Port Vale 1 Cambridge Utd 0

At the end of the last school year, our family was fortunate enough to win a pair of tickets (one adult and one child) to any one Port Vale home match of the 2019-2020 season. My wife has zero interest in football (possibly even less than that), and one of my children loves football, one has no interest and one is too young to appreciate it. So Lizzie and I won by default, and I opted for the home game against Cambridge United on Saturday 31 August.

This, like my report from Port Vale vs Stevenage from a few years ago (February 2011!), is more of an eyewitness report than match analysis.

The game started brightly under blue, cloudy skies. Vale had some very early chances and most of the early pressure.  The team played well and the majority of the first 45 minutes was played in Cambridge's half.  I don't recall Cambridge having any first-half chances, and it was mostly one-way traffic.

A couple of rare attacks along Cambridge's right wing were stopped by some strong physical defending, as the Vale left back and centre back were pushed, pulled back and occasionally got into a tussle with shirts being pulled and so on.

Nathan Smith (left) keeps an eye on Sam Smith (centre)

There was a period in the first half where the game threatened to boil over, and here I must blame the referee, who (in my own unqualified opinion) had a poor game. He missed a lot of the pushing and shoving that I've mentioned - from both sides - and failed to make the bookings that would probably have calmed things down and reminded the players of the rules.  Port Vale's Nathan Smith was involved in a number of physical challenges against Cambridge attacker Sam Smith, and they both (in my view) came close to getting booked.  

Port Vale continued to press, but the players went in at half time with no goals scored. Some of the fans near us viewed this as a glass-half-full situation, since Vale hadn't conceded either, and were on track for their first clean sheet of the season.

The referee didn't make any bookings during the first half, and consequently in the second half the game came very close to boiling over. 

The referee attempts to deal with a scuffle
without getting directly involved.

The referee steps into another scuffle, but note the two players behind him STILL fighting over the ball.

One petty incident involved a minor controversial scuffle - did he slip or was he pushed? - and one of the Cambridge players landed on the ball and  stopped to pick the ball up as he was certain he'd been fouled.  The Vale defenders argued that he hadn't been fouled, and had subsequently handled the ball immediately.  A scrum of around seven or eight players followed, each side determined to get hold of the ball (literally). The referee failed to take charge of the situation, and remained an almost impassive bystander, only booking one or two of the players, when other officials may have gone further.  It's always unfortunate when a referee manages to get himself noticed through his decisions - this was one of those games.

Cambridge United started the second half much more brightly and energetically and started gaining chances, but did not convert any of them.  As the game opened up, Vale were able to make some headway down both wings. David Amoo constantly made his presence felt in the inside right position, and kept threatening to beat the Cambridge defence.  

On the left wing, David Worrall was not having a great game.  His work rate was excellent, chasing down any opportunities on the Vale left, but he failed to make any progress and his crosses were all easily collected by the Cambridge goalkeeper, Dimitar Mitov.  Vale won a quick series of corners on the left hand side as the second half went on, but none of them produced any real chances, with Mitov proving excellent in goal and easily collecting any of the high crosses into the box. 

On the right wing, there were some nice tight passing sequences as the Vale attack attempted to break down Cambridge's deep and persistent defence, and it was through the right wing that Vale eventually got their winner.  David Amoo was able to break forwards and beat two defenders on his way into the Cambridge area; he got close to the by-line and sent a fast, low cross across the face of the goalmouth.
  

Retreating defender Davies beat his own goalkeeper to the ball and turned it in to the goal for an unfortunate own-goal.  Vale were able to hold on to their lead for the final five minutes (plus stoppage time) and also achieved their first clean sheet of the season, so it was a double winner that consolidated their mid-table position and allowed them to set their sights on the top half of the table.

 

Star Trek Discovery - First Impressions

Now I know I am a little late to the party, but our household recently started a Netflix subscription (primarily because we has just finished Parks and Recreation from start to end) and Mrs Leese had seen clips of Brooklyn 99 on YouTube. Brooklyn 99 is only available through Netflix, so that was that - we subscribed to Netflix.

An additional benefit is that Netflix streams Star Trek Discovery. It wasn't my idea to subscribe to Netflix, but I am not complaining!

