ENTERPRISE NATIONAL LEAGUE. EASTER MONDAY, 6th APRIL 2026.

What Might Have Been…

Let’s turn the clock back almost exactly a year to 12^th April 2025. Just as now, Morecambe were facing relegation and already occupying one of the places reserved for the detritus of any football table. Then, it was the EFL at the bottom of League Two. Fellow-strugglers Carlisle United were the visitors to the Mazuma Mobile Stadium and it was imperative that Derek Adams’ team of misfits; rejects and journeymen beat their Cumbrian neighbours. This is what I wrote at the time:

“If any match ever could be truly described as a six-pointer, today’s was it. Carlisle are the only club in the entire EFL between Morecambe and the abyss which leads to the National League. They have both played forty-one games so far; Carlisle have 34 points and Morecambe just two points more. In the reverse fixture last December, the Shrimps actually won at Brunton Park in a game where Jon Mellish was sent-off: a dismissal which was later rescinded by the authorities – much good did this do United at the time. But Morecambe’s record overall against the Cumbrian club is generally dire: they have only won five of twenty-four games in senior competitions and have lost twelve, not including their reverse against United last November at the Maz in the FA Trophy where Carlisle came from behind to win 1-2. With just five league games left to play this season, it was imperative for Morecambe to win again today.”

Instead, Morecambe totally bottled not just this game – losing 0-2 with an utterly feeble and uncommitted display – but the entire ensuing campaign. They finally collapsed into non-league obscurity a massive – and actually deeply humiliating – thirteen points short of safety. Carlisle didn’t turn the corner either and went down with us, a mere seven points adrift with over a million pounds of money we can just fantasise about frittered away on a squad almost as bad as our effectively free one.

This season, though, United have been closer to the top than the bottom of the National League and have already beaten us yet again at Brunton Park: 1-0 in the final game of 2025.

The Blues arrived in third position in the division and on a run of three straight wins and a goalless draw which happened against rapidly-improving Gateshead at Brunton Park last Friday. Mark Hughes’ men are guaranteed a place in the Play-Off campaign with just four games left. They won’t win the National League because they are too far behind leaders York and Rochdale (13 points) to be able to realistically catch either of them. But they are so far ahead of other Play-Off teams such as Southend that they can’t be pushed out of the top seven either.

For Morecambe, reality was far starker. Just as was the case last year, they had to win today to avoid a second successive relegation. Off the field, unwelcome news that the club is financially unsustainable and needs to cut its cloth in order to survive was no surprise. But the admission that it still faces unpaid debts from the previous regime – such as to Lancaster & Morecambe College, whose base as a training centre and venue for Academy games will come to an end as a result – was a shock. The acknowledgement that this oversight has been a result of the lack of `due diligence’ is very troubling. Owners Panjab Warriors claim to be injecting £200,000 a month into Morecambe FC to keep it afloat. They say that this can’t go on.

So the vultures could well be circling off the field at the Mazuma Mobile stadium. Yet again.

Not that you would know this from looking at the club’s website: as usual, the Warriors have kept completely silent about these latest worrying developments.

On it – thanks to the disastrous stewardship of Panjab’s flawed Wunderkind Ashvir Singh Johal – the Shrimps started today’s game six points short of safety. They are relying on clubs like Eastleigh to continue their dire form of recent times in the hope that the Hampshire outfit or one other might replace them in the mire by the end of this month.

Jim Bentley’s team started the game in twenty-second position, a point short of Brackley – who sit at the top of the Legion of the Doomed just above us in twenty-first position. So even if the Shrimps won this afternoon, they would still be in the relegation positions.

Morecambe fans would thus all have one eye on what was happening in Brackley – where Boston were the visitors – and Eastleigh, who hosted Yeovil – and keep their fingers well and truly crossed this afternoon. It was still mathematically possible prior to kick-off for Morecambe to catch clubs that lie higher in the table than Eastleigh but the only way to keep any genuine hopes of a Great Escape alive for the Shrimps would mean beating Carlisle today.

