IF it were a snooker match then referee Len Ganley would have shrugged as John Spencer rolled the cue ball back into baulk for the umpteenth time, he’d have adjusted his legendary stance and re-racked the reds.

If it were a cricketing contest then Dickie Bird, David Shepherd and Billy Bowden would have huddled together in front of the pavilion and contrived a ‘bad light stops play’ scenario in order to get the cream teas in.

“A hot summer’s day and sticky black tarmac. Feeding ducks in the park and wishing you were far away.”

That’s entertainment. Paul Weller got it right. Because this plainly wasn’t.

Like watching an entire Grand Prix take place behind a safety car, or trying to spy horse racing through binoculars in the fog.

Or indoor volleyball: serve, set, spike, point, serve, set...

Like a wasted afternoon sat watching Grandstand after they took away the football bits.

Or Dickie Davies’ World of Sport without Giant Haystacks or Big Daddy.

Around 1,800 travelling fans spent £34 on a seat and probably just as much on petrol or train fare. And judging from the reddened faces and bleary eyes around kick-off probably as much on beer inside the Wilmslow. At £2.50 a pint, there was better value inside that boozer than on the grass.

But football points aren’t measured in entertainment.

And but for a shocker from Leeds referee Jon Moss, Mick McCarthy’s side would have earned a very notable draw, their first on away soil since the Run from Hell chilled gold and black bones to the very core.

The problem was that in the blue corner you’d got a team reeling from five defeats in six league games and with supporter unrest behind the scenes due to the lack of supposed ambition of the owner.

Eleven timid tadpoles, ten-plus-one cowardly cats, nine-plus-two fearful ferrets.

In the opposite corner you’d got an away team. And when did they ever turn up just to dazzle and disappear into a smoke of goals?

And four points from eight games wasn’t going to get McCarthy fingering his Play The Barcelona Way coaching manual. That Wigan victory might have blitzed them up the table but memories of those five straight losses and that first 80 minutes against Swansea is enough to send grown men disappearing into a bottle of Appleton Estate Extra 12 Year Old.

A perfectly-crafted, full-bodied aged rum. Aged for a minimum of 12 years and available online at 41 pence cheaper than the cost of said match ticket.