A legend returns.

Tomorrow sees Keith Alexander return to sincil bank,the man who lead the imps to 4 successive playoff campaigns brings his maccelsfield town side to sincil bank for the last midd week game of the season.

There were some many great times and memory's for the Keith era (2002-06) here are my top five games form that time

Scunthorpe united 0-1 Lincoln city 2002-03 playoff semi final 2nd leg

after a great 5-3 home win over our lincolnshire rivals in the first leg in lincoln,we kept them at arms lenght for most of the game quite easily then with 5 mins to go simon yeo scored to sent us to our first playoff final the atmosphere in the away end for that last 5 mins or so and after the game was the best i have ever been in in fourteen years of watching lincoln the programme takes on of the prides of place in my collection. we had to put up with there manager slagging us off in the press saying we were a long ball team etc etc in the build up to the match. how he felt when in those last 5 mins he had 2,500 lincoln fans chanting "Brian law, your a wanker,your a wanker!" only he will ever know!

Lincoln city 5-0 Grimsby town. 2006

needs no explanation really, 4 -0 up at half time grimsby,s manager holding the team talk on the pitch at half time! good times? i think so!

Grimsby town 2 -4 Lincoln city 2005

Imps storm into a two nil half time lead cods get it back to 2-2 only for simon yeo (him again!) to get his and the imps third within seconds of the cods second. imps score again late on and its battered cod for tea all round!!

fulham 5-lincoln 4 (AET)

Carling cup 2nd round.we played premiership fulham away in the cup, came back form 2 goals twice only to lose with the last kick of extra time! we may have lost but it was a top night out in the capital and the imps played very well against a team 4 leagues above them.

Doncaster rovers 0-2 Lincoln city

living where i do there are alot of donny fans, so to be one of only 2 teams to beat them on there own patch in the year they won the championship went down very well indeed!

there were so many great times under keith, its just a shame we never got him the promotion that he deserved. So big keith, one of footballs true gentleman we salute you and thank you for the memory's!

now ..., let us win keith...please! lol

thank you frank!

just like to say thank you to Big Frank sinclair for his efforts this season, i am personally gutted that jacko has decided to loan him out for the rest of the season to wycombe so as he says he can look at some youngers for next season. (nothing to do with the fact that if he plays one more game for us he automatically gets a new contract next year than eh jacko?)

ok he is 36 but his has an FA cup winners medal and has played for Jamaica in the world cup finals in France 1998 and has played most of his career in the premiership!!

theres a reason for that jacko.....

FRANK SINCLAIR ME LORD, FRANK SINCLAIR!!!!

(lincoln city chant heard at various grounds in the 2008-09 season)

Barnet 3 - 2 Lincoln city

well that was another let down!!

its always a good game at barnet and to a neutral this one was as well. for me it just summed up our entire season in 90 mins.

Barnet was one of the few grounds i have seen Lincoln win at every time i have been there (3-2 and 5-0) and when we went 1 -0 up after about 10 mins or so and with my lucky Pittsburgh boxers on i thought that would continue, well that went tits up!

at 1-0 up we wasted several good chances to go 2-0 and i think if we did we would have won. Barnet were one of the worse sides i have seen at sincil bank this year so i wasnt to worried... until they scored from the first attack of the game!! bugger!

soon as they scored we went from bossing the game and playing with a swagger to playing like a group off pissed up nervous kittens

HT 1-1

barnet took the lead, we hit back straight. it was then end to end and could have gone either way, but you knew which way it was going to go! three Min's from the end they scored 3-2 good night!

its a long way back from north London when that happens

barnet is a good away ground though, nice food there is a pub 30 seconds from the away fans entrance and at 14 quid is one of the cheapest grounds in our league

if only for the result!!

phrases you never hear at Sincil bank.

"Two second round cup tickets please"

"I do hope grimsby stay up this season"

"Did you say scott kerr as got 30 or 40 goals this season?"

"I started queueing at 1.00pm and still didn't get in!"

"I see its another sell out today!"

"isn't the food on sale in the ground the best you have ever tasted?"

"we should have a black and white stripped away kit"

"we should never have sacked john schofield"

"3 quid for a cheeseburger is great value for money!"

"so far we have filled three buses for the next away game!"

" i cant remember the last time we lost at home"

more of these to come!!

would the real lincoln city please stand up,please stand up!!!

i will blog parts two and three off the ground hop later, but i have to react to Lincoln's "performance" last night.

