No Thanks – Ryan Semple

Ah, finish on a high, eh? Semple was a great hope for us going into John Schofield’s first game in charge. He had been highly rated at Peterborough and arrived in an unofficial exchange for Simon Yeo in the summer of 2006. We lost a player who we’d helped relocate from New Zealand, who had scored and been sent off against Posh on his return and who was still hero-worshipped by the supporters. We got a player who ended up making just four league appearances, all as a sub.

He did score for us though; he got the only goal of our 2-1 friendly defeat against Liverpool. Injury dogged his time at City and he played his last game in November 2006 as we went down 3-1 to Darlington. He was still around the squad when Peter Jackson took over a year later, and his contract was finally terminated in January 2008.

Of his time at Lincoln, he later said; “The two years after leaving Posh were by far and away the hardest I’ve ever had to deal with. With things turning sour at Lincoln pretty quickly and having a succession of niggly injuries it would be fair it was hard to keep motivated and I fell slightly out of love with the game. Friends and family certainly helped me during the difficult times and without doubt I grew up so much in this period.”

Without being unfair on Semple, it hurt us too.