On this very day 13 years ago, City hosted Chester in League Two action.
The days of Keith Alexander are often looked back on fondly, and rightly so. His work with the club took us from the bottom of League Two to play off hopefuls, but we were always one step from proper glory, the unlucky loser either in a semi-final or at Wembley.
We see what the players have since achieved, GTF and McAuley both plying their trade in the Premier League and sometimes, just sometimes we forget there we dodgy periods, poor matches and constant under currents around the club.
Thirteen years ago today, with Chester City as the visitors, the club wasn’t in a great place. Languishing in the bottom reaches of the division, we were up against a high-flying Chester side with Marcus Richardson playing for them, The days of Keith’s greats had gone, to a degree. There was no Peter Gain, no Richard Butcher or Gary Taylor Fletcher.
Instead, he’d assembled another round of battlers, Gary Birch, Marvin Robinson and in his never-ending quest for a star striker brought in Richard Logan on loan. It was by no means reflective of the classic Keith days, no was our form going into the game. we’d won twice in sixteen matches, a run lasting just under three months.
The mainstay of the side was our defence, still comprising of some fine players and Nat Brown. These were testing times at Sincil Bank, but this was the be the third match of eighteen during which we lost just once.
City lined up as follows: Marriott, Morgan, McAuley, McCombe, Mayo, Brown, Keates, Kerr, Asamoah, Logan, Birch SUBS Cryan, Frecklington, Hughes, Robinson, Ryan
A dour first half brought little joy for either side, Chester shooting towards the Stacey West had the best of the chances but nobody looked like breaking the deadlock. That all changed in a frenetic second half.
Firstly, the visitors scored. Marcus Richardson, bombed out by City a year or so before, smashed a goal just after the restart. He clearly enjoyed the goal too, running towards the Coop Stand with his finger against his lips. At 1-0 down, City looked in trouble. After all, Chester had won three on the spin going into the game and looked a good bet to make it four.
It got worse not long after, a melee from a corner saw the referee have a word with Dean Keates, something Keates wasn’t impressed with. He made a ‘obscene gesture’ to the official and picked up his second red card in four games. City were now not only trailing by a goal, but also had a man less.
Keith’s response was to bring off Gary Birch, a striker, and put on Marvin Robinson. A striker. His approach was always that if you put enough strikers on the pitch, we’ll score. Besides, in a long ball team we had no issue with punting it over the head of a 5ft midfielder anyway.
The comeback started minutes later and the vastly underrated Robinson was involved. A Paul Mayo free kick was launched into the danger area, Robinson flicked it on and the on-loan Peterborough player Richard Logan swooped in to net his only goal at Sincil Bank.
There’s one thing about Keith’s teams that characterises them over everything else; fight. They never knew when to give up and although sometime were left lacking in the footballing stakes, they wouldn’t be out-fought. Chester, doing so well up until that goal, felt the full weight of 3,500 home supporters believing their team could get back in it.
Belief didn’t score the next goal though, Paul Mayo did. He made a surging run into the area, only to apparently be fouled by Tom Curtis. It was a soft penalty, Curtis seemingly touching the ball first, but Mayo went down hard and the referee pointed to the spot. Keith Curle wasn’t a happy man, he was sent off for protesting the claim, although he later claimed he’d simply been talking to one of his players.
Mayo was always deadly from twelve yards and he made it 2-1 to City. With the defenders we had on the pitch, that was surely game, set and match.
In the 90th minute a big punt up field, so typical of the dying stages of a game under Keith, yielded a result. Derek Asamoah was quick if nothing else and he stole through the defence, beat keeper Ryan Brookfield to the ball and made the result final, Interestingly, Brookfield had come on as a sub for the injured Craig Mackenzie and was making his only Football League appearance.
It wasn’t a classic, the win lifted us to 17th but we looked to be a long way from play off hopefuls. Out next defeat came against Grimsby in late December, but then we weren’t beaten again until March, when Boston United managed to grab a 2-1 win. We responded to that by smashing five past the Codheads, but lost out in the play off semi finals before Keith left Sincil Bank.