Shoot!’s FA Cup Awards (Third Round)

Player of the Round: Tom Lawrence (Ipswich Town)

There was a fair bit of hype around this lad when he broke onto the scene at Manchester United, and after a couple of loan spells at lower-league clubs Carlisle United and Yeovil Town, it was rather surprising when the Red Devils let him go and Leicester City snapped him up.

He has still only played three times for the Foxes and is now on his fourth loan spell away from the King Power Stadium. But you’d be a fool to think this lad couldn’t still make it at the very top of English football.

Ipswich had failed to win an FA Cup game since 2010, and that record was under threat of continuing at the hands of National League Lincoln. The second of Theo Robinson’s double at Portman Road left the Tractor Boys 2-1 down with just four minutes left, and in desperate need of a hero.

Lawrence had already cancelled out Robinson’s first strike earlier in the game. The Lincoln forward had given the travellers a dream start, sending 5,000 Lincoln fans into utter delirium after just seven minutes.

Lawrence was to equalise almost immediately, on twelve minutes. Pouncing on a loose ball in the midfield, he only had one thing in his mind. Nut-megging his first victim on the half-way line and driving through the middle of the pitch, leaving three Lincoln players in his wake, the attacking midfielder went on and into the box, beating just one more defender and firing low underneath the goalkeeper from just inside the area.

Robinson’s second came in the sixty-fifth minute and it looked like giving Lincoln the shock of the third round.

That was until 86 minutes, when Lawrence picked up the ball twenty-five yards from goal and took matters into his own hands. His driven shot found the bottom corner  to break Lincoln hearts, and saved Ipswich’s blushes…

For now, anyway, until the two meet again at Sincil Bank on Tuesday. Mick McCarthy’s men will be looking to avoid yet another early FA Cup exit. Let off for now, thanks to one man.

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