Gillingham (0) 0
Lincoln City (0) 1 Hughton 9
Att. 4,838
Entrance: Season Ticket
Programme: £3
Mileage: 45/852
Match Report
Honeymoons last five minutes and patience is wafer thin. So when the final whistle blew on a desperately poor Gillingham performance it was with little surprise that it was greeted with a chorus of boos from disgruntled “supporters” who saw a first defeat as reason enough to raise their voices in the time honoured fashion.I guess these were the same people that loudly cheered a few seconds later when the tannoy announced that Mark Stimson’s Barnet had been beaten by seven goals at Crewe. It confirms that these people feed off negativity.
Nobody would argue that Gillingham didn’t deserve the admonishment from the crowd, they lacked imagination, pace, just about any attribute that is required to win a game of football, but we are just three games in, surely any manager and/or players deserve a few more games than that?
Whilst I’m not a booer, I still want my twopenneth worth.
It can be argued that because of injuries Andy Hessenthaler’s choice of formation has been forced upon him, but I cannot understand the ethos of playing at home with just one striker. Cody McDonald will be the second man when he is fit, but there must somebody else capable of playing off Adebayo Akinfenwa in the meantime. Luke Rooney emerged as substitute on the hour and brought a couple of good saves from Joe Anyon, something that hadn’t happened previously.
Rooney is young and can be a bit of a headless chicken. Consequently, if he starts he may not last the full 90 minutes but, on this occasion, his energy and positivity may well have put this game beyond Lincoln before he ran out of steam.
After two years of bemoaning Stimson’s use of the substitute it is refreshing to see Hessenthaler making bold substitutions when the game is not going to plan. But can anybody explain to me the value of the 50th minute change?
If a player, in this case Kevin Maher, has performed so poorly for the first 45 minutes, why would anybody expect him to radically improve in just five minutes of the second half. Tell him in the dressing room that he is being replaced and spare the bloke the indignity of being hooked to the sarcastic jeering of the crowd, something that is not going to help the confidence of a player whatever end of their career they are at.
Gillingham fell foul of the returning player when after nine minutes a shot from Albert Jarrett, whose performance bore no comparison to his woeful spell at Priestfield, was only parried by Alan Julian to Cian Hughton who reacted far quicker than John Nutter or Chris Palmer to fire into the far corner.
Lincoln had their lead and now it was up to the home side to break down a resolute defence led by Ian Pierce, one time of West Ham. For the first 45 minutes Gillingham played without imagination or craft to even muster a shot on target.
The introduction of Curtis Weston sparked a bit of life into a leaden footed midfield and when Rooney arrived, Lincoln’s defence began to creak a little. Spiller might well have been awarded a penalty, a Josh Gowling header was somehow scrambled to safety, in addition to Rooney’s two efforts.
With a couple of minutes remaining, Akinfenwa hit a post and as the ball rebounded into the grateful hands of the goalkeeper we knew that this was not to be our day and quite frankly it did not deserve it to be so.
The attendance was almost a thousand fewer than opening day, goodness only know how loud the booing would have been had they all turned up.
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