It was flipping marvelous…
…helped by the fact that several players had their best match of the season (Mumba, Devine, Edwards, Bundu before he went off, Wright after he came on). Others had games that were right up there (Scarr, Randell) and none of the others faltered whatsoever (Cooper, Phillips, Gibson, Hardie, who ran and ran and stopped Hull from playing how they wanted to, and even Whittaker, who despite still looking an utterly forlorn figure who cannot comprehend why every seems to have fallen apart, still managed to do more today than in the last I don’t know how many games put together).
Dan Scarr has been a revelation since he returned to the side. I was always concerned about his lack of pace but in the last however many games it has been I haven‘t once found myself worrying about this, and the impact that he has had in organising the defence and just making us that bit more robust at the back has been hugely important. Ian Foster got things badly wrong with Scarr. (And on a similar vein, I can’t help be have an extra little smile when thinking that the goal that kept us up came from a cross from Callum ‘The Man Who Came In From The Cold’ Wright.)
But Joe Edwards - what is there to say? He may struggle to keep going for the whole game and he may not have quite the pace that is really needed to play the wing-back role at Championship level but boy was he an inspiration and a leader today - showing the attitude we needed to display through his actions throughout the game, constantly organising, communicating and calming everyone around him, including the crowd. Like Scarr and Wright he was frozen out of the side to some extent so it must be incredibly satisfying for him to have scored today and for it to be the goal that kept us up. Make no mistake, that goal is as, if not more, important that a winning goal in a play-off final (which today‘s game was effectively equivalent to from an Argyle perspective) or the much-loved goal that resulted from David Friio’s forward surge against QPR. In effect, that goal today was a promotion winning goal, except that it came at least one season early. If there was any uncertainty before today there surely can’t be any now - Joe Edwards really is an Argyle legend isn’t he?