Lancaster City 3 Corby Town 0A DIFFICULT trip to Leigh or Worskop faces City after they routinely despatched Corby out of the FA Trophy.

Two more goals from Chris Ward and a Kevin Barnes strike ensured Lancaster have at least equalled their best ever performance in this competition.

Now Lancaster have to wait until Saturday, January 15 to find out if they can break yet another record this season and progress to the fourth round.

Manager Tony Hesketh was upbeat after the victory. He commented: "We've got a chance of beating anyone in this competition.

"We were very mediocre in the first half but it was clear we needed to get them on the wide, so we changed to a 4-4-2 formation and performed much better afterwards."

Corby put Lancaster under pressure from the off but City keeper Mark Thornley - with his ever dependable centre back Jamie Udall - did well to keep the ball out of the net. In the fourteenth minute Danny Poultney's cross was well held by Thornley and after 29 minutes minute Sean Brennan's dangerous curling corner was well punched out by Thornley.

Then came a superb solo effort to put Lancaster one-nil in front. A superbly timed pass from Paul Sparrow left Chris Ward with a sniff on goal and, at the moment, that's all he needs.

Ward ran past Tyrone Mintus and then fired his shot into the net from the edge of the 18 yard box. At half-time Dean Martin was substituted for Paul Crompton who went on to create a number of chances for City - and the second goal. It was a cross-field ball from Mark Bailey found Crompton in bags of space on the left wing. Crompton ran past defender Gavin Cox, chipped the ball across the goal from the by-line and Kevin Barnes rose up and headed his cross into the net with style.

In the last 20 minutes the match was turning into the Chris Ward show and Ward was unlucky not to get his hat-trick. After 73 minutes a Jamie Udall header found Ward one-on-one but keeper Kevin Fox came out and snatched the ball.

But Ward finally had his moment of glory when his instinctive strike from put City 3-0 up. Paul Crompton played the ball to Ward who was 25 yards out from goal. The teenager turned, saw the keeper off his line and chipped the ball

over him into the net.

That took the 18-year-old's goal tally to 13 for the season. But his manager was determined the youth's feet should be kept firmly on the ground. He said: "To be constructive, it can be said that Chris has still got to raise

his overall contribution towards the game for the full 90 minutes - but he's got a future, there's no doubt about that."

Team: Thornley, Sparrow, Graham, Udall, Horner (c), Mayers, Martin (Crompton 45), Bailey, Ward, Barnes (Trainor 76), Jessop. Att: 197

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