Lincoln City and Barrow supporters pay good money to watch a man blow a whistle a lot.

That was the way it seemed returning home from the latest instalment in City’s quest to escape from their self-inflicted exile from the league. I’m not normally one to place too much emphasis on the influence or otherwise of the referee on a match but this one, to be topical, was a turkey.

Referees, as I’ve said more than once in this blog, do not win or lose matches, the responsibility for failing to secure three points from the encounter at Sincil Bank must rest squarely with the Imps but the match was ruined as a spectacle by an inept performance from the man in the middle.

Worse still and I’ve seen this before Alan Young (for it is he) subscribed to the view that a team should be allowed to do pretty much as they pleased for about ten minutes then the pendulum would swing and it would be the others turn. The problem with this is the team getting the benefit of virtually all of the decisions is going to come to the conclusion that they can do as they want so it really was no surprise that Wilmer-Anderton went off towards the end of the game for an appalling tackle on Keegan Everington.

City did not help themselves having gone in to a two goal lead courtesy of a wonderful bicycle kick from Matt Rhead, you don’t see that standard of football often at this level, then committed the cardinal error of conceding whilst still celebrating and, needless to say a penalty was awarded later and Barrow were level. I suppose I would say this wouldn’t I but I doubted the penalty. Having witnessed the standard of Mr Youngs refereeing I really doubted it but there you go. 2.2. I hope we don’t regret it.