Cod Almighty | Match Stats
Saturday 17 March 2018
Division 4
Lincoln City 3 Frecklington (31), Green (34), Wharton (39)
Grimsby Town 1 Davies (45+2, pen)
Attendance: 9,774 (1,696 away fans)
Do you know who their sponsor's man of the match was? Russell Slade.
Let's look on the bright side of life: Harry Clifton ran around and had a shot. Really, that's just the minimum we expect, not the best that Town can get.
The less than jolly Jolleyman refused to varnish the broken garden fence of failure with an almost subtle acknowledgement of what we all know:
"We knew what Lincoln would do and we spoke all week about how we would deal with that. But it's one thing to talk about it, it's another to execute it on a Saturday. But I'm not going to criticise my players."
As a sensible chap he knows it's counter-productive to criticise someone for trying their best if they just ain't up to it.
Danny Boy revealed the secret of his springtime success:
"In the first half-an-hour, we played percentages too much. It was a typically cagey derby game. We tweaked things a little which got us playing a bit more and we linked some passes together."
In other words they started big-balling to each other, rather than aimlessly into the snow sheets. He'd realised this was still Slade's shockers.
The costumes, the scenery, the make-up, the props, the crowd that lifts them when they're down.
The headaches, the heartaches, the backaches, the flops, the police who'll escort us out of town.
The start of the game when your heart beats like a drum, watch out John for the closing when the customers don't come.
There was no busyness in Town's snow business when it came to the ten minute crunch.
Hey, we're broken-hearted, but we go on.
Different colours, different creeds, different people have different needs. Lincoln are back to being Lincoln. It makes them happy to play the Haxey Hood every week.
They are absolutely nothing special at all, but in this fetid division Braintree with biceps is a recipe for success. Extremely well drilled at blocking, barging and generally hassling, with a simple method of attacking: big blokes being big. Yeah, it's Lincoln being Lincoln.
They may even go up. Whatever. When the Cowleys get poached, Imp eggs will rot again. It's the natural order of things.
We're trying hard to believe in fairy tales.
Mr D Coote
I really can't be bothered to even think about the officials, I have a bun to eat and a curry to cook. They didn't have the human decency to abandon the game at half-time and let us go home, so a bog standard 6.555.
A howling football match ruined a good wind.
In a word: snowballs
Lincoln City: Allsop, Eardley, Bostwick, Wharton, Habergham, Whitehouse, Frecklington (Wilson 81), Woodyard, Williams, Rhead (Palmer 60), Green (Anderson 65)
Subs not used: Farman, Long, Rowe, Pett
Booked: Palmer
Town: McKeown, Hall-Johnson (Rose 57), Clarke, Collins, Fox, Clifton, Berrett, Davies, Woolford (Jaiyesimi 66) Cardwell (McSheffrey 46), Matt
Subs not used: Killip, Mills, Dembele and Vernon
Booked: Clifton