Right, that's yer lot. As per usual, we're all standing by to hear what Mr Evans has to say. He got his excuses in much earlier in the week, so don't expect too much of a deviation from the pre-prepared script. He'll probably slate Bradley Thomas a bit as well. Thanks for your e-mails. Sorry I couldn't use them all....

Last e-mail - 'Make no mistake, we are in a proper struggle now,' trembles Adam. 'We're running out of games that we can possibly get points from. Rocky home form, shocking away form, players in out in somewhere else (and scoring against us). not wanting to steal AB's tag line but "is this progress?' Oh and the upgrades now running behind. double boo.

Coaching course - 'How much should be bet that Evans has a coaching commitment in the Redcar area immediately after the game that he has to shoot off for?'

Bestest friends - 'Is he going to speak to the fans tonight then?' spits MNH. 'I suppose it will give him chance to crap on about Roy "bessie mate" Keane. Wanker.'

Referee! - Believe it or not, Steve Evans has begun berating the match officials. For what, exactly? Perhaps he'll reveal all in the after-match interview. Assuming he sticks around for it, that is.

Sinking like a stone - 'Looks like Utd will drop another place if Accrington can hold on, and be resting just above the automatic relegation places having played 1 or 2 games more than everyone else,' says Andy.

'Just who exactly *are* the much-vaunted '3 or 4 worse teams than United' in the league who are going to ensure Boston's survival no matter what in many people's opinions? I'm not sure I can spot any team that's as bad and ISN'T making changes to change their fortunes...'

PEEP PEEP PEEEEEEP! Another routine away defeat for our hapless lot, Darlington winning at a canter. Games are swiftly running out for some miraculous turnaround to occur. But Steve Evans is the messiah, after all, so no doubt it WILL happen, right? As for today's defeat, at least the lads were properly prepared for the match, thanks to BUSA, and got a chance to train at a real football club.

90 mins - Three minutes of added time....

88 mins - At least Torquay are losing at Lincoln. Elding has scored for Stockport.

87 mins - CHANCE! Darlington almost wrap it up, another defensive calamity but Marriott is alert enough to push the ball away, and it's bundled away for a corner by Cryan.

84 mins - What's this? Darlington's commentary suddenly sparks back into life. 'Prog Rock, eh? All that Uriah Heap, Genesis, Yes and Emerson, Lake And Palmer? Horses for courses, but I'll stick with my Abba, ta,' says Cookie.

84 mins - 76 Boston fans have made the trip. Good on 'em.

81 mins - 'Is Neil Wainwright any relation to Nigel Wainwright, who was *my* old PE teacher at BGS???' says Andy. Er, Neil Wainwright? I did actually say Nigel if you look back. And, no Andy, I haven't gone back and edited my mistake. I don't do that kind of thing. Really, I don't....

78 mins - 'Stop the clock?' questions Cookie. 'Are you inferring you'd rather be watching Aneka Rice's nice round arse jumping into that helicopter than watching Boston? Aye, so would I.'

74 mins - This game is lost. "It really is shocking. We are, as a club, dead and cold - "stop all the clocks"' says MNH. At least Leeds are winning.

71 mins - Farrell was replaced by Green while the commentary died. Can I just say that you should never, ever subscribe to the Match Live console service. It is absolutely woeful. Shocking. It should actually be illegal, it really is THAT bad. Fuming Darlington fans are already planning on a stern letter to their chairman. I've had to use that shambolic service a lot for these reports, and believe me: it's not just Darlington's commentary that's utter dogshit.

69 mins - Oh dear - MatchLive dies, so it's onto the backup. impsTALK turns on BBC Radio Lincolnshire just in time to hear Bradley Thomas receive his second yellow card - and his marching orders.

65 mins - CHANCE! Darlington could quite easily be three goals up had Ravenhill not just headed wide from three yards. Boston substitutes imminent....

64 mins - GOAL! Neil Wainwright scores on the diagonal run, latching onto a decent through ball from Horwood after Darlington exchange a few things called passes (yes, passes!). I used to have a PE teacher called NIGEL Wainwright. Ahem...

61 mins - 'I had to get this one in,' says Mick The Bastard Taylor. 'And Cooksey Maylett Farrell. get in there Taylor. Oh bugger 1 down!

Evans out etc

60 mins - 'The Boston 31 look a bit miserable,' chuckles BBC Radio Cleveland's potty-mouthed commentator. 'Nah, I just made it up. Not far off though, heh heh!'

59 mins - GOAL! Well it had to happen, I suppose. Ian Miller scores to put Darlington ahead. Horwood's free kick wasn't dealt with and the ball fell to the ex-Boston United emergency loanee, who is, you'll not be entirely surprised to learn, making his debut for the Quakers.

55 mins - Corner for Boston, Greaves meets the ball but it's a couple of yards wide.

