Lincoln City coach David Preece was satisfied with his side’s 3-1 friendly win against Lincoln United on Tuesday.
The match gave both sides an opportunity to give fringe players some vital minutes and coach Preece, stepping in as manager for the evening in Chris Moyses’ absence, saw the value of the fixture for both sides.
He said: “It doesn’t matter how hard you work in training or how much physical work you do – you still can’t replicate what you do in these games. It’s very useful to them (the players) because we need them to be ready for when we do have suspensions and injuries.
Preece also emphasised how lucky City are to have a club such as United to play friendly matches against.
“Everytime we come to Lincoln United we always know we’re going to get a competitive game and a lot of the boys got ninety minutes who haven’t had a lot of football lately.”
The Imps struggled against a lively United side in the first half, but Preece took satisfaction from how his side managed to come through that and exert their control in the second half.
“Even though we didn’t start that well, we grew into the game and in the second half we were much happier with how we played.”
Imps forward Liam Hearn continued his comeback from injury by featuring for the full ninety minutes and Preece was relieved that he came through unscathed.
“It’s important he gets more minutes on the pitch and gets his body used to playing every week and sometimes twice a week.”
Meanwhile, there were some National League matches being played on Tuesday and, as a result, the Imps dropped to tenth in the table.
Preece couldn’t hide his frustration that his side weren’t in league action saying.
He said: “Things have been going so well for us lately, we don’t really want to be falling behind because of games missed. We’re playing catch up now.”