL to return to the rebranded National League, enduring a single season in the National League South during 2023-24. They returned to the National League as Champions and last season, finished eighteenth in the table.

Yeovil won the FA Trophy in 1981, when they beat Stevenage Borough at Villa Park in Brum by two goals to one.

The Glovers have encountered the Shrimps on eight previous occasions – all in League Two. Morecambe won five of these and lost just two. I’ve not been able to identify anyone who played for both clubs.

The fixtures planned for the clubs to meet again this season are at Morecambe on Saturday, 22^nd November 2025 and then in Somerset on Saturday, 21^st March 2026.

The Glovers have had a torrid time of late and arrived on a really bad run of form. They were dumped out of the FA Cup by minnows Hemel Hempstead (who only had ten men for over two-thirds of the game) and have just one draw and thus a single point to show for their last six league matches. Last time out – seven days ago – they were beaten at home by Southend, 0-1. They arrived in north Lancashire in eighteenth position in the NL, just four points ahead of twenty-second placed Morecambe. So this would be an ideal chance for Morecambe to both add to Yeovil’s current woes and also close the gap between themselves and the visitors.

Morecambe were a tad lucky to beat Brackley Town 2-0 last Tuesday night at the Maz. They totally lost momentum in the second half at a point when they were winning by a single goal and an equaliser seemed increasingly inevitable. It appeared to have arrived after an hour but the Referee – who had a poor game throughout – disallowed it. I couldn’t see why at the time but having watched a video of the incident, it seems to me that her decision to strike it out for Off-Side was simply wrong. Shane Byrne’s header on the home goal line was the result of a misplaced defensive headed clearance by Mo Sangare, who actually directed the ball straight towards the scorer. I know the Off-Side Rule changes constantly, but isn’t it still the case that if an opponent plays the ball to you, it’s not possible to be in an Off-Side position? Brackley Manager Gavin Cowan was incandescent about this after the game – as well he might be; claiming that the Fourth Official saw this but the Referee over-ruled him. In such moments are success and failure decided: the visitors were well on top at the time and if their goal had stood, who knows what the final result might have been?

Ashvir Singh Johal’s men needed to be much better organised today and deal with their undoing time and again so far this campaign: a collective failure to concentrate for 90 minutes. I’m not going to bore readers yet again as to why I don’t listen anymore to Ash’s predictable and somewhat robotic ramblings which have replaced proper interviews by media outsiders as his pre-match thoughts before games. But you have to wonder how much more influence behind the scenes his coaching staff are having on the team currently. It was noticeable, for instance, that Goalkeeping Coach Jon Stewart was far more visible than usual on the sidelines last Tuesday night – not that you could miss a man as simply huge as he is physically. When Jack Nolan scored the Shrimps’ opening goal, it was interesting to see the way he ran directly over to Jon to celebrate – ignoring the congratulations of his team-mates and treating a Manager who hasn’t picked him recently as if he didn’t exist. Unrest in the team? Trouble at t’Mill? Or something and nothing? But wouldn’t it be good if someone asked Ash to comment on incidents like this one instead of feeding him vetted lines so he can waffle-on about his own agenda in his public pre-match musings?

Yeovil Manager Richard Dryden – by contrast to the Morecambe boss– gave a proper interview to the BBC before the game. Asked what he expected from today’s hosts, he answered:

“A lot of attacking stuff from them. They move the ball quick; they’ve got good movement. They’ve got players who can score at the drop of a hat and I think that was proved on Tuesday night. We watched these Tuesday night and they were pretty good against Brackley. They changed their shape – whether they keep that shape or not… – but it’s about us creating and being solid out of possession. Every game’s tough but we go into it with some confidence: about how we can play against them.”

The weather had been quite sunny in north Lancashire during the morning of the match. But as three o’clock approached, mist started to appear and the game began in almost foggy conditions with a slick of almost dew-like wetness on the greasy surface.

As a result, players regularly lost their footing. And whistle-happy Referee Declan Brown responded by regularly blowing for non-existent `fouls’ which neither team had committed. If a player falls over but the nearest opponent is not even within touching distance of him, how does that work Ref? He was utterly hopeless and I’m tempted to blame him for spoiling this afternoon’s game. But that wouldn’t be fair. The players from both teams and their Managers must take the responsibility for one of the worst games of football I have ever seen. Yeovil looked like a team that has forgotten what it is like to win: they offered virtually nothing as far as progressive football was concerned all afternoon. And Morecambe weren’t much better.

