Saturday 2nd April 2022
EFL League One
Charlton Athletic (0) 1
Jayden Stockley 88
Lincoln City (1) 2
Morgan Whittaker 33, Tony Scully 76
Attendance: 10,091 lnc. 1,100 away fans
Charlton Athletic:
MacGillivray; Clare, Lavelle, Purrington; Matthews (Leko 74), Gilbey, Dobson (Lee 86), Fraser (Forster-Caskey 65), Blackett-Taylor; Stockley (c), Washington
Unused subs - Harness, Famewo, Pearce, Burstow
Lincoln City:
Wright; Norton-Cuffy, Jackson, Poole, Robson; Bridcutt (c) (Maguire 70), McGrandles; Whittaker, Fiorini, Scully (Hopper 82); Cullen (Marquis 87)
Unused subs - Walsh, Sanders, Bishop, House
In a game that saw both teams reduced to ten men, following a brace of red cards either side of half-time, two superbly taken goals for the Imps and a huge slice of luck when the match referee Robert Madley was unsighted and missed the fact that a Jayden Stockley header had clearly crossed the line for an equaliser (when the Addicks were still only a solitary goal behind), ensured that Lincoln claimed three vital points, on an afternoon when they all but guaranteed their League 1 status again for at least another season,
However, it was the visitors who drew first blood ten minutes later, when Morgan Whittaker found space and broke free on the left hand edge of the box, before cutting inside a curling the ball beyond Craig MacGillivray to open the scoring with a well executed strike.
Just minutes later, while they were still trying to regain their composure following Whittaker's goal, the home side were reduced to ten men, when Gilbey was dismissed for a second bookable offence, for pulling back Jamie Robson, having only been booked for doing the same thing just ten minutes earlier to Conor McGrandles. As brain farts go, that one measured ten on the Richter scale.
The Addicks appealed in vain that they had pulled level when the referee missed the aforementioned Stockley header crossing the goal-line and the visitors were still holding onto their slender lead for all they were worth going into the break.
HT: Addicks 0 v Imps 1
But instead of capitulating under wave upon wave of Charlton pressure, the Imps actually doubled their advantage, when Tony Scully controlled the ball well with his first touch and pinged the ball into the top corner of the net with his second, with fifteen minutes remaining. "You don't stop those f*ckers!" muttered a purveyor of hackneyed football clichés, sat directly behind me, who was sick as a proverbial parrot that goals win games and points make prizes, so he went home to kick the cat, even though he doesn't actually own one.
Ten minutes after the restart, Lincoln were also reduced to ten men, when Whittaker wiped out Ben Purrington with the type of challenge that Bruce Lee would've been proud of. It was an X-rated shocker of a foul, bordering on a criminal offence for which the exponent deserved to drown in his early bath.
Lincoln's keeper Jordan Wright pulled off a great reflex save on the hour mark, to deny the ever lively Stockley from levelling things up, as Charlton took the game to the Imps who were soaking up a lot of pressure and battling gamely to keep their hosts at bay.
The visitors brought on two air-raid wardens to oversee the closing ten minutes as Charlton blitzed the final third and scatter-bombed Wright's domain.
And as the clock ticked down it was squeaky bum time for the Imps when Stockley hung in the air before powering a header into the roof of Wright's net from Jake Forster-Caskey’s corner kick delivery.
Johnnie Jackson must be wondering how on earth his side didn't get a draw from this afternoon's encounter, at the very least. But that won't trouble the eleven hundred Lincoln fans as they headed home from the Valley today. It seemed as though most of them were squeezed into the same train carriage as me on the way back to London Bridge.
Right at the death Elliot Lee threaded a ball through into the path of Conor Washington, who drilled the ball a couple of centimetres past the wrong side of the left hand upright... and Michael Appleton's side manned the trenches and held out for the win that they so desperately wanted, while completing the double over the Addicks this season.
FT: Charlton Athletic 1 v Lincoln City 2
The Imps are now ten points clear of the drop zone, four points behind Charlton... and as things turned out they actually needed to win today, because two of the teams below them in the table, namely Fleetwood Town and Morecambe both picked up three points apiece as the fight for League 1 survival intensifies. Lincoln rode their luck at times today, but you couldn't deny that either of their goals were worthy of winning any game of football.
