One Game at a Time: Lincoln City (A) November 12th
Well as cup runs go it couldn’t have started any better. A run out for the talented youth, a goal in five minutes for the developing Academy star Randell. Not even the immutable law of the ex was going to derail this season’s cup run, as Ryan Taylors glass ankles survived but his leg muscles didn’t, and the Ginger Ninja sat this one out.
Which given how the rest of the game panned out was probably just as well as a Taylor hat trick in the second half was about the only thing missing from what was in the end, the definition of a debacle.
Schuey, to his credit, gave due credit to a team that on the day were better than we were, certainly more up for it, and his barely suppressed anger during his press duties probably made the coach trip home for the squad a rather less than enjoyable one.
As with any bad defeat, and we have had more than our fair share of them at Blundell Park over the years, from missing out on the League Two title to Pompous under Del Boy, to a Jimmy Lumbey hat trick in 1974, it is what happens next that is the acid test. The last two times we have shipped five goals have provoked decent reactions from both management, by changing playing style and personnel, and players, by turning the Charlton defeat into a catalyst for the current run to the top of the league.
Injuries aside, and we must hope that the return of the likes of Gillesphey and Mayor, and potentially Miller stay on track, and that Dan Scarr and Connor Grant muscle pulls are minor ones, we don’t become a bad side overnight, despite what the scoreline indicated. Equally confidence is a fragile thing and so having a week off before the next match will allow the squad to get this out of their system and move on.
Also, we don’t have to hack up to Lincolnshire every week so that’s a plus for Saturday.
Oh.
Well, they do say the best thing to do when you fall from a horse is to get back on immediately and so in that regard the fixture list couldn’t have been kinder. And with Grimsby now handling the honours of a likely second round FA Cup tie at Cambridge we could have been spending the whole of November in a bizzare footballing Fen-der bender, if the form book hadn’t been so violently upended.
Lincoln themselves demonstrated the ups and downs of cup ties, losing at non-league Chippenham Town, before themselves upsetting the form applecart in the Water Buffalo Cup at Bristol Turnips, with a tidy 3-1 win.
All of which accumulator busting results mean that we enter the weekend not knowing who is available, what the form of our opponents truly is, and being grateful that it isn’t us who has to pick up the pieces. And there is always the Papa Johns for Wembley.
Our opponents, Lincoln City, were formed in 1884, as yet another pub team eventually found its way into the league. Regionalisation meant that our paths rarely crossed pre-war, and other than an FA Cup tie at Home Park and Lincolns brief foray to Division 2 in the early thirties (and straight back down again afterwards) they made relatively little impact on the footballing consciousness. As an amateur club they did reach the last sixteen of the FA Cup in 1886/7 being defeated, somewhat surprisingly to the modern-day fan, by Glasgow Rangers.
The league campaigns were more of a struggle. In 1911 they were relegated out of the League to be replaced by local rivals Grimsby (sorry, sorry). It was even worse in 1920, when despite finishing above GT (is that better), Lincoln City were relegated out of the league and GT were invited to join the newly formed Third Division North.
If Lincoln had a golden age, it was probably the post war years under Bill Anderson, when the club made a concerted effort to stay in the second division, not always successfully it has to be said, but on relatively shoestring budgets (their 1948 promotion winning side was assembled for around £2000). After their immediate promotion/relegation the Chairman promised they would be back within three seasons, and they were.
They remained at that level, although the 1957/8 season would have seen stirring renditions of the Great Escape theme had the film been around in those days. Cast adrift at the bottom of the league the Imps won six in a row against all odds to relegate surprised and shocked looking Doncaster and Notts County by a single point.
It was not to last however and relegation to the new third tier in 1961 was compounded by immediate demotion to the newish bottom division four the following season.
Lincoln can claim, however, to have had a hand in the creation of one of the more successful football dynasties, when in 1959 they handed out a 4-2 drubbing to the then slightly woeful Liverpool. The result of that defeat was the resignation of then Liverpool manager Phil Taylor, and the appointment shortly afterwards of one William Shankly esquire. The next few decades were to prove to be somewhat more exciting for the slumbering Merseyside giants. Lincoln City, not so much.
With their other local rivals being Scunthorpe and predominantly non-League Boston United, City do have a healthy disregard for all things Pilgrim. Considering that Bostons most successful period when they made the Football league and could actually play Lincoln coincided with Steve Evans and his subsequent suspended jail sentence on tax evasion charges, perhaps that isn’t an unreasonable position. And whilst they may as a City invented their own shade of Lincoln green, one thing is certain, it isn't Argyle Green.
