Notts beat the Hatters at Meadow Lane for the first time in 11 Years

Had his full first team debut cut short

Team news confirmed that Willis Francis would take his place in the starting line up, in place of Michael Brough who was sitting out a one-match ban.

The only other change to the Magpie’s line up was the return of Kevin Nicholson to left back, which pushed Ian Richardson into the centre, filling in for Nick Fenton who was missing the first game of a two-match suspension.

The match was only 15 minutes old when Willis Francis’s hope of a dream debut came to an unfortunate end. Willis picked up a bad hip injury – the extent of which will be revealed on Monday – and had to be replaced by Simon Ramsden.

The game was being played at a high tempo. Caskey had Notts’ first chance of the game with a half volley, which went wide of the goal.

Went close

Despite being one point off the play offs at 3pm this afternoon, Luton looked like a very ordinary team who created little in the way of chances in the first half.

One thing that became quite evident during the second half was both keepers’ inability to kick the ball remotely straight or into a good position. Most of Mildenhall’s kicks ended up in the Jimmy Sirrel Stand and Lars Hirschfield’s kicks out of his hands went straight along the floor, unfortunately Notts were unable to take advantage of any of these miss-kicks. With the amount of kicks goalkeepers do in a week I would have expected them to be a lot better.

Notts started very lively in the second half and continued to create chances for the front pair of Stallard and Heffernan, amongst others. Stallard had an excellent game and posed a great deal of problems for the Town defence.

Notts had the majority of the play against a very physical Luton side and took the lead after 79 minutes.

Got two excellent goals this afternoon

Referee, Matt Messias caused outcry after some of his decisions. He failed to play an advantage many times throughout the match and was extremely lenient with some of the challenges going in from Luton players, especially early on.

Notts extended their lead with 7 minutes left. It was Heffernan again who scored what must be a contender for Goal of the Season. He ran with the ball from the right hand side and turned past two defenders before blasting a shot into the net. That was Heffernan’s fourth goal in three games for Notts.

Duncan Jupp

Five minutes late, Tony Thorpe scored what turned out to be a consolation goal for the Hatters. It was a rather untidy goal where Nicholson should have cleared the ball, long before it got near the goal, btu failed to do so.

The pressure was now back on Notts for the remaining minutes as Luton pushed for an equaliser with a succession on corners.

That was Notts’ fifth win out of seven games at home, which is pretty good considering it was October before we won our first game at Meadow Lane!