It was a lovely, sunny day in north Lancashire as a succession of Carlisle supporters’ coaches took advantage of the lovely view across the Lakeland Hills as they drove down the promenade towards the stadium instead of approaching inland via Westgate. They packed the away terraces and contributed – at least initially – to a tremendous atmosphere in the Maz.  

Almost five thousand people turning-out for a non-league fixture? As Jim Bentley or anyone else with a Scouse accent may have said eons ago when Morecambe were members of the Northern Premier League (average gate: three men and his dog): “You’re ‘avin’ a laff!”

Any fear that the Shrimps would fail to turn-up as they did in this fixture last season were quickly dispelled as the men in the red strip went for it right from kick-off. Visiting goalkeeper Gabriel Breeze was forced into his first save of the afternoon when the ever-willing Chris Popov cut in from the right and took a shot after just three minutes.

But Carlisle were not here to make up the numbers: they clearly intended to win. For them, outstanding player David Ajiboye was a pain in the proverbial all afternoon for the Shrimps. On this showing, Carlisle’s Number Seven is wasted at this level – and in his team as well. `Flair’ and `Carlisle’ – as opposed to `Big’ and `Agricultural’ – are two words which I don’t think have ever gone too well together and I suspect that without Ajiboye’s input today, they would have lost. He set-up our old pal Harvey Macadam for a shot on goal with a brilliant run down the right after eight minutes but the former Fleetwood player hit the ball wildly over the bar.

But we have a Number Seven of our own who is also worth his weight in gold. He was the Official Man of the Match again today, closely followed by Jack Nolan. I at least thought that Miguel Azeez also played better – and in a far more committed way – than I have ever seen him do so before in a Shrimps’ shirt. Until he ran out of steam early in the second half.

Call me cynical if you like but I seem to remember that Carlisle put in a bid for his services earlier in the year. He probably saw this as an audition…

Whatever, United – living down to their `agricultural’ past and that of Manager “Sparky’ Hughes as well – did quite a lot of play-acting today: feigning injuries and repeatedly getting in Referee Zac Kennard-Kettle’s face at every possible opportunity. I must apologise to the son of Trevor Kettle (who the oldies among us will remember) in advance for acknowledging that he didn’t allow the game to boil-over at any point. But he did fall for the visitors’ shenanigans more than once. In the twenty-fourth minute, though, one of their better players – Alex Gilliead – had to leave the field after going down off the ball for the second time in rapid succession. Sadly for him, he obviously wasn’t pretending.

The game continued to be really good to watch as two sides clearly wanted to win it and Morecambe made the breakthrough in the thirty-second minute. Harlee Dean took a throw-in on the Morecambe right; the ball was headed backwards from the edge of the Carlisle penalty area by Liam Hogan – and there was that man Gwion Edwards running onto it from deep to swerve a perfect shot into the net to Breeze’s right with the United goalkeeper helpless.

As silence suddenly fell over the huge travelling contingent and the home fans sang the theme from the `Great Escape’, Morecambe could have gone further ahead when Popov got away on the right and set-up Paul Lewis for a chance which came to nothing. Then Harlee Dean headed Azeez’s free-kick from the left wide of the target when hitting it seemed easier with with thirty-seven minutes on the clock.

Anyone with a decibel meter would have probably had it broken when the funereal silence from the away end was overcome from a continuous and extraordinarily loud verbal soundtrack from the Morecambe Manager. Whatever he said, his men were able to return to the Dressing Rooms at half time in the lead: a deserved one at that.

We would all expect Mark Hughes to have a few things to say to his mis-firing team at half time. And – predictably – Carlisle started to play at a higher pace than before in the second half. They bulldozed Morecambe for the first ten minutes and perhaps a bit longer: playing the ball faster and pushing higher than they had done in the first period. Their reward was almost immediate: Ajiboye and Azeez were both involved as Miguel failed to clear a pass from the Carlisle player in his own penalty area; two Blues’ players  had a chance to take a shot on goal and Regan Linney – rightly roundly booed for what is apparently called `simulation’ these days in the first half – scored. As the away supporters apparently woke from the dead, the visitors started to ask all the questions. For ten minutes or so, this really was top against bottom.