My heart sank when I saw that Ash had chosen Harrison Panayiotou to lead the line for the Shrimps today. (I’ve been told subsequently that Admiral Muskwe had been selected but was injured during the warm-up but I don’t know if this is true.) Yes, that’s Hopeless `Harry’ Panayiotou. He’s never had a good game in a Morecambe shirt and today was no exception. He didn’t win a single header; failed to either control or hold the ball up and contributed precisely nothing all afternoon – except his customary yellow card which, to  be fair to him, was yet another ridiculous decision by the Referee. In the second half, one of the few good moves of the match saw Ben Tollitt get away on the left and slide a superb ball across the Town penalty area: all it needed was a touch for an almost certain goal. If Harrison was quicker to either anticipate or actually even move, he could have slid-in and turned the ball home. But he didn’t even try to. His replacement, Rolando Aarons was possibly even worse – offering precisely nothing during the admittedly only ten minutes or so that he graced the pitch with his underwhelming presence.

In the first half, it was all Morecambe. They passed the ball nicely a lot of the time but almost every time they fashioned a chance to shoot – as the crowd continually and loudly encouraged them to do so – they failed to. Only Jake Cain and Jack Nolan seemed immune from this particular disease. Jack drew a routine save from Jed Ward after about twenty five minutes and an even better one low to the goalkeeper’s left at the foot of his post in the fifty-second. Jake forced the visiting stopper into another really good save at full stretch to push his shot from just outside the penalty area away for a corner with almost an hour on the clock. But we get ahead of ourselves.

As the visitors were pinned in their own half almost permanently, the pattern of the first half seemed to be: pass sideways; pass sideways; pass sideways; pass backwards (with the variation of passing back to the goalkeeper every so often). Little penetration; no end product. Jamal Blackman in the home goal had virtually nothing to do; his Opposite Number was busier – but not busy enough. So a totally soporific half ended scoreless.

If anything, the match got even worse in the second half. Yeovil looked from that start to be playing for a draw and Morecambe – with Gwion Edwards again retiring early at the break – looked like they wouldn’t score if they played until Xmas. But it could have been even worse. Declan Brown produced a magic trick that his namesake Derren would be proud of in the 78^th minute. On a rare attack, Yeovil’s Junior Morias appeared in the centre of the field and he played a lovely ball into the home penalty area which substitute Tahvon Campbell latched onto. But Mo Sangare thwarted him with a superb tackle. Sadly for poor old Mo, though, Tahvon fell over on the slippery surface as a result. And – as we have already noted – if you fell over today, Mr Brown awarded you a free-kick. Or, in this case – a penalty.

Campbell picked himself up and took it – a powerful shot low to Jamal Blackman’s right. But the big goalkeeper threw himself full length and managed to push the shot away via the slightest of touches of the post to safety – it was a truly outstanding save and the highlight of an otherwise relentlessly dreary afternoon.

So Jamal saved us the match because if he hadn’t stopped the spot-kick, we would certainly have lost again. Yeovil are a poor team which we should be beating easily, particularly in the predicament we are in currently. But as things turned out, we were lucky to get even a point out of the game. Yet again, it’s just not good enough. As a result, Morecambe remain twenty-second in the National League. Yeovil went up one place to seventeenth.

So what did our Manager make of this latest disappointment?:

“Disappointed not to win the game. I thought for the first seventy-five minutes, we looked pretty solid. Pleased with another clean sheet – and another point. Those periods of pressure – we need to make the most of them. We could have scored in the first half: a couple of chances and that opens the game up. We defended really well. It was hard to break them down. If we scored at those moments, the second half’s a little bit different. The game went on and on and on. We zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”…

Sorry – I fell asleep as Ash went on and on and on with the same old stuff we have heard so many times before: ifs, buts and maybes. And if it wasn’t so perishingly cold, I’d have probably dropped off during the game as well…

Morecambe:  40 Jamal Blackman; 5 Maldini Calcurri; 6 Ludwig Francillette; 7 Gwion Edwards (32 George Thomas 45’); 9 Harrison Panayiotou (Y) (12 Rolando Aarons 86’); 10 Jake Cain (8 Miguel Azeez 72’); 18 Ben Tollitt; 20 Mo Sangare; 24 Yann Songo’o (C) (Y); 28 Emmerson Sutton; 36 Jack Nolan.

Subs not used: 1 Archie Mair; 2 Lewis Payne;19 Ma’Kel Bogle-Campbell; 33 Arjan Raikhy.  

Yeovil Town: 1 Jed Ward; 3 Alex Whittle; 4 Morgan Williams (Y); 6 Jacob Wannell (C); 5 Finn Cousin-Dawson; 7 Junior Morias; 8 Luke McCormick (Y); 11 James Daly (Y); 18 James John Plant (29 Tahvon Campbell 71’); 19 Josh Sims (21 Harvey Greenslade 66’); 25 Max Jolliffe.

Subs not used: 22 Matthew Gould; 14 Brett McGavin; 15 Dan Ellison; 17 Andrew Oluwabori; 28 Leo Ramirez-Espain.

Ref: Declan Brown.

Att: Just over two thousand. (111 from Yeovil – safe journey home to each and every one of them.)