Editorial Comment

Last updated : 13 September 2003 By Luke Thornhill
Another season beginning with pre-season optimism. With undoubtedly one of the best squads in the third division, including many young stars like Stanton and Hodges, surely promotion should come to us like flies to sh...

Well it started well at least, a confident performance and result at Macclesfield followed by a gritty innings against Kidderminster after being reduced to ten men.

But then the usual rot set in, consistency, so long the sworn enemy of the Iron again returned to all but demolish any hopes of automatic promotion and leaving us already with a battle to make even the playoffs.

Consistency is a wonderful thing and very few teams manage it, Man United consistently take apart all opposition, this season Fulham have done it, Chesterfield have to an extent and even Grimsby have been consistent...although that's a consistency we don't really want.

Chesterfield are a fine example of what we should be, admittedly we don't all have 29 year-old sugar daddy's willing to buy us, but then not all of us want that.

The club may not be the richest, but that really shouldn't be an excuse for not achieving success. Our youth team is second to none and has produced a steady stream of quality players with many more in the pipeline.

There are clearly times when we need to bring players in though, and we should have a set-up where players want to come to Glanford Park.

Look at our failure to bring in John Doolan from Barnet, we've got a 'modern' ground, a good set of players and realistic aims of promotion.

Yet Doolan decides to remain at Barnet, a club with smaller crowds than us, the prospect of being homeless after council planning malarky. What have Barnet got that we haven't?

To us nothing, to the outside world Barnet however is slightly more fashionable than Scunthorpe. So rather than moaning about people not wanting to come to Scunthorpe shouldn't we be looking to sort out our players mentality of 'We're good enough, so we don't need to put in the effort'?

For every Kidderminster and Brighton there's a York or Plymouth. They say the sign of a good team is winning when you play badly, we seem to have fallen into the Twilight Zone and good performances manifest themselves into draws (Darlington) and any less than adequate results in defeats (York and Plymouth).

But its far from doom and gloom at Glanny Park, Jackson's made a quick recovery from injury, Pepps is making good progress and even Wilcox has had his role to play in the first team, putting in performances notably better than some defenders you'd expect to be 'regulars'.

The youth side continue to do well, hopefully set to get a good run in the FA youth Cup after demolishing Chesterfield. The youth set-up continues to be the envy of all of our local rivals and long may that success continue. Paul Wilson's side have pedigree and many will have a good future in the game.

So the overall outlook for the future of the Iron is bright, but if we are to achieve success with the immediate squad then we need the players to realise that no-one has any right to promotion and has to work for it.

Luke Thornhill