I thought that Morecambe had settled down again after this and might actually get back into the game. But – in the sixty-eighth minute – United’s goalkeeper threw the ball to his right to that man Ajiboye. He ran from about half way into the home half deeper and deeper and deeper into the Morecambe rearguard and then cut sharply inside. Next moment, the ball was in the net.

What happened?

The scorer (thin and wiry) took on substitute George Thomas (who frankly isn’t either); went round him as if he wasn’t there, sold a dummy to Myles and slipped the ball past him absolutely brilliantly.

The away contingent became even louder. But they were reduced to silence again until the end of the game when Morecambe – playing on the break more often than not – equalised. In the eighty-second minute.

Many of my Shrimp-supporting pals insisted last season that Harvey Macadam was overrated and his tendency to play the ball backwards and sideways instead of forwards was a serious weakness. We didn’t even talk about his ability – or otherwise – to head the ball.

But today, he scored with a perfectly looped header past his own goalkeeper when the visitors had failed to clear their lines with just eight minutes left to play.

I always knew the lad would come good for the team he was still on the books of at the beginning of the season…

Sadly, it didn’t really help. The match ended 2-2 but Morecambe actually needed to win.

The other lost souls in the division also managed to draw – but it didn’t change anything that matters.

Eastleigh pulled out all the stops against Yeovil and won 2-1.

They – and Aldershot – are now eight points ahead of us with just nine points to play for.

Both of these clubs have superior goal differences to ours.

So, effectively, we were relegated – yet again – this afternoon.

I personally think that our loss against Yeovil two weeks ago basically cooked our goose in the National League. Logically, though, we were domed long before that at the moment that our seemingly omnipotent owners appointed one of their own to wreck any chances the club had to either rebound back to the EFL – or actually survive at all.

Today – as at Rochdale on Friday – we had a glimpse of what might have been if Jim Bentley had been appointed a lot earlier then he actually was. Let’s not even mention what might have happened if they had kept Derek Adams at the club instead of summarily dismissing the Scotsman.

But it was not to be as owners who miss no chance to bleat about the importance of the `community’ – and regularly ignore the one they have found themselves in – followed their own agenda. An agenda focused on a gamble that a man who has never played football professionally knew better than people who have. It was never going to work.

This is what Jimbo had to say at the end of the game – and, arguably – an end of an era:

“Good game; good advert. Obviously, we want three points: one’s not enough at this stage of the season. Can’t knock the lads in regards to desire; attitude; determination; tackling – all that. Second half, we didn’t really get going. But we kept plugging away. We threw caution to the wind. I can’t be too critical. The fans were absolutely brilliant That was nice that they clapped us off. We’re nearly there – but we keep going. It wasn’t to be today.”

Morecambe: 41 Myles Boney; 2 Lewis Payne; 5 Harlee Dean; 7 Gwion Edwards (3 Raheem Conte 89’); 8 Miguel Azeez (Y); 12 Kyle Jameson; 16 Liam Hogan; 17 Paul Lewis (Y) (23 Dan Ogwuru 74’); 24 Yann Songo’o (C) (32 George Thomas 63’) ; 36 Jack Nolan; 42 Chris Popov (18 Ben Tollitt 74’).

Subs not used: 25 Alfie Scales; 28 Tommy Fogarty 33 Timothy Akindileni.

Carlisle United:  1 Gabriel Breeze; 4 Terell Thomas; 5 Morgan Feeney (C); 7 David Ajiboye; 9 Georgie Kelly (23 Charlie Wyke (Y) 70’); 10 Regan Linney; ; (25 Ephrain Yeboah 90’); 16 Stephen Wearne (8 Callum Whelan 90’); 12 Ryan Galvin (Y); 18 Jack Ellis; 20 Alex Gilliead (2 Archie Davie 24’); 37 Harvey Macadam.

Subs not used: 30 Hugh Parker; 3 Cameron Harper; 26 Bevis Mugabi.

Ref: Zac Kennard-Kettle.ATT: 4,156 (1,725 from Carlisle).