Dollies’ pitch is not perfect: Lancaster boss Mark Fell laments state of Giant Axe surface

That’s the view of boss Mark Fell who has seen his men pick up just two wins from 11 home games in the NPL Premier Division this season.

On Saturday, City were beaten 3-1 by high-flying Marine on home turf – a frustrating result considering the team went into the match on the back of a four-match winning streak.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that some of the Dolly Blues’ best performances and results have come on their travels.

With three weeks now between City’s next home fixture, Fell is hopeful the pitch will have an opportunity to improve although he admits it’s going to be an ongoing concern for he and the Board to deal with.

"The Giant Axe is a really tough place to play because of the state of the pitch,” said Fell, who takes his team, weather permitting, to Nantwich this weekend.

"I am certainly not having a pop at the volunteers at the club. We all understand it’s a tough job.

"It is tough because we probably can’t invest the finance that we need to invest in the pitch to make sure it’s where it should be.

“We’re not maintaining it properly and it means the surface is a problem.

"We changed the way we structure our game this season by building a different team almost.

"We let go of players like Simon Wills, Glenn Steel and Ben Hudson who are excellent in this league at playing a certain way and being on top of an attritional game.

"But we wanted to try to develop the way we play football a little bit more but if we are not going to have a pitch that matches that then we might as well have kept hold of those players.

"It is a challenge and there are some discussions going on with the club of how we can improve things.

"I think we need some help and how we go about that, I don’t know. That’s the club side of things – I can only tell them what I think we need to improve.”

A mitigating factor behind City’s loss on Saturday was the red card shown to Jamie Mellen for two bookable offences.

"There was 14 bookings in the game – there wasn’t one bad challenge,” said Fell. “The referee completely dictated the outcome which is not how it should be. I didn’t think Jamie’s was a sending off – there’s so many inconsistencies in the game.”