City hit by nap happy United

By Sports desk

FC United 5 Lancaster City 2

LANCASTER City crashed to a 5-2 defeat in front of a bumper crowd at FC United - but the final result didn't tell the full story of the UniBond League Division One North clash at Gigg Lane.

The Dolly Blues led against the league's big spenders and also rattled the woodwork on two occasions as they battled hard to get a shock win.

But in the end they ran out of steam as FC United took another big step towards the play-offs.

City led inside two minutes when Mark Jackson darted through a static United defence, who claimed for offside, and kept his cool to slot past Sam Ashton for a quality goal.

But Stuart Rudd levelled on 14 minutes as he beat Ben Price in a one-on-one situation.

Lancaster refused to be rattled by that blow despite a hostile crowd of almost 3,000 cranking up the volume and Aaron Helliwell created an opening for himself before firing past Ashton into the bottom corner.

The pressure was on at this stage and Price saved well from Rudd and then he stopped Simon Carden from putting United in front.

But the pressure told when Jerome Wright's corner hit Nugent and flew into the net before Rory Patterson's speculative volley deflect in off the unfortunate Price.

Jackson hit the post within seconds before Mike Rushton and Helliwell went close to getting City back into the game.

But Patterson made it 4-2 before Nugent headed a fifth to give the scoreline an unbalanced appearance.

Lancaster City: Price, Uberschar, Redhead, Heffernan, Swann, Stringfellow. Rushton, Entwistle, Love, Jackson, Helliwell. Subs: Greenwood, Jeffrey, Rigby

9:08am
14.04.08