By contrast Lincoln have had some interesting managerial incumbents. Graham Taylor cut his teeth at Lincoln for six years including a record breaking Fourth Division title, but when he called it quits and headed to Watford in 1977, Lincoln could only sit back and wonder what could have been. Taylor took unfashionable Watford from the Fourth division to the First, and the brink of Europe although it may also have been Eltons cash that helped.
Following on from Taylor, came Colin Murphy. Murphy is best remembered for his bizarre and impenetrable management notes. Unlike most such contributions to the now dying programme formula, Murphy would fill his notes with what appeared to be gobbledegook.
Some examples taken from a Yorkshire Post article on their strangeness included the pre-game announcement “I realise that not many possess the wisdom of the Mandala, but at times persiflage is not comprehensible. However, don’t worry, we shall defeat the diphthongs.”
Before another match: “However discombobulating we have been made to appear, we shall genuinely endeavour to discoidulate the cleavage.”
They surely were created to confuse and confound both supporters and opposition alike.
Consider the following, when Murphy insisted that, “We cannot fall into the trap of committing practical haplography”, that, “To extemporise or not to extemporise – that is the issue we face today”, and, “One thing is for sure in all of these circumstances: if one performs with crapulence they will require a corroborant which will need to give you the strength to perform the corroboree in order to become corrible.”
There are literally dozens more examples where those came from, including the particularly memorable intro, “Well, as the art mistress said to the gardener, ‘It’s getting tight’”, and the cautionary, “Life is not like a bowl of cherries, but more like a bowl of Hungarian goulash – hot, sticky, and, at times, intestinally negative.”
Later managers include Sam Ellis, less successful at managing than his playing days for City, a 42-day interregnum from ex Chelsea stalwart Steve Wicks, and the fortunately for him a long spell under Keith Alexander. Fortunate because at one point he was rushed to Hallamshire General hospital for neurosurgery which he thankfully survived. Allan “Sniffer” Clarke also had a spell after Murphy departed without moving the dial.
Lincoln also had a brief flirtation with SAS, better known as Shearer and Sutton, who had won the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers. Sadly for Lincoln Shearers involvement was in making his Newcastle debut in a pre-season friendly at Sincil Bank, whilst Sutton was manager for a less than successful year before resigning for personal reasons. This spell in management is rarely mentioned in his Radio 5 Live punditry (then again neither is his fine for twice spitting in the face of a trainee barrister at a Norwich restaurant almost ten years previously).
If City have had some noteworthy managers (and the Cowleys), the same cannot be said of their playing staff. Until the recent loan spell of Brennan Johnson from Nottingham Forest (who sent him to hone his diving skills whilst Tom Daley was away on Olympic Duty and Splash was not recommissioned by ITV) the best Lincoln could muster was, wait for it, Gareth Ainsworth, who spent a couple of years there before a half million-pound move to Port Vale. It is still a record which must be embarrassing for Darren Huckerby who is next in line.
Lincoln does have one record breaking international player in its history. Unfortunately for them it was England fast bowler Freddie Trueman, who played a couple of Midland League games for them, and who was offered a deal but decided the risk to his cricket career was too great.
They did also have Phil Neale, one of the last footballer/cricketers on their books.
One more sombre point of interest is that Lincoln has a stand named for their two fans who perished in the Bradford City fire disaster. They were the opponents when a stray cigarette caused a fire in the stand at Valley Parade and fifty-six people perished in the resultant inferno which consumed the wooden stand it started below in four minutes.
The Stacy West Stand at Sincil Bank commemorates the two men, Jim West and Bill Stacey. It is believed that the effect of the fire on the squad, together with the subsequent condemnation of almost half the structure of Sincil Bank certainly contributed to the following relegations and loss of League status by City. The club still send representatives to the annual commemoration of the events at Bradford. The captain of Bradford City that day, Peter Jackson, was later to manage Lincoln for two years.
So, as we approach the LNER Stadium (still Sincil Bank to the cognoscenti of the 92 Club) we may be nervous after previous Lincolnshire discomfort, but the final word can only belong to the mangler of the English language and former Imps boss Colin Murphy
“You, me, we, all of us have been forced to breakfast on travesty, lunch on objection and insult, dine on inflicted pressure. High tea we daren’t sit still long enough to take and, by supper, we were still expected to have been victorious.”
Indeed we have Colin, Indeed we have.
