Harrogate Town opinion: Leyton Orient performance was a difficult watch

After the visit of Walsall on Saturday, a game Town should have won but nearly threw away following a defensive howler, my friend, on seeing us for the first time, had summed proceedings up by saying “at least your players had some fight about them to get back into it.”

All of that evaporated on Tuesday night in what must rate as one of the toughest, most difficult watches I’ve experienced at Wetherby Road in recent times.

Any sense of momentum brought on by the last-gasp equaliser at the weekend, dissipated like a damp squib within five minutes of kick-off as we found ourselves thoroughly outclassed, outfought and outrun by a visiting Leyton Orient team who played like Town used to.

Our early season form seems a long way away now and without that impressive haul of points accrued in the first 10 matches, we’d now find ourselves firmly down at the wrong end of the table scrapping with Scunthorpe and Oldham.

The thrilling victories over our close neighbours Bradford City have only helped to mask a really poor run of form since well before Christmas. Both teams we struggled against this week were comprehensively beaten earlier in the season.

Most fans realise that Town are punching well above their weight in terms of resources and history.

We’ve enjoyed unparalleled recent success, but we don’t expect the team to continue to win every match in League Two. Sometimes it’s going to be a struggle, however the minimum requirement must always be total commitment from the players.

That’s what’s got us to where we are now and once you lose that, it’s a slippery slope downhill. That’s why Tuesday night was so hard to take.

What we witnessed was a perfect horror-show in every aspect. All the gripes from various matches this season seemed to coalesce into one.

Abject defensive errors led to all three goals; the midfield was overrun; we didn’t press the opposition when out of possession; movement off the ball was poor when in possession, leading to players passing it backwards for it then to be lumped forward to no effect under pressure; the forwards couldn’t buy a goal ... I could go on, but I don’t think it’ll do any of us any good to dwell on it.

If the first 45 had been an almighty struggle to stay in the match at 0-0, an early second-half goal for the visitors saw heads drop completely and players disappear into themselves.

There was a lack of fight, and no natural leader on the pitch in the absence of the injured Josh Falkingham and Lloyd Kerry.

As the second and third goals went in, and Town players seemingly didn’t want to even be on the pitch, the stands around us started to empty and apathy set in. Having previously written that I’ll never leave a match early, no matter what, I found myself sorely tested here.

Having established that the bloke next to me was attending only his second Town match, I enquired about his debut. After some thought, he qualified that it was the goalless draw against Mansfield ... “and that was dire,” he added.

That being one of our better recent fighting performances against an in-form team, the question is will he return after Tuesday night?

The fans that were left in the ground on the final whistle quickly disappeared and the few Harrogate players that ventured over to clap the supporters were met with very few takers. Apathy is contagious.

Whatever the result, Town players and fans have nearly always acknowledged each other’s efforts after the game. We win and lose together. Performances like this risk rupturing that special bond.

The rise of this club has seen the establishment of a small terrace culture in the Kop at home matches, very much like the young supporters seen at York City over the years. This is something that Harrogate Town hasn’t seen before.

It’s to be expected and, indeed, encouraged if we are to establish ourselves as a club in the Football League. Yet some of the chanting leaves a little bit to be desired and someone close to them needs to have a word.

The sexist chants aimed at our physio, Rachel Davis, on Tuesday night were just embarrassing and have no place at Town. That such an out-dated chant should come from a group of 14 to 16-year-olds seemed bizarre.

Likewise, the embarrassing chants about child abuse aimed at some opposing fans recently. I won’t acknowledge them by repeating them here, but they need to go.

Having said that, fair play to those young lads in the Kop during the second half. In the absence of any encouragement from their own team on the pitch, they kept bouncing and singing right to the final whistle.

At one stage, as they sang, “Let’s pretend we’ve scored a goal” before ‘celebrating’ wildly, and over-zealous stewards hauled people out seemingly for enjoying themselves at a football match, it became the only worthwhile entertainment left for us to watch from the relatively sedated atmosphere of the Wetherby Road stand.

If the same team turns up at Glanford Park on Saturday to play a team Town thrashed 6-1 earlier in the season, Scunthorpe will find themselves enjoying only their fifth league win of the season.

Let’s hope that isn’t the case.