By Nathan Jackson
September 11 2005

DATES VISITED THIS GROUND : 2/4/2005, 13/8/2005

THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON THE VISIT DATED: 2/4/2005

It was quite odd going to watch Lincoln playing and the match not actually being the part of the day I was looking forward to. That would be going to meet my sister who I hadn't seen or spoken to in 5 or 6 years. But you don't care about that so we'll resume our tale from Lincoln train station. With only 3 trains running that would get Lincoln fans to Nottingham, you can guess the one at 10:34 was fairly full. So full infact, all 5 carriages had people standing up in them.

We arrived in Nottingham just over an hour later and we were greeted with the local police who took us to the local Lloyds Bar. Now I'm going to let my anger out a bit. At the time I was working for Lloyds Bar in Lincoln and I got ID'd to buy a bowl of chips but they Sid, who is older than admittedly but looks about 14 goes and buys 5 pints WITHOUT GETTING ID'D. Anyway, we eventually got bored so me, Denton and random guy who's named I can't remember made our way through the suburban jungle that is Nottingham.

We arrived at the ground and wanted to go to the ticket office. We saw a shortcut through a gate that lead behind the main County stand. I asked a steward if we could go through it if we took our Lincoln shirts off, funnily enough he said no. So we wandered around the long way eventually getting to the ticket office and then we had a small wander into the club shop and it was really cramped in there, not because a lot of people were in there, just because they were selling so much stuff.

So we went and waited outside the ground with the gates eventually opening at roughly 2pm. A quick run up a flight of stairs later saw us emerge into the massive "Kop" stand. We were told that we were only allowed in the lower sections unless we filled that. After about 10 minutes they decided to let us in the upper section. The view from there was breathtaking. It was just amazing what a good view you get at the top of that. Looking out the ground was arguably the best in League 2. To our right was an absolutly massive stand which was of a good design but despite ending up with a fair amount of people sat in it, it looked empty due to the pure size of the stand. To our left was a slightly less impressive stand but still good all the same and behind the far goal was a rather tacky looking stand. Unfortunatly the atmosphere created by the Notts County was low, chants were very few and very far between.

City performed in a rather rubbish manner (unsuprisingly) and the hugely pleasing Imps support of 2,552 fans went out hugely disappointed. Oh, and on my way to meet my sister, without a Lincoln shirt on, I was allowed to walk through the shortcut mentioned earlier.