COYG!
Well as cup runs go it couldn’t have started any better. A run out for the talented youth, a goal in five minutes for the developing Academy star Randell. Not even the immutable law of the ex was going to derail this season’s cup run, as Ryan Taylors glass ankles survived but his leg muscles didn’t, and the Ginger Ninja sat this one out.
Which given how the rest of the game panned out was probably just as well as a Taylor hat trick in the second half was about the only thing missing from what was in the end, the definition of a debacle.
Schuey, to his credit, gave due credit to a team that on the day were better than we were, certainly more up for it, and his barely suppressed anger during his press duties probably made the coach trip home for the squad a rather less than enjoyable one.
As with any bad defeat, and we have had more than our fair share of them at Blundell Park over the years, from missing out on the League Two title to Pompous under Del Boy, to a Jimmy Lumbey hat trick in 1974, it is what happens next that is the acid test. The last two times we have shipped five goals have provoked decent reactions from both management, by changing playing style and personnel, and players, by turning the Charlton defeat into a catalyst for the current run to the top of the league.
Injuries aside, and we must hope that the return of the likes of Gillesphey and Mayor, and potentially Miller stay on track, and that Dan Scarr and Connor Grant muscle pulls are minor ones, we don’t become a bad side overnight, despite what the scoreline indicated. Equally confidence is a fragile thing and so having a week off before the next match will allow the squad to get this out of their system and move on.
Also, we don’t have to hack up to Lincolnshire every week so that’s a plus for Saturday.
Oh.
Well, they do say the best thing to do when you fall from a horse is to get back on immediately and so in that regard the fixture list couldn’t have been kinder. And with Grimsby now handling the honours of a likely second round FA Cup tie at Cambridge we could have been spending the whole of November in a bizzare footballing Fen-der bender, if the form book hadn’t been so violently upended.
Lincoln themselves demonstrated the ups and downs of cup ties, losing at non-league Chippenham Town, before themselves upsetting the form applecart in the Water Buffalo Cup at Bristol Turnips, with a tidy 3-1 win.
All of which accumulator busting results mean that we enter the weekend not knowing who is available, what the form of our opponents truly is, and being grateful that it isn’t us who has to pick up the pieces. And there is always the Papa Johns for Wembley.
Our opponents, Lincoln City, were formed in 1884, as yet another pub team eventually found its way into the league. Regionalisation meant that our paths rarely crossed pre-war, and other than an FA Cup tie at Home Park and Lincolns brief foray to Division 2 in the early thirties (and straight back down again afterwards) they made relatively little impact on the footballing consciousness. As an amateur club they did reach the last sixteen of the FA Cup in 1886/7 being defeated, somewhat surprisingly to the modern-day fan, by Glasgow Rangers.
The league campaigns were more of a struggle. In 1911 they were relegated out of the League to be replaced by local rivals Grimsby (sorry, sorry). It was even worse in 1920, when despite finishing above GT (is that better), Lincoln City were relegated out of the league and GT were invited to join the newly formed Third Division North.
If Lincoln had a golden age, it was probably the post war years under Bill Anderson, when the club made a concerted effort to stay in the second division, not always successfully it has to be said, but on relatively shoestring budgets (their 1948 promotion winning side was assembled for around £2000). After their immediate promotion/relegation the Chairman promised they would be back within three seasons, and they were.
They remained at that level, although the 1957/8 season would have seen stirring renditions of the Great Escape theme had the film been around in those days. Cast adrift at the bottom of the league the Imps won six in a row against all odds to relegate surprised and shocked looking Doncaster and Notts County by a single point.
It was not to last however and relegation to the new third tier in 1961 was compounded by immediate demotion to the newish bottom division four the following season.
Lincoln can claim, however, to have had a hand in the creation of one of the more successful football dynasties, when in 1959 they handed out a 4-2 drubbing to the then slightly woeful Liverpool. The result of that defeat was the resignation of then Liverpool manager Phil Taylor, and the appointment shortly afterwards of one William Shankly esquire. The next few decades were to prove to be somewhat more exciting for the slumbering Merseyside giants. Lincoln City, not so much.
With their other local rivals being Scunthorpe and predominantly non-League Boston United, City do have a healthy disregard for all things Pilgrim. Considering that Bostons most successful period when they made the Football league and could actually play Lincoln coincided with Steve Evans and his subsequent suspended jail sentence on tax evasion charges, perhaps that isn’t an unreasonable position. And whilst they may as a City invented their own shade of Lincoln green, one thing is certain, it isn't Argyle Green.
