Love's labour lost

ON a day dedicated to lovers York City found the arrows of their heart's desire off target.Their ultimate craving was a Devon-scent three points against impoverished Plymouth Argyle. The Pilgrims were deemed riper pickings than to be found in any florists' shop on February 13, especially with the sight of the Second Division's two blooming lights looming over the Bootham Crescent horizon.But Home Park was not where the ardour was and the Minstermen have to challenge the summit leaders of Watford and Bristol City in successive home games without the confidence-hike of victory.Triumph should have been recorded by City. Plymouth, poor in attack and porous in defence, should have gone the way of Millwall more than six months earlier. But the Lions remain City's solitary one away-day success.From a game as frequently threadbare and frayed as a last-action hero's ripping-yarn rope across a yawning chasm, the visitors still mustered late cohesion and composure to unravel the Pilgrims' rearguard and chisel out a series of openings.But when the frame of Jon Sheffield's goal did not act as an implacable obstacle - an upright echoing to an early header of power from skipper Tony Barras and then resounding to the same thud to a late drive of stealth at the end of a stirring 40-yard run from Gary Bull - top scorer Rodney Rowe found to his, and his team-mates' dismay, that the accuracy of his shooting-boots had deserted him.Three times in a blinking of four minutes Rowe, thrust back into the fray from the substitutes' bench, screwed two drives wide and then, when his right foot failed, was crestfallen to discover that his left foot also suffered the same flaw as he lashed a gilt-streaked Bull pass high over the crossbar.But there was a shaft of solace. Rowe at least got his powerful frame into those clear openings, a feature that has been sadly lacking in his previous goal-starved run of appearances, which led to his demotion against Walsall.Rowe added more muscle to the earlier sinuous, but unproductive movement of the Bull-Jonathan Greening partnership that had begun the game.Greening, fresh from his 'fantasy football' experience at Manchester United, started lively enough, but he and Bull were nullified as much by a dispiriting lack of service as by Argyle's agricultural three centre-back cordon.City's midfield were anonymous rather than assertive and that was due in part to a certain lop-sided formation in which Paul Stephenson occupied a more advanced role along the left flank leaving the centre to be patrolled by a compressed trio of Mark Tinkler, Steve Bushell and Alan Pouton.While Stephenson's adroit footwork always offered him a get out of trouble clause the others laboured breathlessly to reproduce the cleverness on the ball that has characterised their more influential performances this season. Perspiration flowed by the bucket-load, inspiration would not have dampened a thimble.More's the pity. Plymouth were ramshackle opposition. Their idea of creativity was that old slack magic of one lump or three to heave the ball from back to front where the run all day Carlo Corazzin and his eager teenage associate Lee Phillips were willing, but trivial pursuers.Apart from the impish Martin Barlow, who had the virtual freedom of Home Park to drift in and out of tackles to busy himself, the Pilgrims' only salvation rested on Richard 'fling it long' Logan.Either by throw-ins, which he hurled with the prodigiousness of a javelin-expert, to the corners he curled menacingly into the area, Logan's run represented the height of the hosts' main threat. But that all but crumbled thanks to the steady hands of goalkeeper Mark Samways and steadfastness in defence of Barry Jones.Both excelled, Samways unflappable and unflustered in coming to stash Plymouth's high-ball tendency, Jones marshalling a rearguard show that prevented a single corner or shot on target from the Home Park paupers in the second-half.It was only in the latter stages of the second-half that the mundane encounter improved as a spectacle. Up to that City spell of domination the game was a mish-mash of mistakes and miscues. Not a St Valentine's Day to remember with much affection.