Game of 2 halves at Sincil Bank

By Nathan Jackson
July 24 2006

Lincoln raced into a 3-0 lead against Leicester but the youth team again struggled and the game at Sincil Bank ended 3-3. The first half saw the regular first team easily cope with a strong Leicester side but as soon as the substitutes started to be made, it all fell apart.

City opened the scoring after good work down the left between Forrester and Stallard before Lee Frecklington shot powerfully from the edge of the area. Douglas parried the ball upwards and after spending several seconds in the air, dropped behind the line. Kerr doubled the lead soon afterwards when great work from Forrester released him one on one with Douglas and Kerr coolly slotted past the former Celtic keeper for 2-0.

It was 3-0 on half an hour when Stallard broke through 1 on 1 with the goalkeeper and was then fouled for a penalty. Douglas saved the penalty but Forrester put away the rebound. City went into the break with the 3 goal advantage with Imps’ keeper Raynor not having a shot to save..

That didn’t last long though as 2 minutes into the second half, substitute Marriott failed to sufficiently deal with a weak shot and a Leicester player was left with an easy tap in. It was 3-2 less than a minute later when Elvis Hammond broke through and smashed a shot into the top right hand corner of the net.

A mass chance saw virtually all but 3 of the Imps’s players go off and being replaced by mostly youth players. Within a minute, it should have been 3-3 when Hammond broke through again but couldn’t get his weak shot on target. Not long after that and again Leicester broke through one-on-one but again couldn’t get it on target. The youth team started crumbling and were lucky that Leicester couldn’t hit the target as Elvis Hammond wasted another opportunity when he shot straight at Marriott. McAuley had a goal disallowed for offside.

Leicester looked to have found that equaliser when they broke through AGAIN but Marriott managed to keep the ball out with the palm of his hand. Lincoln however almost made it 4-2 with Birch chipping the ball over the final defender and Ollie Ryan hit a ferious volley wide of the net. Leicester finally equalised with an own goal from a defender and that was the final noteworthy action of the game.