Alfreton Town 1-3 Lincoln City

Its Autumn. The nights are drawing in, the leaves are falling and Lincoln City have begun there yearly search for (yet another) new manager. Steve Tilson and his assistant Paul Brush got the boot Monday evening with youth team manager Grant Brown taking over as caretaker manager whilst the board hunt high and low for somebody crazy enough to take on the challenge of managing the Imps.
But before the search for a new gaffer starts the small matter of an away match at fellow BSP strugglers and  last seasons BSN champions Alfreton Town FC.

Alfreton isn't too far from Retford so it was a short but pleasant journey over to Derbyshire in the Bazmobile. En route we exchanged stories from our various trips over the previous weekend. Baz and the boys had the pleasure, if that's the right way of putting it, of watching Lincoln's 4-0 kicking at Tamworth on Saturday. By the sounds of it i got by far the better the deal by watching Dunkirk FC then the Panthers.  Although i did get to miss out on "The Old Bailey boy" and his antics. Although its always an interesting time hunting for a new manager, we were both pissed of at the fact that we find ourselves in this position again. It only seems like 5 minutes since we were looking for a new manager. We seem to change our manager more often than the Sugarbabes change their member line up. This time we have to get it right. Just like the last time and the time before that and the time before that....

Alfreton's ground is quite well hidden but we  found it, even if we did take a short detour around the town; checking out the scenery if you will. As we had arrived in plenty of time we managed to bag a prime spot; a mere hop skip and a jump from the away turnstiles. So far so good. The ground is in a natural bowl and from where we parked you got a decent view of the whole stadium.

As neither of us had eaten and with over an hour to go till kick off we decided to have a ferret about and see if we could find anything to stuff our faces with to keep us going till our Kebabs on the way home. After a short walk up the road we spied a chip shop and a chinese so dived in to grab a bag of chips. There was only about 4 people in front of us. Great we thought quick bit of snap then off to the footie.
What we actually found was the chippy with the slowest service in the United Kingdom. We must have been in there about 15 minutes or so. It was also pretty hot in there which isn't ideal when you have a thick padded coat on.
When the chips arrived they were above average although it had started to drizzle when we got outside and as every chip lover knows chips and rain don't mix. So it was a race against time to eat them before the rain soaked them. Yes i did look like a pig eating out of a trough, but downtown Alfreton on a Tuesday night in October isn't the place to be worried about what you look like eating a bag of chips.

On the way to the ground and indeed around the town we had noticed that the local police were out in force. This was a bit of a surprise. Either the rozzers were expecting the Lincoln fans to give Tilson some stick (if he had stayed) Or the club/town/local police were still coming to terms with Alfretons new status in the football pyramid and were unsure as to what numbers away sides would bring this season. As with much in life the answer is probably a bit of both.

Tonight it was 13 quid to get in and for that you got a spot on the uncovered terrace in the corner. Some seating was available for an extra pound along the side of the pitch.  A very charming young lady sold me a programme for £2.50. I didn't get a chance to read it though as the drizzle coming down quite steadily now. It wasn't raining heavily and thankfully it wasn't to cold or windy. We hoped that it was just a shower but nope it continued all night long. I believe this is what people call character building. It wasn't too bad though i had my long coat and cap on. Lucky enough i hadn't left my cap in the car. I mean who would do such a foolish thing?  Especially if they had been working outside all day cleaning gutters and stuff.. hmmm.


The Impact arena is a basic kind of ground. Opposite us was a small uncovered seating area with covered stands down each touchline. The stand we were in was the largest of the four. The open terrace we were on was split into two sections. We had a small corner with Alfreton getting the other two thirds. A section of Alfreton's side also had a roof over part of it. Which would have come in quite handy on a night like this. The crowd was 1,232 with 410 Imps fans. I am not great at maths but it works out that roughly a third of the total attendance were from Lincoln. Now given this i don't think it would have been unreasonable for us to have the larger section of the terrace. The home fans could go round to which ever stand they wanted to go in and so had plenty of space and cover. I don't like criticising clubs but i do think Alfreton got it wrong this time.
Due to the fence between the sections, the shallow rake in the terrace and the fact that the Lincoln section was quite full a large proportion of the away following couldn't see the near goal.(Myself included)

Wish you were here?

After a bright opening spell from the hosts, Lincoln hit them with a double whammy with two goals from Sam Smith on 11 and 13 minutes. I would love to tell you what they were like but I couldn't see. I did have a great view of Alfretons goal on 18 minutes though. A ball was humped in from about the halfway line and headed home by Paul Clayton.
City's two goal lead was restored 5 minutes later when McCallum latched onto Anyon's long goal kick and struck a great volley home from 20 yards out. I did see the ball leave his boot but didn't see the ball hit the back of the net. But who cares! City had just scored three goals in the first half and i can't remember the last time we had done that. Or even got three goals in a game for that matter.
Apart from the obvious fact that we were 3-1 up, the other plus point of the first half was the performance of young Karl Cunningham who was making his first team debut. I have always been impressed with him whenever i have seen him play for the reserves and he looked right at home playing for the first team. Huge credit must go to Grant Brown for having the balls to give him a first team shirt.

Lincoln kept their hosts at bay for most of the 2nd half restricting Alfreton to chances from set plays. Although as our defence has been dodgy for a couple of years now, i was never totally confident that we would get the win but if anything it was Lincoln who looked like adding to the score.
The final whistle went and you could tell how much it meant to the Lincoln players, staff, and the fans who had endured a soaking on the terrace.
Many more harder challenges await us in the days ahead but lets just enjoy the night shall we?