50 mins - Phew! Cummins fluffs a glorious chance to put Darlington ahead from six yards out, from Wainwright's cross....."According to the team sheet: Marriot, crying; Thomas: Grieves. Is it really that boring?' cracks Cookie. 'You tell that Cookie that I've now moved on to listening to old Prog Rock albums, so there's no saving me... So that's two votes for golf so far?' Andy says.

47 mins - Darlington are now set up as a straight forward 4-4-2.

Live pictures from the Darlo Mega-Dome, from Mick 'The Bastard' Taylor....


Kick-off! - The second half gets underway. The BBC man sighs. he really doesn't want to be there. Really.

Andy's Dilemma - MNH reckons Option 1, while Cookie says: "Tell Andy that he should play "Don't Wanna Hear It" by Minor Threat backwards at 33rpm. It tells you how to chip from a sandpit with a putter over 20 feet. No, honest.

That renowned BBC impartiality continues - "It's crap, innit? Dreadful, absolutely dreadful. We're back to the long balls forward, there's no width, he [Dave Penney] needs to get it back to 4-4-2. Is this all a lower league version of match fixing, to help out Boston?' he suggests, intriguingly...

Cisco CallManager Upgrade Min-by-Min Updates - 'Patching complete on the Subscriber, awaiting Publisher to finish before starting application changes. big news is the link to the Unity voicemail system is done and working. Get in!'

Andy needs your help - What do the Impstalk readers think I should do with my afternoon? Option 1 - go down to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls trying out the new grip my golf pro gave me?

Option 2 - drive to one of the massive malls around and wander around it for a couple of hours?

Any other ideas happily considered.

Do they not switch the microphones off? 'We must've been fucking shite,' says a BBC voice, before regaling his mate with a tale of how someone, for the first time ever in his football career, actually went home and spoke to his wife following a dressing room bust-up.

Peep peep peeeep - Half time, and another one of those games that really does make you question the fundamental merits of being a football fan. As I understand it, last season's fixture at the Comedy Bowl was also so tedious people were flinging themselves from the huge, empty tiers.

44 mins - Two minutes of added time.

42 mins - Chance! Wainwright creates Darlington's first chance of the game so far. Marriott is forced to put down the newspaper and do some bloody work.

40 mins - Chance! Trevor Benjamin, with his back to goal, turns his marker nicely and gets a shot away, but it's safely collected by Jones.

36 mins - "Garth Crooks talking about players in tights. FFS give me my license fee back!' begs MNH. Yeah, well BBC Radio Cleveland's commentator is also being paid for by our licence fee, lest we forget.

33 mins - Professional BBC journalist backstabber jnr is providing wonderful, illuminating commentary of the game. "Headed away by Cryan," he'll say. There will then follow about fifteen seconds of total silence. Then: "Comfortably caught by Jones."

30 mins - 30 minutes on the clock And Boston are doing okay. They're obviously here for a point, and have come the closest to scoring so far. So far, so good. Bloody dull though. Still, better than being three goals down I suppose.

27 mins - "Ghost of servers complete, Subscriber and Publisher. Software patches underway for OS soon to be followed by Cisco approved patches. On site engineer doing well, only got him on loan for the weekend, thankfully Redstone Communications are paying 50% of his wages," reports MNH. "You may ask why we are doing the upgrade. The main win is the VT Advantage 2 video conference facility. that and shit loads of options to play about with."

25 mins - "In an attempt to liven the game up, I'm checking the updates to a soundtrack of Jimmy Buffett," says Andy.

Nibblin' on sponge cake,
watchin' the sun bake;
All of those tourists covered with oil.
Strummin' my six string on my front porch swing.
Smell those shrimp
They're beginnin' to boil.

23 mins - Jesus. Cisco Call Manager is capable of supporting up to 30,000 lines per server cluster. 30,000! That's almost as many empty seats in the DarloDome today.

22 mins - I think something happened! Jones, not that arsehole Dave Jones mind, dropped a cross at the feet at Brad Maylett, whose shot is cleared off the line by Wheater. Boston get a corner, but nothing comes of it.

21 mins - "Cisco Unified CallManager software is the call-processing component of the Cisco Unified Communications system. It is a scalable, distributable, and highly available enterprise IP telephony call-processing solution.

Cisco Unified CallManager extends enterprise telephony features and capabilities to packet telephony network devices such as IP phones, media processing devices, voice over IP (VoIP) gateways, and multimedia applications. Additional services such as unified messaging, multimedia conferencing, collaborative contact centers, and interactive multimedia response systems are made possible through Cisco Unified CallManager open telephony APIs. Cisco Unified CallManager is installed on the Cisco Media Convergence Server 7800 Series of server platforms and selected third-party servers."

18 mins - Calling MNH, calling MNH - please please please, let us all know how that Cisco CallManager upgrade is going.

13 mins - Really, nothing has happened on the pitch. Seriously. Nothing.

