Lincolnshire F.A. Senior Trophy
1st Round
Tuesday 12th November 2019
Kick Off 19.45 Actual 19.46
Skegness Town 3 Barton Town 3 (2-4 pens), attendance76 (official 56)
21’ 1-0
33’ 2-0
45’ 3-0
52’ 3-1
66’ 3-2
77’ 3-3
@ Vertigo Stadium
Wainfleet Road
Skegness
PE25 2EL
£5 Admission
£1 Programme, 16 pages.
Skegness Town moved to the Vertigo Stadium towards the end of their time in the Lincolnshire League, with this being their second season in the Northern Counties (East) League. Despite playing in a league where floodlights are mandatory, they rarely schedule midweek matches where they are actually required. They may have used them once last season, but this season this was the first proper game under them, as the first two midweek games were played in August, when games can easily be played without lights.
Both clubs had mentioned on Twitter on Monday that the game was on and the weather forecast for Skegness was reasonable, although you can’t always believe a forecast. It came as a bit of a surprise whilst en route to the match when Skegness tweeted at 4 o’clock that there had been a precautionary pitch inspection, but the game was all set to go ahead. As the ground is on the right hand side when entering the town (if coming from anywhere other then the north) we called in there, before heading off for food/drink. Apparently, the match Referee had been called in due to it being very wet and the opinion was, as long as there was no more rain, the game was on. Thankfully it remained dry, as I don’t think the game would have survived otherwise. Had I known beforehand that there was going to be a pitch inspection at that time of day I would not have risked travelling. Skegness has to be one of the most awkward and tedious journeys out there, wherever you live. Even Barton Town had tweeted a pre match thank you to any of their supporters making the ‘long’ 118.4 mile round trip! Don’t know what they would think about a 400 mile jaunt then!
Both clubs ply their trade in the Northern Counties (East) League. Skegness are top of Division 1, whilst Barton are third from bottom in the Premier Division, so we were expecting an even contest, which is what we got, but oddly, where each team totally dominated a half each. Skegness were already 2-0 up when Barton had a player sin binned for the last bit of the first half and when they made it 3-0 just before the break it looked all over. An early second half goal for the visitors set things up nicely and when they added a second, with a cracking 25 yard shot, they were very much on top. A bullet near post header levelled it up at 3-3 with thirteen minutes left. Either side of the equaliser the Barton ‘keeper pulled off two brilliant saves and when we went to penalties to decide the tie (thankfully no extra time) he was once again the hero, saving two of the Skegness efforts, whilst Barton scored four out of four.
The aim of once again completing the top ten levels of the English pyramid is edging closer. Just Tottenham Hotspur, Crawley Green (Step 5) and Jersey Bulls (Step 6) to go.
