HIS manager David Holdsworth describes Alan Power’s new position, playing just off Lincoln City’s in-form striker Jamie Taylor, as the “Kevin Nolan role”.
Thankfully the 24-year-old Dubliner hasn’t taken on the West Ham United captain’s chicken goal celebration, because we’d have seen quite a bit of it in the past week.
After an ankle-injury interrupted start to the season, Power has started to find his cultured feet in the Imps’ impressive unbeaten run that had reached nine games before yesterday’s meeting with Hereford, culminating in his first two goals of the campaign.
The first came in a 2-1 win at Barrow that raised City, much troubled in the last 18 months since their second relegation from the Football League, to the relatively giddy heights of 13th in the Blue Square Bet Premier.
The second, however, set them on their way to a 3-2 extra-time FA Cup giantkilling at League One side Walsall, and kept alive the hopes of a financially lucrative third round place, should BSBP rivals Mansfield be seen off at Sincil Bank next month.
Power admits he didn’t know which way to turn after seeing it hit the back of the net, but is thankful he has found his way back on the right path after a few wrong turns in his two-year spell at Hartlepool United.
Power says: “The manager calls it the Nolan role, and the celebration’s run through my head, but as soon as I score I don’t really know what to do. I go a bit blank.
“The more goals I score it’s possible that I’ll learn a few celebrations, but on Tuesday I just ran behind the goal for some reason and gave a bit to the fans. I got a bit carried away with myself!”
After coming through the ranks at Nottingham Forest and gaining international recognition at youth and Under-21 level, Power admits he lost his way in the north-east before Justin Edinburgh – who had previously taken him on loan at Grays – signed him for Rushden & Diamonds.
That was in the summer of 2010, and after that tragic year in Northamptonshire, when his close pal Dale Roberts – a team-mate at the City Ground and Nene Park – committed suicide and then the club went under, he is now starting to make a real mark at Lincoln.
“I’ve always said I let myself down at Hartlepool,” he says candidly. “From going there with the potential that I had coming from Forest, I let myself down. I was young, naïve and didn’t have the right attitude.
“I was completely under wraps at Forest, truly professional and the academy staff still looked after me even when I signed my pros, in that they knew what I’d be doing and what I was eating all throughout my day.
“I went to Hartlepool and I suppose I was seen to be a man by then, and I didn’t cope with that as well as I should have done.
Interest
“I was a young lad, living on my own with a bit more money than I’d been used to, and I didn’t live right. But I think it’s about how you bounce back from it. I’ve come back now and I’m hoping people are starting to take me seriously again.”
The serious side of life off the pitch has seen Power move in with girlfriend Laura, who he’s met since signing for City in the summer of 2011 – although Taylor likes to take the credit.
“Laura’s a Lincoln girl and we moved in together this year, so I’m settling down now. Jamie likes to think he settled me down as well for some reason, but I’ve still got to find out exactly how myself. I think I took him under my wing – he reckons it’s the other way!”
Whichever way round it is, boss Holdsworth will be hoping his front two – the joint longest serving players alongside Nicky Nicolau and John Nutter, who this week joined Woking on loan – continue in their current vein of form with Taylor having netted seven goals in eight starts before Power took over the baton at Barrow.
“It’s making us start to feel old that we’re the longest serving players, but we’ve gelled well with all the other now and it’s a new era,” says Power.
“Everybody came in during the summer and as a team we knew that we were good enough to put results together, it was just going to be a matter of time. That’s starting to happen now.
“Including the Walsall replay, we’d kept the same starting line-up for four successive games and that obviously helped. We’ve found a formation that suits us and the personnel that we have now.
“We are going into games knowing that we are not conceding many and that we can score goals. It’s always good for a team who know they can do that, and in Jamie and Vadaine Oliver – who scored the two other goals on Tuesday night – we’ve got two who are bang in form.”
As is Power himself, and he knows the Cup run could give him a shop window to return to the higher echelons of the game.
“It’s certainly my aim to get back into the Football League,” he adds. “I think I’m more than capable but it’s what other people see.
“I always feel like I need to add a few more goals to my game, so hopefully this season I can do that and that might be what clinches a bit more interest.”
More strikes like in the past week and there’ll be more Power to Alan’s elbow on that score, that’s for sure!
