The team thrashed by Peter Murphy’s Annan Athletic 6-0 on Tuesday – and who should be put out of their misery in today’s second leg – did not enter the Scottish League One play-offs in vintage form. Nor, though, did they come in with a long-standing and regular record of being obliterated by close rivals.
There were a couple of shoeings over the season (5-1 to Albion Rovers, 6-0 to Stirling) but many more victories and close encounters. The Sons finished second in the league, 11 points above Annan, with 17 clean sheets from 36 games. Not bad, all in all.
And the moment they set foot in the play-offs, their net was busier than a North Atlantic trawler’s. Anyone who spied 6-0 a few miles away will have benefited from odds of around 200/1.
In which case, good luck to them. Otherwise: it shows that the play-offs can be impossible to predict and don’t have to be defined in any great way by what has gone before.
Annan (and Dumbarton) cannot have expected such a riot at Galabank and, similarly, anyone who feels there is a clear guide to events at Valley Parade tomorrow, and Brunton Park next Saturday, is jumping to a questionable conclusion.
More than anything, the play-offs are an opportunity to write your own history. That is how Carlisle have to take it now, irrespective of the fact that, of the four teams involved in the League Two shoot-out, their form is the worst.
United do not go into them on a trail of defeats, yet nor are they on a winning or unbeaten streak. There is not a vast amount to separate them and Bradford City lately, while Stockport County and Salford City are in broadly better nick.
To which the reasonable response must be: so what? Not in a blasé way but certainly as a means of underlining that it’s what you do now, not what’s gone before, that counts.
Carlisle’s play-off history, since this method of deciding promotion began in 1987, leads you up certain paths then takes you down others when it comes to figuring out how things might play out this time.
In 1994, they arrived in stunning form, winning four on the spin amid a surge up the Division Three table under Mick Wadsworth. Who would have wanted to face a side on such an impressive roll?
Wycombe Wanderers, as it turned out. For Carlisle, as their keeper Tony Caig said this week, being there was a different matter to getting there. They had climbed one Everest but the psychology changed when it came to working out a broadly better opponent in a semi-final tie.
Duly Wycombe put them away, with a little to spare. The play-offs of 2005 were different, Carlisle going into them in reasonable form but not an unbeatable gallop. Aldershot, if anything, were at a better late-season tilt but United downed them in boisterous circumstances in a semi-final barely done justice by the word ‘epic’, before going on to conquer a Stevenage side who’d previously beaten them twice.
The events of 2008 are still too painful on which to linger yet, for most of that first leg at Elland Road at least, it was as if the Blues’ stumble to the League One line had not happened at all. If anything followed any sort of pattern it was 2017, when Carlisle’s general form before the play-offs was something of a scramble – dramatic, yes, but never convincing enough for them to get on top of a brighter Exeter City, however dramatically those play-offs unfolded.
So what happens now? Anyone’s guess, but at least, you would normally think, the reasonable assumption that, this being Carlisle, it will be close. If United behave as United often do, it will be a matter of having nothing on the tips of your fingers come next Saturday other than nibble-marks.
Over nine play-off ties, the most comfort the Cumbrians have enjoyed in terms of aggregate goals is a lead of two at Leeds in 2008. And even that had been halved by the end of that game.
Otherwise, they’ve either been precariously ahead, level or behind – sometimes precariously there as well. Considering they are about to face a side against whom they’ve won 1-0 and drawn 0-0 this season, tight encounters would seem to be the way to bet.
But not necessarily, as the Law of Dumbarton shows. Again – what’s gone before doesn’t have to repeat itself.
Paul Simpson, speaking directly after the Sutton United game and the emergence of the Bradford tie, said something I doubt he’ll be repeating on the training ground this week, or at least not with feeling.
“I think it’s probably fair to say [Bradford] are coming in[to the play-offs] in better form than we are,” he said. “I know people say form goes out of the window…I’m not sure it does but I hope it does on this occasion.”
Simpson is no fool, clearly, and will not have minded his words being spread that United’s opponents are in some ways favourites despite finishing beneath the Blues (on goal difference).
United’s boss also reminded us that the three other play-off sides have budgets that “dwarf” Carlisle’s. True (Stockport County), true (Bradford) and true (Salford City). Again, though, also a good picture to paint if you’re trying to remind that trio of the expectation they’re carrying around.
Putting all that into his own players’ heads in big dollops…maybe not. This week is not about making Carlisle think like minnows. It’s about making them believe, or reinforcing that belief already, that they are the equals and potential betters of Bradford, whose packed stadium tomorrow night will resemble no other League Two venue.
It is about engineering ways United can do, as a rough comparison, what they did at Elland Road in 2008. And why should they not? Anyone who thinks any of this is scripted doesn’t know play-offs. There is every opportunity, here and now, for someone in blue to seize the pen.