Lincoln 0-1 Darlington

so after a very good one nil win against 2nd place wycombe last week and a good draw with ten men against playoff chasing bury we get this shit.

after going 1-0 nil down in the seventh minute we hardly looked like scoring all night apart from when we should have had a penalty i carnt remember an effort of mention for the imps in the whole game although to far darlo didn't have many either. this made for a crap game which was as interesting as watching paint dry or old friends repeats.

you just don't know which lincoln will turn up to games at the moment. were great against gillingham, port vale,wycombe and bury but total shit against grimsby and darlington.

its pissing me off!!

its like saying you are going on a blind date with either sophie ellis bextor or beth ditto,but you wont know till you get there!, you will either have a holiday in the USA or the Congo! i will tell you at the airport!its either a full english breakfast or bread and dripping the cook will decide when he gets up!!!

lets hope city turn in on at Barnet on saturaday as i will be there!!

over to you Lincoln!!

its life.....but not as we know it !!part 1

HOP HOP HOP!

last weekend i took in five non-league games in the central midlands league. there was one game on the Friday night then 4 games at different grounds on the Saturday.

the league is the arse end of football. both in terms of grounds and quality of play. but that's the fun part of it. People had traveled from London, Newcastle, Devon and Sweden to watch this annual event.

i was intrigued to see just how sad some people can be with football.i just go have a few pints, try to get a badge chill out and watch the game.

however some guys there were one up from train spotting! it was great to be sat in the bar at the first game at hucknall rolls royce leisure fc ( my favourite of the five grounds)and watch the hoppers barge each other out of the way to write the teams down in there little note books ( why not just save time and take a picture?)

then on the table next to us there was a debate going on about if it was worth going to watch crystal palace reserves because they don't issue teamsheets! and the now immortal line of " i say football just isn't football without a nice bit of stilton ( a cheese) he then proceed to get afore mentioned cheese out of his sad bag as i call them and cut a slice of the stinking stuff off and eat it!

after that we decided to go outside,we went past the good looking female official on the gate and collected the programme pack for the weekend and i got a team badge. The PA said if anybody needs anything go and see the lady on the gate... hmmm the mind goes into overdrive!

outside yet more strange life forms were to be seen. you know the kind, big back packs, beards caps full off badges all trying to show off by telling anybody who could be arsed to listen about the last ground they went to.

i decided i was only going to get badges of the home clubs we visited on the tour. and a shirebrook town one as i was unable to get one when i last visited them. otherwise i would have spent a bomb and my bank account would have been as healthy as lemman brothers does. (i still spent 18 quid on them all weekend!!)

i managed not to buy any other crap that was being sold, old programmes and alike, i mean who really wants to buy some of this shit? tow law town reserves form 90/91 season anybody? nope thought not.and why do some of these creatures spent all game looking at the afore mentioned shit as appose to watching the game?

rolls royce 3-4 ollerton town

rolls were bottom of the league and played like it, sad thing they are set to fold at the end of the season as i thought they were the best run club of the lot we went to and the one i would most like to watch a game at again given the chance.

there keeper had a night to forget so i wont go into the details. but it was funny when at the end his girlfriend put her arm round him and he replied "fuck off i am having a bad night"

that's the way to treat a lady eh!

Not quite what we wanted

GRIMSBY TOWN 5 -1 LINCOLN CITY

VICTORIA ZIZKOV 1-2 SPARTA PRAGUE

THIS CAN BE A SHIT GAME AT TIMES!!!!!!!

Right lets get the lincs derby out of my system first. Although i am a big jacko fan and firmly belive he is the man to take the imps forward i feel he must hold his hands up and take the blame for this defeat against the empire of the cods.
0-1 down at half time due to a good move from grimsby wasn't great but repairable,the second half saw us take the game to them,get it back to 1-1 then batter them some more. then on 78 they breakaway and get a goal!
then came the turning point, despite there being 12 left plus injury time jacko goes all in, takes of our defensive midfielder and our rock in central defence puts an attacking midfielder and striker on, the result-we are totally unbalanced grimsby score 3 more and we just fall apart quicker than the french resistance in world war 2.
before the subs were made we were making but not taking chances and with us attacking our end i am pretty sure we would have got it back to 2-2 but alas we will never know.

so that's three lincs derby's played with jacko in charge

won 0

drawn 1

lost 2

scored-2

conceded 7

and please jacko dont say on the radio you and the players are hurting like we were, you didn't pay 16 quid to watch us fold like a deck of cards, have 5000 cods giving it large against us.or go to work on Monday and get all the shit i did about it.

the worse thing about it is that you and the players could have done something about it!!!

good win last night against wycombe though!! but the attendance of just over 2500 says volumes as to how the red army are feeling right now

Another derby!

