Last weekend's win over Lincoln City was a bit of a strange one really. After initially tearing into the Imps in the first ten minutes to create a bucket-load of chances, Rovers then proceeded to stroll to a comfortable 2-0 victory. Don't get me wrong - I'll take wins like that every week. But Lincoln turned out to be so poor that we barely needed to break into a sweat, and if anyone can remember that far back, it reminded me of one of those regulation home wins when we used to be a good team at the sharp end of Division 2. All eyes were on Paul Tait in the aftermath of his head-butt up at Darlington, and he responded perfectly with a hard-working performance that won him the man of the match award over the tannoy. Giuliano Grazioli sneaked his eighth goal of the season from the penalty spot, given by the ref supposedly because Rovers had only converted one of their previous 47 chances, or maybe he thought it was time to humanely put Lincoln out of their misery. Once we had the two-goal cushion, Ray Graydon felt safe enough to throw on Dave Gilroy up front to check him out before Tait's suspension, and this was a little surprising seeing that he had veered towards Justin Richards with recent substitutions. Gilroy looked lively and after finding his touch he got into the game more and nearly scored when a smart breakaway found Carlisle on the right and his inch-perfect cross met the striker's head only for a terrific point-blank save to deny the youngster a first senior goal. However, I don't think either Richards or Gilroy appear to have done enough to take the vacant striker's shirt as Graydon dipped into the transfer market in the week and signed Brighton's David Lee. From the pictures I've seen of him, he looks a lot slimmer than the previous David Lee Rovers signed under Ian Holloway, and he appears to be primarily an attacking midfielder who can also play in attack. Naturally we assume that he will come straight in to play alongside Grazioli, but maybe the manager will stick Lee in alongside Rob Quinn in midfield, seeing as he cannot decide between Bryant or Hogg. Last week Lewis Hogg turned down a chance to play for Northern Ireland's Under-21s, so not to damage his England chances. Personally I would opt for the Irish because he could be playing international football now like Kevin Gall is doing for Wales, and I reckon he could realistically force his way into the senior side, especially since Neil Lennon has retired. They played Spain last week, and he could have been marking someone like Mendieta or Luis Enrique - what a fantastic experience that would be. I know the North are unlikely to grace the major tournaments for a while, but those sort of games can only improve you as a player and it is something to tell the grandchildren about. But if Hogg believes he can go all the way with England, then fair play to him - go for it. I was lucky to be at the Millennium Stadium for Wales' historic win over Italy on Wednesday, and what a night it was. Alessandro Del Piero scored his second deflected free-kick in five days for Italy and as the ball looped over goalkeeper Paul Jones, it reminded me of Mark McKeever's 'goal' on Saturday. The Rovers winger saw his shot career in off a defender's chest and I was so pleased for him that he had finally broken his duck, until it was cruelly given as an own goal afterwards. All I can say is that I bet they would not have taken it away from Del Piero had he done it! © Chris Chappell - Friday 18th October 2002 Back to Index