Notts County drew with Boston United this evening in a behind closed doors friendly at Meadow Lane in a game played with a view to get much needed match sharpness into the Magpies players legs ahead of next weeks’ National League playoff semi-final.

The final score was an entertaining and high scoring 3-3 draw with County goals from Tom Crawford, a cracker from Cal Roberts and a fine strike by Ben Turner but whilst the score was not totally important for Manager Neal Ardley, the fact that Notts had conceded three goals for the second successive game perhaps was.

After losing 3-1 on Saturday to Dorking Wanderers in what Ardley stated “was a wake up call” Notts again conceded three against lower tier opponents which was concerning for the Manager who said “there’s elements that have highlighted stuff we’ve got to be better at and conceding six goals in two games isn’t great, most of the goals were poor and we need to cut that out or we will only be playing one game”.

Ardley was much happier with the sides attacking prowess tonight however stating “going forward we were much sharper, much more tempo, much more intensity and carved out so many great opportunities just the final bit wasn’t there so loads of positives”.

Notts will by the weekend know of their semi-final playoff opponents as Yeovil face Barnet in an eliminator on Saturday with the winner travelling up to Meadow Lane for a place in the Wembley final and Ardley mentioned he’ll be getting his side prepared for whoever they face next week stating “we’ll go through both games, clip them and look at all the stuff, the seeing danger side of stuff isn’t quite there yet, the one v one stuff needs to be a little bit tidier because when Saturday comes around there’s no margin for error”.

Ardley stated there’s no more practice games lined up ahead of Barnet or Yeovil with the Manager re-iterating “we’ll be in this weekend then we’ll have a full week next week in the build up to it and when we know who we are playing we’ll be able to focus a little more on who we are up against and can try and find out a way on how we can go about in beating them”

The eliminator match between Yeovil and Barnet at Huish Park is LIVE on BT Sports this Saturday (3pm) with the semi-final at Meadow Lane the following weekend, Saturday 25^th July at 5pm.

*Main image @Official_NCFC Meadow Lane hosted its second friendly match in five days.