The following article was first
published in the December, 1999, issue of When Saturday Comes as part of
the magazineís regular feature More Than A Match
Lincoln City 3 Sheffield United 0, League Division Three,
September 29, 1982
It wasn't the size of
the Sheffield United team which game to Sincil Bank that had the home support
worried. It was the number of away fans. You could see them crossing the bridge
from the coach park in the gap between the old wooden South Park and St.
Andrews stands. It was a never-ending stream, and for the only time in all the
matches I ever saw at Lincoln they took over the entire swathe of open-top
terrace that stretched alongside the ground, leaving the home fans to cram in
behind the goal at the railway end.
The gate that night
was 8,550, around five thousand more than Lincoln's home average. What chance
did we stand against a side of that stature, that could generate so many fans
and take them away for a mundane midweek league game at a no-name countryside
club? Surely they would sing their side to victory and drown out the home
supporters, and we would traipse home humbled, but happy at the thought that
at least we'd beaten Orient the previous Saturday.
So many fans, they had to be good, and who were we? Well, we happened to be top of the league, having won five out of the season's first six games. And a few months earlier we'd missed out on promotion to the old second division by one point. Despite this, the nucleus of the best Lincoln side in thirty years remained - players like Trevor Peake, Glenn Cockerill and Gordon Hobson who later went on to better, if not spectacular, things. At that time, with my teenage hormones only slightly affecting my judgment, I believed that if they stayed together as a team they would eventually win the European Cup.
Still, they'd have to
get past Sheffield United first.
The railway terrace
behind the goal was not always a comforting place to be on a dark night. For
years there had been a huge sheet of corrugated iron somewhere up at the back
near the roof that flapped and banged in the wind so that you felt sure it
was going to crash down into the faithful. Once you'd heard it often enough,
though, you became convinced that it must be safe otherwise someone would
have fixed it. Its thunderclaps were as reassuring as the sound of the passing
trains and the hundred year old version of The Lincolnshire Poacher that scratched
its way through the intercom as the teams came out. Ah yes, these sounds reminded
us that, despite the massed away contingent from Yorkshire, we really were
at home.
The rest was up to the
footballers. Lincoln came out, outplayed the men of steel and then shut up
shop to preserve their energies for knocking Leicester out the league cup
a week later. Sheffield United were as paralysed as the tongues of their followers,
and when Trevor Peake scored a header from a corner at the railway end there
was a cheer from the home support which combined relief, joy and astonishment
all in one. Relief that we could not be touched tonight, joy at the scoreline
and the continued dominance of the division, astonishment that this was all
still happening to Lincoln City.
And then, better than
the football, people began to sing. Sincil Bank never has and never will be
a vocal ground, and its fans are hardly known as progenitors of rousing terrace
originals. But tonight, with everyone cozied up behind the goal, the chant
arose of "Colin Murphy's red and white army," sung in alternate
lines on one side of the goal, then on the other. And as Lincoln played possession
football the choir went on for at least twenty-five minutes, its anthemic
strain reverberating back and forth across the railway end, even drowning
out the pendulous shard of corrugated iron and somehow making that sea of
people who had invaded our home terrace seem static and insignificant.
This collective celebration
was nothing like I had ever experienced at Lincoln, and now that the ground
has been razed and resurrected as a botch of misfit plastic-seater stands
with all the soul of a Burger King, I doubt that such nights are any more
commonplace than a side from one of England's major cities coming east for
a lesson in footballing basics. At the end of the season Lincoln finished
sixth, the side dispersed, and four years later they were playing non-league
football. But though in my lifetime we've never ditched a big name or forged
a major cup run, that night of passion and warmth and of toying with SheffU
came to represent in my doting, nostalgic brain a year in which Lincoln City
rose out of a century-long trough of mediocrity to play truly great football.