THREE towering headers from central defender Joe McMahon handed Lancaster City a deserved victory over willing but untidy Vauxhall Motors on Tuesday evening.

Two went directly into the Vauxhall goal and the third set up Ryan Zico Black for his third goal in four games.

This was McMahon's first Giant Axe start for City and after a nervous opening was just the sort of performance to earn him cult status with the fans.

In fact the whole City team started nervously as Vauxhall, fresh from their first win, made the early running.

The off-side trap being employed by the visitors caught the Dolly Blues six times in the opening 15 minutes.

And there was 17 minutes on the clock before the first real opening when McMahon had a free header from a corner but somehow placed his effort wide when it looked easier to score.

It was the signal for City to take over the game, though, with Tony Sullivan and Peter Thomson timing their runs well to beat the off-side trap.

Twice Thomson ran beyond the defence to be foiled first by pacy full back Carl Spellman as he sprinted back to cover and then by a desperate tackle from young keeper Thomas Dittmer fully 35 yards from goal.

Sullivan was also halted by Dittmer when he broke the line while at the other end Vauxhall's sporadic raids won a series of corners but never threatened Jamie Speare's goal.

By half time the corner count was 8-1 in the favour of the Wirral Motormen and soon after the break it had mounted to 10-1.

They made it pay when, on 53 minutes, Peter Cumislkey lost his marker and rose at the far post to head home the opening score from a corner.

It pepped up Vauxhall so much that for five minutes City were forced onto the back foot for the first time but then McMahon began to take control.

He went forward as Neil Prince prepared to take a free kick won wide out on the left by Thomson and was perfectly placed to meet the cross. Dittmer parried his header but Black was on the spot to hammer home the equaliser from eight yards.

The same combination worked eight minutes later after Ian Dawes was blatantly body-checked in the centre by Phil Brazier. When play resumed after a long stoppage, Prince's precision free kick gave McMahon his first City goal.

Dawes limped out of the game three minutes later to be replaced by Murray McCullough but the next significant action came on 79 minutes as another City free kick this time taken by Paul Sparrow found Black in space behind the defence.

Spellman was forced to bring down the nippy striker in the act of shooting. Unfortunately, when Black got up to take the spot kick he placed it wide of Dittmer's right hand post.

Vauxhall took that as a signal that they could get back in the game and rolled forward in wave after wave of attacks.

But McMahon went up to the other end to head in his second from an 89th minute corner.

It was not quite the last word, though. Twice in stoppage time Cumiskey broke free of the City shackles to bear down on goal. Speare dived as his feet to save his first shot and Paul Sparrow cleared the second off the line with Speare beaten.

CITY: Speare, Clark, McMahon, Sparrow, Scott, Sullivan, Dawes (McCullough 70), Elderton, Prince, Thomson, Black. Subs not used: Gibbons, Stanhope, Yeoman