“…. Gerroff, yer rubbish, same old City, I don’t know why I bother coming, false promises every bloody season, I can’t stick that nancy-boy in midfield he can bugger off back to Carlisle for all I care, I tell you what Arthur, I’ve had enough of it me, you won’t see me here next week …. YYYEEEEEEESSSSS!! Oooooooooo!!! GGGOOOOOAALLLL!!!! Brilliant Greeny, I love Greeny me, this is our year y’know, we love you City we do, we love you City we do …..”

The last minute winner makes fools of us all (though some more than others), especially on occasions such as yesterday when we are giving a passable impression of a team that could play until midnight and still fail to trouble the visiting netman. O yes, make no mistake, we pinched a couple of extra points that we scarcely deserved against dogged Boston. But equally make no mistake about just how significant such snatched victories will prove come the promotion-scented Spring.

Happily Mr Taylor stuck to the exciting 4-4-2 formation, though surprisingly Keates, splendid at Cambridge, was ousted by Green. And Justin kept hisplace (hurray! Trilbies in the air!):

Musselwhite
Thelwell Whittle Hinds Delaney
Price Green Ashbee Elliott
Alsopp Burgess

And we began promisingly. An Elliott cross: Price heads over. Delaney scoops a long ball in from the left: it lands somewhere near Brandesburton. Then the ball is transferred from left to right where the marauding Price has a shooting opportunity, but puts his effort wide. Already the eager use of both flanks, such a prominent and truly enjoyable aspect of our football so far this season, is threatening to run Boston ragged – none more so than their stately midfield general, Neil Redfearn, already a veteran with Oldham and Barnsley close on a decade ago.

And then, as we settled back to enjoy the feast, Boston rattled our post. Justin missed a header – I gasped, I checked, it really was him … no one’s perfect. In the ensuing melee a shot bashed the outside of the Muss’s right-hand post, though I think our king-size keeper just about had the effort covered. This turned out to be a brief moment of alarm. Boston were trying to play a passing game, but looked palpably inferior to our sleek machine and most of the play rolled Northwards, where keeper Bastock was defending the goal in front of several hundred boisterous yellowbellies. Elliott wins the ball and passes crossfield to Price, who sets up Ashbee for a shot which flies harmlessly high. Then Alsop wins the ball, feeds Price and his low pass to Burgess is lifted gruesomely wastefully over the bar from close range. An offside flag offer only partial respite for Ben’s blushes. We are better, but not at our best, and not scoring.

A torpid spell around the mid-way point of the half is broken by a goal which is well-deserved on the balance of play, though still a bit of a surprise given the flagging pace of the match. Thelwell and Price combine well down the right – as so often already this campaign - and a cross is hoisted towards the near post, where a flick on (by Alssop, I think) directs the ball to Elliott at the back post, and he simply lets the ball bounce off his forehead, loop lazily over the flat-footed Bastock and nestle just inside the post. 1-0 to us, and a moment later Burgess fired into the side-netting as Boston, epitomised by balding terrier Chapman at left-back, looked enthusiastic but simply not quite good enough.

But it was an odd sort of an afternoon. We hadn’t ever really flowed on the pitch. Off it, the atmosphere was really poor. I don’t have a lot of sympathy with those who complain “Circle bad, Boothferry good”, because there are plenty of sullenly grimly silent afternoons at the Ark mired in my memory, but even so yesterday’s mournful lethargy was a new low point for the Circle. Granted, the programme confronted spectators, many of them young and in need of protection, with a photo of Mike Scott evidently in need of a turbo-charged laxative; and Mike Peterson’s popular “quiz teaser” this week asked us to name the three City players of the 1970s “who liked Ice Breaker and Caramac better than Curly Wurly and Aztec”, offering as a helpful clue the information that “all three had a grandfather who had at least one limb shot off at the Somme”. And yet even this cannot explain why the afternoon’s entertainment didn’t get out of second gear. When, just before half-time, Stuart Green, with no opponent in sight, stood on the ball in the centre-circle only to be met by a slick shoulder throw which deposited Greeny on the turf in an embarrassingly inelegant heap, while the bouncing, giggling football squealed “Ippon!”, we knew that we were one up, and that was about all we could say in positive vein about a tame 45 minutes.

It got worse.

Boston equalised early in the second half. We conceded a free-kick on the edge of our box, which was duly blocked by the wall, but the pressure was not abated and when another free-kick, from wide on the left, was floated to the back post, one of theirs found himself wholly unmarked, able to steer the ball goalwards and then watch with glee as our dithering defence failed to block the bouncing ball as it trundled over the line. I think the last touch belonged to the bemused Delaney’s ample left buttock, but the Muss showed no vigour in trying to get off his line, and the whole affair was a sorry shambles, as rank a piece of defending as I have seen since, err, our last home game.

Directly from the kick-off Green shot narrowly wide from twenty yards, but that proved to be an isolated moment of defiance as the visitors gained in confidence and pushed the play into our half. We were anything but fluent. Good moments from Green and Elliott, but nothing sustained; Price keen but less effective than previously and unable to assert his partnership with the disappointing Thelwell; Burgess badly out of sorts and easily dealt with by the Bosts.

And yet Burgess is a sharp enough footballer to pose a threat even when plainly struggling for confidence. A neat interchange with Alsoop saw the Aussie sprinting clear of the visiting defence, only to be neatly chopped to the floor by Matt Hocking. The ref had not the slightest hesitation in brandishing red. I think two, maybe three, defenders would have got across to challenge Danny before he had the chance of a clean shot on goal, so this struck me as a harsh dismissal, but Matt Hocking, a well brought-up lad, chose not to complain and trudged sadly off the pitch.

It was a while before we took the resultant free-kick, not only because of Hocking’s long march, but also because Mark Greaves was brought on as a Bost substitute (earning an entirely appropriate warm reception) and then the kick was advanced to the very edge of the penalty box as punishment for foolish Lincolnshire dissent. Elliott took it and shot straight into the wall; Ashbee did the same with the rebound and then third time unlucky as Green punted an effort wide.

For the 749th time in the last four seasons we had eleven men against ten. A taxonomy of footballing clichés would be incomplete without “It’s often harder against ten men” – to which could usefully be added “especially when it’s a witless Hull City team that’s trying to break them down”. We just don’t know what to do, do we? To be appropriately generous to Boston, they were showing great spirit, but, as Mr Taylor himself might put it, we’ve got to do a little more for me to be fair. The visitors left just one man up front, the spectacularly useless Douglas, but we retained our orthodox back four until as late as the 80th minute. We could and should have showed more adventure. As it was, Forrester replaced Thelwell, but, aside from a deft Price backheel from a low Burgess cross (well saved) and a game effort from Forrester, stretching to reach another cross (wide), we lacked fluency and conviction. Messy, it was, and the win looked beyond us.

Keates for Elliott; Melton for the tiring Burgess. “Big Hits” Melton played up the middle and did nothing of value at all, Price pushed further forward, and Green moved out to the right. It was a bit late for invention, but we had five minutes (plus the added) to conjure up a winner. For four-and-a-half of them that looked about as likely as Shaun McRae getting the gig as the next James Bond but then a ball was punted in hopefully from the left towards the back of the box, where Stuart Green, famed for his heading much in the same way that the sprint events are famed for attracting athletes with no interest in pharmaceuticals, screwed his eyes tight shut, apologetically thrust his stylish bonce ball-wards and was as surprised as anyone to realise the ball had eluded the despairing Bastock and wobbled into the net.

Greeny did what any right-thinking person would do in such circumstances and raced over to snap the corner flag, for which he earned a booking, but he had won us the game.