WHETHER it was the spirit engendered by the Dam Busters March (a regular on the PA here) or simply the flavour of the occasion, the first leg of the League Two playoffs got off to a frantic start and things never really eased until half-time. This was Lincoln’s fourth consecutive year in the battle for playoff supremacy, but it looks as doomed as all the others.

Of course, neither Grimsby manager Russell Slade nor his Lincoln counterpart Keith Alexander were conceding the tie. The former predicted that when the teams meet again at Blundell Park on Tuesday the Imps will do everything in their power to “beat down the door”.

Alexander was insisting that “the game had been all Lincoln” and that the first of their two disallowed goals was “clearly not offside”.

Neutral spectators did not quite see it that way, although they would have found the swashbuckling attitude of both teams in the first 45 minutes a good way to fill in the time between lunch and the FA Cup final.

Slade was correct when saying that “the best move of the first 20 minutes we got a goal from”. It was started by Andy Parkinson, who probably played his best game of the season for Grimsby. “It gave us something to hang on to.”

But the key figure in that move was Curtis Woodhouse, who laid on the cutest of balls for Gary Jones to rifle home. Woodhouse bestrode the first half, but seemed to prefer saving himself for the rematch after the interval.

Maybe he was taking a leaf out of Jones’s book. When asked if the playoffs were something special, he remarked that he would rather be on a beach.

City battled back, making Steve Mildenhall earn his spurs with a finger-tip save from a stunning free kick delivered by Jeff Hughes. Eight minutes later the goalkeeper spread the width of his hands to palm over the bar a piledriver from Lee Beevers.

On the stroke of half-time Jamie McCombe should have headed more incisively after a Scott Kerr free kick, but the second half beckoned and Lincoln looked odds-on for an equaliser at the very least. In fact the second half was as flat as the county it was played in.

Paul Bolland had taken over the show by this time, which was just as well in view of Woodhouse’s decline. The home crowd bayed for the injection of the talismanic Simon Yeo into the fray, but he did not have sufficient time to make his mark.

“We were resilient and defended well,” Slade observed. “That’s what pleased me most. I gave orders that we were not to concede too many free kicks. Lincoln are at their best on set-pieces.”

It will be the blood and thunder approach which they can instil into their corners and free kicks which will determine whether Lincoln have any chance of turning this result round in the second leg on Tuesday.

STAR MAN: Andy Parkinson (Grimsby)

Player ratings. Lincoln: Marriott 6, Beevers 5 (Freckington 60min, 6) McAuley 5, Morgan 5, McCombe 4, Kerr 6, Brown 5, Hughes 6, Green 4 (Yeo 60min, 5) Robinson (Birch 76min, 4), Forrester 4

Grimsby: Mildenhall 7, McDermott 5 (Croft 18min, 6), Futcher 6, Whittle 5, Newey 5, Cohen 4 (Reddy 68min, 4), Bolland 7, Woodhouse 6, Parkinson 7, Mendes 4 (Toner 78min, 5), G Jones 6

Scorer: Grimsby: G Jones 22

Referee: L Mason

Attendance: 8,037

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