OPINION: Swindon Town’s promotion hopes were dealt a huge blow

By Peter Mitchell

Swindon Town’s promotion hopes were dealt a huge blow when they went down to rivals Exeter City by 3-1 on Saturday.

Town started brightly on the front foot and dominated the first half hour’s play, preventing the home side from producing anything worthwhile. After some concerted pressure Swindon deservedly went ahead when Kaiyne Woolery (in for the semi-fit Luke Norris) shot home from 8 yards.

Unfortunately the lead lasted only 5 minutes when Jake Taylor equalised following a cross from Hiram Boateng.

The game had now changed and the Town defence and midfield were failing to stop crosses reaching the ever-dangerous Jayden Stockley up front.

Just before half time, the Grecians took the lead when a penalty was awarded after Matt Taylor was somewhat harshly adjudged to have tripped Dean Moxey inside the box.

Town only created a couple of chances after the break, the best being when Marc Richards missed a good opportunity shooting straight at goalkeeper Pym. Eventually, with Exeter content to sit back, the result was put beyond doubt when they scored their third, inevitably through Stockley. With five minutes to go Boateng, again the provider, was given a free rein to run through Swindon’s box.

Disappointingly Swindon had seemed unable to change the pace or thrust of their game after the interval and overall it had been a pretty mundane performance.

After the match manager Phil Brown summed matters up with “I’ve (now) seen both sides of the team, and there’s work to be done………but we’ve still got a foothold in this competition. The way we defend has to be improved upon”. I think we’ve all known about the fragility of the defence even back as far as September when we had a full complement of defenders, but the management has consistently paid it too low a priority.

It is now clearly an uphill task for Town to achieve anything this season. What is crystal clear is that nothing short of maximum points in their two games over Easter will keep Swindon in with a faint chance. It seems only a down turn in form from their nearest rivals will offer them one more bite of the cherry. Trying to put an optimistic spin on things, it’s certainly not all over yet - but it would need a run of 4-5 straight wins to change things significantly, and Swindon’s consistent inconsistency this season doesn’t point to that being a credible scenario.

An interesting ironic aside to conclude with - Luton Town – the new League Two leaders – started their game yesterday with four ex-Swindon players in Alan Sheehan, James Collins, Alan McCormack (all from the Di Canio era) and Scott Cuthbert.