Leyton Orient 3 Walsall 1, 12/10/19

A game in which... Joe Widdowson scored. Take that in for a moment and spare a thought for Eliud Kipchoge who, just hours earlier, became the first human to run a sub two-hour marathon only to find that by teatime his feat was only the second greatest sporting achievement of the day.

But wait, there's more: Joe Widdowson scored the goal – his first since 2009 BC – with his right foot. Remember, the defender is so left-footed that he rarely even bothers booting up his right, preferring to take to the field wearing a single novelty Spiderman slipper he received for Christmas a few years back. Occasionally he simply leaves his right foot with kit man Ada for safe keeping.

And so, in scoring a right-footed screamer, Widdowson's achievement transcends that of sporting endeavour and sits proudly alongside man's first landing on the moon; the mapping of the human genome; the development of vaccines; and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

From an Orient perspective the sheer euphoria of the goal propelled them to perhaps their most convincing 45 minutes of football this season, scoring twice more in the second half and cruising to victory. And there was only the one catastrophic defensive calamity too, which is progress.



Moment of magic... Widdowson aside there was also the fortifying sight of Matt Harrold scoring his first career goal that wasn't either a header or a tap-in during a last-minute scramble in the six-yard box. And thank the Lord that when Craig Clay was put through on goal by a Walsall mix up he had enough time to remember he couldn't shoot for toffee himself and therefore the good sense to square the ball to his ginger-headed team mate. Tidy finish it was too from Harrold, who is likely to lead the line for the next three games thanks to Conor Wilkinson's attempt at strangling an opponent to death.

Taxi for... James Alabi. And I mean that in the kindest and most literal sense: Alabi would have needed a taxi home after expending so much energy chasing down lost causes in his first three minutes on the pitch that he was subsequently unable to even drag one foot in front of the other. This was unfortunate as in his fourth minute on the pitch he was actually played through on goal and could do nothing more huff to a bewildered stand still. Which is a shame as he would almost definitely had scored had he made it anywhere near the goal. Right?

In the dug out... It's incredible to witness how simply removing the title "interim head coach" from Ross Embleton has liberated him into making sensible footballing decisions like not playing five at the back and dropping Sam Ling. Yes, yes I know he's injured, don't write in. Credit to Ross though, he seems to have got the team into something of a groove, just about in time for a new manager to come in and rip it all up again.

In the bars... On Friday night fans of the recently introduced O's Lager – all zero of them – were left shell-shocked when it was announced that the lukewarm dishwater was to be replaced in the bars around the stadium. By what, though? Well, the logic from CEO Danny Macklin appears to be that since it would be impossible to find a lager universally liked by all Orient fans it was safer to opt for two that are universally despised, namely Budweiser and Coors Light. The last word, however, went to the club's social media manager who cheekily chose to celebrate victory on the official Twitter feed with the off-brand message "If Carlsberg did second-halves..." I say "last word" because he's now been fired.



Meanwhile in the Director of Football's office... 

Kent Teague: Hi Martin, what's up?
Martin Ling: Not much
KT: Just wondering how the search for a new manager was coming on Martin
ML: It take time to read 40-plus application forms Kent
KT: Right, I estimate it would take about four or five hours. It's been three weeks
ML: I also have to cross-check them on Wikipedia
KT: Ok, but again that's probably another three or four hours' work...
ML: And I've been on the phone to Colin Calderwood
KT: Great! What about?
ML: Oh nothing, just saying hi really
KT: Martin...
ML: Yes?
KT: Have you lost the application forms?
ML:
KT: Martin?
ML: I think they're definitely somewhere... Sorry. I heard Ryan Jarvis has got his coaching badges. No?

GUEST POST! Walsall 1 Leyton Orient 1, 21/3/14

Frankly I'm disgusted that Orient are only third in League One with eight games to go and refuse to return from Berlin until they win the Champions League. Luckily Andy Brown - Orient blogger for WAGU and The Two Unfortunates - has no such morals and filed this report from Walsall...

A game in which… Orient spent the first 30 minutes looking as clued up as a Malaysian transport minister at a press conference, but by the second half better resembled the Russian special forces attacking a Crimean air base. Yup, another “game of two halves” saw Orient bludgeon their way to a frankly undeserved draw, highlighted by the fact that Captain Clarke once again hit the back of the net (I know, his goals are like buses).

With the team suffering an apparent hangover from last week’s demoralising defeat, Orient started off without any sort of purpose, giving possession away at every opportunity. They stepped up the pressure second half - mainly via a series of long, aimless balls forwards - and on the rare occasions they did get hold of the ball they looked like they might do something, but Walsall always looked a threat on the counter-attack. In summary, the performance suggests that the team is running out of steam and the management team out of ideas… let’s hope not!