By contrast Lincoln have had some interesting managerial incumbents. Graham Taylor cut his teeth at Lincoln for six years including a record breaking Fourth Division title, but when he called it quits and headed to Watford in 1977, Lincoln could only sit back and wonder what could have been. Taylor took unfashionable Watford from the Fourth division to the First, and the brink of Europe although it may also have been Eltons cash that helped.
Following on from Taylor, came Colin Murphy. Murphy is best remembered for his bizarre and impenetrable management notes. Unlike most such contributions to the now dying programme formula, Murphy would fill his notes with what appeared to be gobbledegook.
Some examples taken from a Yorkshire Post article on their strangeness included the pre-game announcement “I realise that not many possess the wisdom of the Mandala, but at times persiflage is not comprehensible. However, don’t worry, we shall defeat the diphthongs.”
Before another match: “However discombobulating we have been made to appear, we shall genuinely endeavour to discoidulate the cleavage.”
They surely were created to confuse and confound both supporters and opposition alike.
Consider the following, when Murphy insisted that, “We cannot fall into the trap of committing practical haplography”, that, “To extemporise or not to extemporise – that is the issue we face today”, and, “One thing is for sure in all of these circumstances: if one performs with crapulence they will require a corroborant which will need to give you the strength to perform the corroboree in order to become corrible.”
There are literally dozens more examples where those came from, including the particularly memorable intro, “Well, as the art mistress said to the gardener, ‘It’s getting tight’”, and the cautionary, “Life is not like a bowl of cherries, but more like a bowl of Hungarian goulash – hot, sticky, and, at times, intestinally negative.”
Later managers include Sam Ellis, less successful at managing than his playing days for City, a 42-day interregnum from ex Chelsea stalwart Steve Wicks, and the fortunately for him a long spell under Keith Alexander. Fortunate because at one point he was rushed to Hallamshire General hospital for neurosurgery which he thankfully survived. Allan “Sniffer” Clarke also had a spell after Murphy departed without moving the dial.
Lincoln also had a brief flirtation with SAS, better known as Shearer and Sutton, who had won the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers. Sadly for Lincoln Shearers involvement was in making his Newcastle debut in a pre-season friendly at Sincil Bank, whilst Sutton was manager for a less than successful year before resigning for personal reasons. This spell in management is rarely mentioned in his Radio 5 Live punditry (then again neither is his fine for twice spitting in the face of a trainee barrister at a Norwich restaurant almost ten years previously).
If City have had some noteworthy managers (and the Cowleys), the same cannot be said of their playing staff. Until the recent loan spell of Brennan Johnson from Nottingham Forest (who sent him to hone his diving skills whilst Tom Daley was away on Olympic Duty and Splash was not recommissioned by ITV) the best Lincoln could muster was, wait for it, Gareth Ainsworth, who spent a couple of years there before a half million-pound move to Port Vale. It is still a record which must be embarrassing for Darren Huckerby who is next in line.
Lincoln does have one record breaking international player in its history. Unfortunately for them it was England fast bowler Freddie Trueman, who played a couple of Midland League games for them, and who was offered a deal but decided the risk to his cricket career was too great.
They did also have Phil Neale, one of the last footballer/cricketers on their books.
One more sombre point of interest is that Lincoln has a stand named for their two fans who perished in the Bradford City fire disaster. They were the opponents when a stray cigarette caused a fire in the stand at Valley Parade and fifty-six people perished in the resultant inferno which consumed the wooden stand it started below in four minutes.
The Stacy West Stand at Sincil Bank commemorates the two men, Jim West and Bill Stacey. It is believed that the effect of the fire on the squad, together with the subsequent condemnation of almost half the structure of Sincil Bank certainly contributed to the following relegations and loss of League status by City. The club still send representatives to the annual commemoration of the events at Bradford. The captain of Bradford City that day, Peter Jackson, was later to manage Lincoln for two years.
So, as we approach the LNER Stadium (still Sincil Bank to the cognoscenti of the 92 Club) we may be nervous after previous Lincolnshire discomfort, but the final word can only belong to the mangler of the English language and former Imps boss Colin Murphy
“You, me, we, all of us have been forced to breakfast on travesty, lunch on objection and insult, dine on inflicted pressure. High tea we daren’t sit still long enough to take and, by supper, we were still expected to have been victorious.”
Indeed we have Colin, Indeed we have.
COYG!
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