Plymouth Argyle 1 Exeter City 0.

Saturday 2 April 1994.

Referee:

Att: 12986

Oh well. It could have been so much worse. In fact, we definitely deserved a share of the points as chances were made that we had not seen the like of (from Exeter) for some time. Plymouth controlled the first quarter of an hour, but City defended well with a spectacular save from Allen McKnight being the highlight. A rather nasty challenge on Jon Brown changed the game for the better, when the Exeter players seemed quite rightly annoyed at the green slimy ones for putting our best defender in hospital. We should have opened the scoring just before half time, but Mickey Ross's boot just missed deflecting a superb left wing cross into the net. Somebody had a free header (sorry, didn't see who, it was all a bit surprising) after that, but it was aimed straight at the relieved Nicholls.

Half time came and went, and spirits were quickly dampened when Plymouth scored the only goal of the game after 46 minutes. Message to Mr. Cooper: Don't you think you might be getting those half time team talks just a little wrong? Anyway, the Exeter domination continued and how Stuart 'Oh Bloody Hell' Storer managed not to equalise from six yards I will never know. The same player was also brought down on the edge of the box when in a good goalscoring position. Whether he would have scored or not is beside the point, the callous defender must have considered himself extremely fortunate to stay on the pitch. Needless to say, the free kick came to nothing and the twelve thousand Argyle fans (who created an extraordinary atmosphere in that they sounded like three thousand) breathed a collective sigh of relief. Mickey Ross lost a chase against the ball and an Argyle defender in their race towards the goal, and that was that from an Exeter point of view. The referee blotted his already inky black copybook by blowing the final whistle on time, despite being responsible for several lengthy stoppages in the second half. I came to the conclusion that Plymouth won't go up this season unless they improve rather drastically because we're completely hopeless, and they struggled to beat us.

Exeter City:
McKnight, Llewellyn, Brown (Mehew), Cooper, Daniels, Ross (Phillips), Storer, Bailey, Turner, Minett, Gavin.

Attendance 12,986