Life in the old dog yet?

There was a certain inevitability at Sincil Bank last night as City took a sucker punch early on to provoke some half hearted cries of Holdsworth out! The Imps laboured on to little effect and no doubt many were wondering what they might had done with £18 other than be at the match.


My mate Stewart offered the opinion that watching the Imps these days is akin to looking at your poor old pooch mournfully seeing out the remainder of his days, a sad reflection of his former self. It only seemed yesterday that he was chasing rabbits and frightening the postman?

City fielded a new look strike force, little good it did them and the crowd were certainly in no mood to make Conner Robinson’s full debut something he would look back on with regret but to say there was any punch up front would take much rosier tinted glasses than I possess. The manager responded with a triple substitution.

Then a funny thing happened. Well it’s not funny if your name is Simon Forsdick. Vadaine Oliver was on a charging run towards goal and Forsdick brought him down. There was little doubt of the foul but would the referee deem the Nuneaton man the last defender? He did and that meant only one thing and Forsdick made a very slow trudge to the dressing room.

Now this sort of scenario hasn’t produced rich rewards for City in recent years so there was some light hearted conjecture as to where the ball might end up from the resulting free kick. Few expected what happened as Nutter rolled the ball to Nicky Nicolau and he absolutely buried it to put City level.

The Imps were like a dog with two tails now but would they go on to sink their teeth into Nuneaton’s nether regions or go back to whimpering and farting by the fire?

Tom Miller provided the answer although not that many could see how the ball ended up in the net to put City on their way to three points. Just to dispel any thoughts that City might be out of the woods the referee, previously not disposed to right the wrongs perpetrated on the Imps, awarded a penalty. Plenty would not have done. Again, inevitably, Taylor rattled the bar with his effort. The fact that a centimetre lower and City would have been 3.1 up more an indication of the Imps lack of luck at the moment than judgement on Taylor’s ability as a penalty taker. Still, the journey home was a lot pleasanter than it had seemed it would be an hour earlier.