Chester FC 2-0 Whitby Town - Match Retrospective

Chester FC continue to make it tricky to come up with new ways to start a match report after winning yet another festival of stodgecraft on Saturday.

It's now seven wins in a row for the Blues, who defeated Whitby Town 2-0 in a game so lacking in entertainment that the entry fee may turn out to be tax deductible, as officials investigate whether attendance of the match can be counted as charity work.

"It certainly doesn't strike me as the kind of thing you'd do for your own benefit," admitted Henry Jumprope, of the Charities Commission.

Chester made a number of changes to the team that faced North Ferriby with Scary Alex Brown notably absent from the squad altogether.

"Alex needed the time off to plan his April Fools' pranks," explained manager Neil Young.  Unconfirmed rumours have since spilt forth that Brown's heinous practical jokes were yesterday so frightening that the government have had to upgrade the country's terror alert from "severe" to "critical".

The match itself held no such terror, excitement, jeopardy or even Elton Welsby.  It took until the 45th minute for Michael Wilde to nick in and poke over the line as the ball dropped into a congested penalty area, following a melée that can only be described as a hullabaloo.

"It was a hullabaloo," described Young.

Chester got a second just after the break when Marc Williams was generously felled in the area by a Whitby defender, who screamed "piggy back!" before hopping up onto the former Wrexham man's shoulders and slamming him to the ground.  Matty McGinn stepped forward and converted the penalty, smashing it straight down the middle, the way you do on FIFA 12 because you still haven't figured out how penalties work.

Michael Powell made a return to the starting line up and predictably picked up a booking.  His tenth of the season, it came on a day on which the Blue and White fanzine ran shamelessly short of ideas and instead looted the Jestrian for material, offering up a cut-out Powell quiff on their back cover.

The post-match conference was tricky for gaffer Young as a competent performance from the officials robbed him of many of his stock phrases such as "once again we're talking about the referee", "I don't know what we have to do to get a penalty" and "they're against me, they're all against me!" 

Reaching for something of interest to say about the uninspiring match that had played out before him, the Merseyrail Supremo spluttered that "Iain Howard's hair is coming on a treat" before asking Radio Merseyside reporter Real Turnip if he'd been watching The Voice.

"What about that Tom Jones, eh?  That guy really knows what he's talking about," nodded an impressed Young.