It must be weekend derby time!

over in the city of prague victoria zizkov are playing city rivals and glamour boys of czech football AC Sparta prague

I went to prague to watch sparta but when i got there i found out that the game had been moved to the day after i flew out of the city so that was me done with sparta!

however i felt much more at home with zizkov! they are based in the working class area of prague, i was able to look inside the stadium and take some pictures. they have a left wing fan base and best of all they play in red and white strips!! (As all the top teams in the world do!! lol)

if sparta and slavia are the Arseanal and chelsea, Zizkov are the west ham of prague, in the working class end of town and dont win very much!there biggest achievement is knocking rangers out of the 2002 UFEA cup!! no league titles since 1928 and only a couple of cup wins to boot, yep that sounds like my kind of team comrade!!!

The best thing about czech football is that win or lose you can celebrate/commiserate yourself with some of the finest beer in the world, nice and cheap and served by the best barmaids in the world!!! they chat to the custerms do tricks when serving you, not that british ones that tend to dress like slobs and spend more time reading magazines,texting people or arguing with the boyfriends on the phone,oh and there generally better looking as well.

As for the beer it must be tried!!!it tastes so much better than the crap we get in the west. more taste less fizz! Kozel must be tried and thankfully pubs here are starting to serve cezch beer! After kozel pilsner is very nice an ideal session beer which you can now get in bottles form the local shops! and last but not least starpromaen which is on tap in retford!! get in!!

of the the three kozel wins it for me every time!!!

So lets hope that after the imps win Saturday zizkov can make it a double and lets celebrate with a bottle or two of kozel!!!!!!!

the red army's are on the march!!!!! in every way!

Red group, gold group all fighters follow me!!

So after destorying the cockney london dross on tuesday night 3-0, the red imps squadron set off to take on the old enemy in north east lincolnshire. after losing at home to league leaders Brentford on tuesday they sit below the dreaded blackline of the relagation zone and on there knees after six defeats on the bounce .there has surly never been a more important derby for them in the 100 years plus we have been at each others throats.

the fuckers will raise there game for this one you can bet your life on it. just like they did at sincil bank in the 1-1 draw in august but can they do it enough?

lets hope not!!!!

Lincolns strenght this season has been out wide with danny engussen, the second best thing to come out of france after the french kinckers,stockings and high heels combo.

i think the key is for us to sit in then when the codds attack (and they are in the state that draws are no good to them) get the ball wide and let him run at them. and either do the damage himself or let the Horse (geff horsefild) finish them off.

i also get the feeling that is we get the first goal then they will go into there shell and the crowd will get on there backs. if they get the 1st however it will lift them and thoses stupid inflatable fish they have will be waved around for all to see!

all in all the evil empire of the codds is rocking so lets go for it and destory the codd star!!

lock all ships in attack postion

red group standing by!!

white group standing by!

gold and blue halves group standing by!

all imps follow me and engage thoses codds!!!

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US!!!!!

The Lincolnshire derby!!!

World football is full of derby matchs, Inter v Milan, Rangers v Celtic , Sparta v Slavia prague River plate v Boco juniors and now its our turn,the Lincolnshire Derby! its Grimsby v Lincoln!!

I must say that i am looking foward to this one more than any other of our visits to the land of the cod. Firstly because i am meeting up with an old friend who i havnt seen in fourteen years since school ,a grimsby fan no less!!(and having a night round the town on the friday night catching up to boot)

The second is more serious. as i write this blog Grimsby are looking relagation in the face. because of three teams having point deductions for money problems they started the season 17 points ahead of the relagation zone. that is now down to two points ahead of bournmouth in the last relagation place.with luton all but relagated.In the middweek games the codheads (thats what we call them) host top of the table brentford and bournmouth host midd table aldershot town who have nothing to play for (hmmm that sounds familer!!) so there is a very good chance that by the time the imps roll into town on saturaday the codds will be in the dreaded drop zone!

here is where the problem lies.all imps fans who arent smoking the funny stuff now that this season was all about rebuilding after the mess john schofield left us in. the defence is much tighter but alsa goals have been a little hard to come by.all this means that we are playing things out for next year. so we have nothing to play for where as grimsby are fighting for there lives.

However.. the imps away form has been off playoff standard and with some quators of the support starting to question jacko after the sale of frecklington and our own playoff challange long over an away derby win for lincoln would stop the mutterings in the stands of sincil bank.and buy jacko some time till the summer.so its all to play for!!!!!!!

as for the game i think if we can keep them out for the 1st 25 mins we are in with a great chance. They HAVE to win, so if they push foward can hopefully do what we did at gillingham and port vale and rip them to bits with out pace on the wings on the counter.At home teams sit in against us and that is why i think we have been poor at home,although we have only lost three at sincil bank.

so heres to a good night friday night, three points for the imps and if we do win its got to be battered cod (from grimsby!) with chips for tea saturaday night washed down with high quality czech beer!!!