YORK City boss Terry Dolan hailed his quick-fire Minstermen after seeing their reputation for slow-starts disappear at Lincoln's Sincil Bank.

Two goals inside the opening 15 minutes on Saturday paved the way for City's 3-1 triumph and helped stretch their unbeaten run to three games.

Dolan admitted he had few complaints about City's performance and was particularly delighted to have got off to such a flier against the Imps.

"We have been criticised this season for not starting well but I don't think you could complain about the start we had," he said.

"To be 2-0 up after about 20 minutes is about as much as you can hope for and when you do get a goal in the first minute then it does give everybody a bit of a boost.

"We knew Alan Buckley wants his teams to play football, which we are trying to do ourselves.

"We knew that was going to be the case so our first priority was to stop them from passing it around but when you do get off to the start we did it puts us on the front foot."

Dolan admitted the victory was an "excellent win" but conceded City should have wrapped up the points long before Michael Proctor's second strike in injury time finally made certain.

"We left it a bit late before we made it safe," he said.

"The only way in which I was disappointed was in the way we didn't take the chances that we created.

"I thought we could have been 4-0 up at half-time and we had a couple of good chances just after half-time.

"You'll always take a 2-0 lead but it is never safe because if you do give one away it is always a little bit hectic which is what occurred."

Despite a hat-full of missed chances, Dolan was delighted with City's goal return, particularly away from home.

"We are scoring a lot more away from home than we have at home this season.

"I don't know why that is really but we are enjoying ourselves on our travels to a certain degree and the goals have been coming. We just have to make sure we score a few more at home now."

Dolan was also pleased with the performance of debutant Mark Maley, on loan from Sunderland.

"Mark has only trained with us for a couple of days and he's not had that many games for Sunderland reserves so it was good that he slotted in and I think that he showed he is a capable footballer," said Dolan.

Updated: 09:42 Monday, October 01, 2001