Moment of magic... Eldin Jakupovic’s stunning double save down to his right to tip a shot onto the post and then his reaction to dive at Westcarr’s feet to save the follow-up. In retrospect it earned Orient a point, as they should have been 2-0 down in the first 30 minutes.

Referee Tim Robinson

Moment of madness... Referee Tim Robinson’s baffling “senior moment” in the first half. He stopped the game in a the middle of a promising O’s attack to tell Baudry and Downing off for holding, but did not wait until the ball was dead and with no foul given, he gave a drop ball to the utter bafflement of everyone in the ground and much to the irritation of Os fans and players.

Top gun… It was tough to pick a top performer with Orient having an off-day. Our best players were Baudry, who had a decent game on his return from injury, while Jamie Ness made a real impact when he replaced the utterly ineffective Lloyd James in the second half. Jakupovic once again made big saves when he had to make them.

Little donkeys... Precious fans that dish it out but can’t take it. The small group of Walsall supporters who surrounded a prone Moses Odubajo after a collision with the Walsall keeper by the goal, hurling abuse at him, and had to be held back by a chain of stewards, only to suggest the O’s winger should be banned later on. “Moses Odubajo should be reported to the FA for telling a small section of Walsall fans to f**k off” said Vital Walsall, while Matt replied with what I can only hope was tongue in cheek: “Definitely! Clearly read his lips from the back row of block 3. Ref seemed to ignore it as well; he was right next to him”

In the dugout... “We can only do our best” commented Russell Slade when questioned about Wolves and Brentford’s wins which saw the Os slip further behind the top two. No offence Russell, but if this is our best, I’d hate to see our worst. Walsall are a good side that matched Orient at Brisbane Road with ten men, so nobody expected a walkover, but with 7+ players playing below par, Orient were lucky to get a point.

View from the opposition... Vital Walsall was pretty generous about the game: “Result was fair to be honest. Orient dominated last 55 minutes of the game. They could have had a penalty and even snatched it at end." But Michael Tapper disagreed: “I disagree with the fair comment. I thought we made them look like a pub team”. Really? In truth Orient were somewhere in the middle, failed to get their passing game going and played the ball long far too often.

PA announcer of the week… Radcliffe Borough’s PA announcer getting in a twist with his words in a Northern Premier League Division One North game against Lancaster City. Why? Because players and fans from nearby Ramsbottom United had turned up for a fight after their match against Farsley was postponed.

FA Cup: Leyton Orient 1 Walsall 0, 7/12/13

A game in which... David Mooney undid what was a perfectly respectable afternoon of FA Cup football by getting himself sent off in the 93rd minute - the most pointless and stupid thing he's done since he passed the ball to Michael Symes during a game early last season.

That aside, the virus-stricken Orient side should be pretty pleased with themselves for prevailing over Walsall. Lemsips all round.

Moment of magic... Shaun Batt's incredible dummy in the lead-up to Dean Cox's goal, in which he managed to convince the Walsall defence, his own team mates, the entire crowd and a worldwide TV audience of 38 that he'd just done a hugely embarrassing air kick at a simple chance.

Moment of madness... Oh Moons. Why? WHY? Now banned for three games for a petulant kick at Paul Downing, the Irish striker hasn't so much as shot himself in the foot, but blown off his whole leg with a thermo-nuclear warhead. Genuinely, his rush of blood to the head could be season-defining. Let's hope he at least puts his time off to good use by learning the offside rule, hey?

Top gun... With half the team sidelined by man flu, we got see a bit more of Yohann Lasimant, Johnny Gorman and Harry Lee, all of whom made decent accounts of themselves. On the bench we had Martin Ling's son Sam, who's 13, and a bloke that works behind the bar in the Coach & Horses who once had a trial at Hastings United in 1993. Best player on the pitch, though, was Mathieu Baudry, who in his spare time inexplicably sellotapes an iPhone to his head and re-enacts scenes from the 1979 video nasty Driller Killer, as this photograph demonstrates.

Little donkey... Actually no one played particularly badly and, indeed, the victory was based on a very disciplined performance in defence and midfield. Let's instead focus, then, on the final seven seconds of the match in which Walsall managed to miss 47 clear chances to score, prompting one Saddlers fan to tweet "Please can you have one of your strikers? Any one. We aren't fussy." Yeah, have David Mooney, he's free for the next three games.

In the dug out... Given that Russell Slade's matchday duties mostly involve standing up for 90 minutes and shouting "watch the ball!" at Moses Odubajo a couple of times, he must have been pretty ill to have missed the game - especially as he only lives 45 seconds away. Perhaps he just looked at his own team sheet and thought, fuck this. Bizarrely he could be spotted on the balcony of his flat celebrating Cox's goal - surely a first in football?

