27-year-old Ben Purrington was still the homecoming king this weekend; born in Exeter, his career has taken him to Plymouth, Rotherham, and Charlton.
He’s played in the Championship and most recently in Scotland with Ross County, but this weekend, he was representing his hometown club for only the fourth time after watching them from the stands as a kid. It was surely a proud moment until Joe Taylor’s goal settled the affair, of course.
Purrington has been out injured for a couple of weeks and came back into the side as they sought to claw their way up the table, which they’ve done well in recent weeks, to be fair.
After the game, he was the player put forward for an interview, and I thought you might like to see some of his comments about the Imps. He started by saying how Sincil Bank is a ‘tough place to come’ and that we played a certain style.
“(You) come to games like Lincoln away; it’s a very tough place to come. They always make it a scrap, a bit of a tough game, probably a bit disappointing for the fans. They make it a stalemate, and it’s a long ball (game).
“The game probably passed us by in spells. They’ve taken their chance; we didn’t take our chance, and that probably determines the outcome of the game.”
I do have to take Umbridge with this statement – Wyscout suggests we played 60 long passes in the game, compared to 58 for Exeter, which suggests both sides were looking to go long, not just us. Our long pass percentage was slightly higher, from 19.1% to 13.5%, but there wasn’t a significant difference in the two teams. It certainly wasn’t like Stevenage playing Peterborough, for instance.
However, in fairness to Purrington, he did go on to suggest we deserved all three points.
“They probably played into our final third better than we did at times. I think they picked up more second balls all over the pitch. To be fair, we limited them to very little.
“We had obviously chances when you’re coming away from home. It’s those little moments you get one or two chances, and you’ve got to try and take them.”
Indeed, the game may well have been different had Lukas Jensen not tipped their 57th-minute effort onto the crossbar, but he did, and we turned the screw in the moments after that. However, despite the long-ball comment, it is nice to hear an opposition player give a little credit where it is due.
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