LAST Saturday’s game at Lincoln showed us, if indeed we needed it, that the FA Cup tie against the Imps at Edgar Street this weekend is going to be a tough game.

If we play as we did up there then it will be a very difficult encounter for us.

If we work a bit harder than we did then we have a chance of winning the game but they have some good players and made it very difficult for us.

First and foremost, though, we made things very difficult for ourselves.

From the quality of the play, it might not have looked like a game between two sides at the wrong end of the table but, at the moment, it’s points that count.

If that’s what it takes, I would rather play scrappy football and get some points on the board.

They worked hard and got behind the ball; we did not do that as well as they did.

We didn’t do the nitty-gritty, the horrible side that makes teams win games.

Lincoln had won two on the trot and moved up into the pack in mid-table and that is something that we need to do.

The Lincoln defeat brought to an end an unbeaten run of seven games but we should have come out of that run with two or three more wins than we did.

Draws are really meaningless and just hide away the fact that we are still conceding goals.

Wins are what will take us up into that mid-table position.

The FA Cup is more than just a welcome distraction.

I’m certainly not going to hide away from the fact that the most important thing is to get some league points.

That is vital to us at the moment.

However, a good FA Cup run can breed extra confidence among the group so we’ll go into Saturday’s game positively and will hope to get something out of it.

There’s been a lot of talk this week about the proposed strike by referees in Scotland and there’s no doubt that referees are in a very highly pressured position.

It’s a difficult job and not one that I would like to do.

It’s tricky to know how they can be helped; perhaps we should go down the route of rugby where there is more respect for the referee and the ball can be moved 10 metres forward as a punishment.

Video evidence is another possibility when there are tough decisions or incidents during the game.

That would take perhaps a few seconds and would take the pressure off the referee by allowing another official in the stand to have a look.

Rugby and cricket are perhaps more stop-start games then football is, but for the sake of two or three seconds to get something right, it’s not much to ask.

During a game, there might be four big decisions which demand scrutiny and a few extra seconds over 90 minutes are hardly significant.

How you stop the game and organise the review is probably the biggest question.

Lots of things can be considered, and not just by referees, about how the game can be improved for everyone.