View from the opposition... Walsall can probably consider themselves a bit unlucky - not least for Craig Westcarr's free kick which left Jamie Jones frozen to the spot for a full 45 seconds while the ball pinballed between him and the posts. But they didn't seem to have quite the spark they had when they drew with us in September. "We'd still be trying to score if we were playing at midnight," tweeted fan Rob Rowley.

Tweets of the week... Respect to loanee Robbie Simpson who, when he's not missing a last-minute sitter against Preston, appears to be something of a rap star, as shown in this video tweeted from the team's curry night earlier this week.

Even more impressive was fan David Plane's ode to Dean Cox, as tweeted by Paul Graves. But it was Rob Noble, Orient's marketing and partnerships manager, who caught the moment of the night on camera, however, and tweeted this: "Kev Dearden eating the mic. Obviously the curry wasn't enough."

Leyton Orient 1 Walsall 1, 28/9/13

Orient fans burn their season tickets

A game in which… dreamy Orient fans were reminded that we don't actually live in a utopia where the sun always shines, the streets are paved with gold and your football team win every single match. Still, it was nice while it lasted and there really is no shame in drawing at home with a very classy and very resilient Walsall side.

Yeah, yeah, so they only had 10 men for most of the game and Orient certainly weren't at their fluent best – there seemed to be more misplaced passes in this single match than the rest of the season put together, for example – but, you know, sometimes things just don't work out. No need to axe the entire team. No need to fire the manager. No need to weep openly on the streets. No need to conduct a ritual sacrificial burning of your season ticket on Hackney Marshes. At least wait until we lose to Oldham next week.

Moment of magic... David Mooney's ninth league goal in nine games, in which the Irishman powered his shot into an open goal almost like he didn't used to regularly miss chances like that two seasons ago. Who'd have have thought back then that Moons would have more goals than Kevin Lisbie? Indeed, who'd have thought he'd have more goals than Jamie Jones?

Moment of madness... Three moments of madness in fact: Walsall captain Andy Butler's red card (unjustified); Romain Vincelot's first yellow card (unjustified); and Romain Vincelot's second yellow card, in which the midfielder showed the sort of pointlessly snooty petulance you'd expect of a top French food critic tasked with reviewing Brisbane Road's infamous pies. Justified.

Top gun... This wasn't a day that Orient particularly clicked, but Mathieu Baudry (or "Frenchie" as he's known to his team mates on account of his penchant for kissing them with tongues whenever he scores a goal in training) once again showed his class at the back and very nearly won the game for Orient at the death with an arrowing header. Omozusi had a pretty good game too.

Dean Cox

Little donkey... It'd be fair to say that this wasn't Dean Cox's finest performance (ditto Brentford). It would be unfair to say that for that reason he should be tarred, feathered and placed in stocks in Coronation Gardens so irate Orient fans can throw rotting fruit at him. After all, even our classiest players are allowed off days sometimes - if they didn't they'd be playing for a big team like Brentford. Oh, hang on...

In the dug out... There was eye-bulging rage on the Walsall bench when referee Graham Scott showed Andy Butler red in the first half, particularly from Jon Whitney, the opposition's physiotherapist-cum-grave digger. Hang on, grave digger? Yes, that's right, when Jon isn't patching up players or trying to fight Kevin Nugent he's shovelling dirt onto coffins. Must come in dead handy.

View from the opposition... "Wha a team" wrote Walsall fan David Harris with scant regard for the convention of using consonants at the end of words. "Go to Orient n r the 1st to halt their winnin streak despite playing most the game with 10 men." Fair play, though it's a measure of Orient's progress that away fans are celebrating securing a point at Brisbane Road as opposed to previous seasons when opposition managers would be sacked if they didn't win by at least three clear goals.

Tweet of the week... "Looking for 3 serious people willing to learn. Earn around your current commitments" spammed former Orient striker Ryan Jarvis this week in a bid to combine playing professional football for York City with flogging a nutritional supplement. "**ATTENTION** 3 DAY TRIALS AVAILABLE NOW!" he continued, perhaps suggesting he's finding it hard to make ends meet at the moment. Shouldn't have accepted that pay-per-goal deal at Bootham Crescent, hey Jarve?

Orient by numbers... 37. The number of times David Mooney was caught offside in today's match, a total only exceeded by inside forward Billy Rees in a game against Norwich City in November 1953. "There was 19 feet of snow that day but the game went ahead nonetheless," chuckled Billy some years later. "I became stranded up to my neck near their six-yard box and stayed there until the following Tuesday when skipper Stan Aldous came to dig me out with his tractor. Lost my foot to frostbite, unfortunately, but I still managed another four seasons for the Os. You couldn't let little things like that bother you."