10 mins - Just discovered in the impsTALK Junk mail folder - "Oi you lot!," yells Mick Taylor. "Didn't any of you listen to jonny boy when he was the chairman? What he said was this "you build a big "fuck off" shiney new stadium that has several thousand seats to many. You have shity plastic food joints scattered around and a few places selling over priced, flat, low alcohol drinks and you make the punters turn up at 12.30 YES, THAT WAS 12:30!!! so they can all spend more of their hard earned cash, before paying to go into the ame, and before buying their matchday programme, and before buying their lucky fucking guess the goal type lotto ticket that only pays out 40% of the income. WeLl I've been sat here since 12:30 YES, 12:30 waiting for this impsTalk thing to get going. NOW GET THIS GODDAMN SHOW ON THE ROAD OR JONNY WILL NOT BE VERY PLEASED!

Best Wishes
Mick 'The bastard' Taylor

9 mins - Crocked sub Greaves was struck down by priaprism. Ravenhill has been booked. Backstabber #1 offers no explanation why.

8 mins - Everything you could ever want to know about Darlington - in Punjabi,' says Andy.

7 mins - "Checking in from work. will be listening to Leeds lose to Crystal Palace while keeping tabs in the text rambling. Do you want text updates on the upgrade from Cisco Call Manager 4.0 to 4.2?' offers Mickey Nuttell's Hair. Sure, why not? It can't be any more bone-crunchingly dull than the first seven minutes of this game.

4 mins - Dave Jones, I have discovered, is a director at Darlington. And quite a popular one at that, obviously. So if you fancy e-mailing in random abuse aimed at Dave Jones, get typing.

1 min - I wonder who Dave Jones actually is?

Kick-off! - 'Remember, Darlo lost this four nil at York Street,' drones foul-mouthed backstabber commentator #1. Actually, it was 4-1. Jesus. This man is a professional BBC journalist. He's no Dalton.

2.55pm - I'm listening to the BBC Radio Cleveland feed supplied by MatchLive. Oddly, the commentators are having a chat amongst themselves, unaware that they are broadcasting to the gullible ranks of MatchLive subscribers (i.e me) - and are viciously slagging off some bloke called Dave Jones. 'I don't rate the guy, I don't like him,' one bloke says. 'If he can't stick around I can't be arsed, I don't want to know.' Ouch! 'I went into the boardroom and they said 'Oh he's gone', says another. 'I haven't got time to fuckin' run around after him, the arsehole.'

2.50pm - Here's the teams:
Darlington:Jones, Close, Wheater, Miller, Horwood, Keltie, Ravenhill, Cummins, Wainwright, Armstrong, Blundell
Subs:Reay, Rowson, Collins, Russell, Johnson

Boston: Marriott, Cryan, Thomas, Greaves, Nicholson, Clarke, Vaughan, Cooksey, Maylett, Farrell, Benjamin
Subs: Green, Rowntree, Stevens, Joynes, Ellender

2.45pm - David Galbraith, who was named as a substitute, has gone and crocked himself. He'll be replaced by Adam Rowntree. I promise not to make any Fruit Pastille jokes if he comes on.

2.15pm - Boston playing that 4-5-1 cum 4-3-3 that Evans likes because Mourinho did last season. Marriott, Cryan, Thomas, Greaves, Nicholson, Farrell, Maylett, Clarke Vaughan, Ernie Cooksey supporting Trevor Benjamin.

2.10pm - 'We were talking over dinner,' says Steve Evans to Michael Hortin, moaning about his tiny, tiny squad. 'What would we be like if we still had the Ryans, and the Joachims, and the Eldings and the Canovilles?' Well, a quick glance at the results when these players were still around pretty much sums it up: still shit.

2.05pm - What? The game's on? Oh. I'd better start writing something then..... The Boston Town game is ON, by the way, in case you can't be arsed with this.

Preamble - Well, the snow has cleared as Britain attempts to recover from the Big Freeze (© every newspaper since Thursday) and the game at Darlington’s comedy stadium is most definitely ON! Hooray! Which means we get to endure another afternoon of Boston United’s increasingly farcical attempts at avoiding the relegation trapdoor.

Trevor Benjamin has joined the Pilgrims in a last gasp loan deal and goes straight into the starting eleven. I believe Boston United is Trevor’s FOURTEENTH club. He turned 28 on Thursday. He must be good then.

That lot - Darlington are marginally less inconsistent than Boston United, capable of both eye-brow raising away wins, and eye-brow raising home capitulations. Which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, since they are comprised mostly of ex-Boston United players.

Well, of course, when I say mostly, I really mean they have four ex-player. The most notable, Julian Joachim, is ruled out due to one of those clauses that Evans puts in contracts to ensure players he’s been forced to flog on the cheap don’t show him up by plonking a hattrick past the Marriott a few weeks down the line.

Arguably the lowest point of the Quaker’s season thus far was the 5-0 home defeat at the hands of Rochdale (who have not been particularly kind to Boston this season, either). This game was also notable for the cries of ‘Sotnick out!’ echoing around the vast banks of empty seats, although it seems that the fans have since decided he’s not really a bad bloke after all. Bless ‘em.

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