Star Trek Discovery is the first new Star Trek series I've seen since Enterprise, and a lot has changed since then - 9/11, ISIS, the discovery of the Higgs Boson... it's a whole new world.  Star Trek has kept pace with changes in sci fi TV visuals, in the same way as the rebooted films have presented the best of Hollywood's visual effects.  But what about the audience? While Enterprise was airing in the UK, I was recording episodes on VHS video cassettes, so that I could watch episodes either live or at a time after their original air date.  It took weeks and months to get through a series (season), and by the end of a season  you could watch the series from end to end and better see the threads in the plot - if there were any.  Star Trek was entirely episodic, so you knew everything would be back to normal by the end of the hour.  In fact, season 3 of Enterprise (the Xindi arc) was widely criticised because it ran as a season-long arc and you couldn't just watch an episode in isolation (there were a few that could stand alone, but not many).

Now, with streaming services delivering on-demand TV 24/7/365, it's possible to watch Season 3 of Enterprise in a day. Not sure you'd want to, but the possibility exists.

Star Trek Discovery is able to balance the episodic nature of Star Trek with the demands of modern streaming audiences. The first two episodes are best viewed back-to-back, in the same way as TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise all started with two-parters. There is a clear arc set up - the start and execution of the Klingon War - and then there are some serious differences. Observant viewers will notice that the series is called Star Trek Discovery, but the episodes start on the Shenzou. And the Captain is played by Special Guest Star Michelle Yeoh, who, as a Hollywood film actress is unlikely to be sticking around for the series. I predicted the destruction of the Shenzou with the captain on board before the opening credits had even finished.


Not that I'm complaining. The story shows us life in the Federation from the perspective of a mutinous officer who has only been saved from the brig and eventual court martial and expulsion by the needs of war.  Star Trek hasn't had a criminal in the crew since Tom Paris was pardoned and allowed to join the Voyager crew, and Lt Suder fought his violent tendencies while trying to integrate into the same crew.  This allows for some wonderful character interaction as the crew realise that they have Michael Burnham (famous mutineer) on board.  Meeting the crew from Michael's perspective means that we're thrown into the middle of a fully integrated crew - there's no shakedown time.  

The characters and names in this story are entirely fictitious. 
Any resemblance to any persons living or dead...

This is more TNG than Voyager, for sure.  Voyager started with the death of the second officer, the chief medical officer and the conn officer, throwing the Maquis and the Federation crews together.  There's none of that here; this is an established crew  who already know each other - and we don't.  The officer with the eye-enhancement (Keyla Detmar), who bears no resemblance to Seven Of Nine; the bridge officer who looks like a relative of Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy (Airiam) - we know very little about them, except that they're bridge officers. Still, there's plenty of time for the series to show us more about them, all in good time.

...is entirely coincidental.

So far, I have watched the first seven episodes, up to and including Magic to Make The Sanest Man Go Mad, and I am pleased to say I have thoroughly enjoyed a very new, fresh angle on the Star Trek universe. The crew have a healthy smattering of imperfections and character flaws; and when placed in a stressful war scenario, these imperfections become exposed .  The writers are not afraid to kill off characters and destroy ships with alarming frequency (the captain of the Shenzou is one example).

And there's a great balance between episodic and arcing TV. In episode five, Choose Your Pain, we meet Harry Mudd (who will go on to become a thorn in James T Kirk's side). By the end of the nearly wrapped episode, he's left to to rot in a Klingon prison, and that's a neat and tidy conclusion.  But oh, no, he's back again in the standout episode seven, Magic to Make The Sanest Man Go Mad, and he wants revenge.  Again we have another episode which reaches a firm conclusion, but now we're also wondering how long it will be before he'll be back again.

There are a few minor drawbacks to the way the story has been set up, the most noticeable being that as a prequel, we know how the story is going to end - there's no spore drive in Kirk's universe, so the ship is probably going to get destroyed eventually.  I just hope it doesn't get erased from the timeline completely ("And Spock woke up and realised it was all a dream"? No thanks).

Otherwise, I am thoroughly enjoying the new series and can wholeheartedly recommend it.