January
With New Year’s Day being a Sunday, the next game was on the following day’s Bank Holiday, and although I’ve forgotten why I didn’t make the journey to Chester I do know that I incompetently failed to get to Sincil Bank for the visit of Plymouth due to missing the bus into town.
Another Bank Holiday, another six thousand-plus crowd, and another draw. With Alan Harding now injured, Alan Jones returned to the side, but the Imps got off to a bad start within the first minute when a mistake by Clive Wigginton allowed later Mansfield striker Terry Austin to score for the visitors. However, just six minutes later it was Austin who equalised for City when he headed a Jones corner into his own net. Phil Neale, who by this game had switched positions with Dennis Leigh and was playing in midfield then put City ahead. But after a Plymouth equaliser just before the break there were no more goals in the match with the point gained being enough to lift the Imps out of the bottom four for the first time since the beginning of November.
With Walsall involved in the FA Cup Third Round the following Saturday City then had a blank weekend before the visit of Bury the Saturday after that. Perhaps with supporters becoming fed up of two months without a home win or else because unlike the last two home games, it wasn’t a Bank Holiday the attendance showed a fall of around two thousand. The good news was that John Ward, having come through two reserve games was fit to return to the side. He took the place of Peter Graham as the new manager continued to show faith in young Mick Harford. With Alan Harding also fit again John Fleming was dropped to the bench. The manager had promised an all-out attacking performance for this match but it was a dour and scrappy game with both sides failing to score and neither deserving to.
The point against Bury was enough to maintain City’s placing outside the bottom four, but the unfortunate thing to come out of the match was the aggravation of John Ward’s knee injury which was to put him out of action for the rest of the season.
Willie Bell’s desire to improve the coaching set up at the club saw Geoff Worth who had been running the nursery team in Sheffield and coaching the Northern Intermediate side on a part-time basis now made a full-time member of staff.
Peter Graham took Ward’s place in an otherwise unchanged side for the visit to Shrewsbury Town who were one of a few clubs at the time (Derby County and Notts County being other examples) who elected to produce their match programme in the form of a newspaper – only part of the front is seen here.
It was Graham who scored the only goal of the match in the sixteenth minute, and the Imps held on to give Willie Bell his first win and only City’s sixth in the league to move up to 18th place, two points clear of the bottom four.
The following Saturday saw the visit of Port Vale, one place below City in the league table and an unchanged side built on the success at Shrewsbury with a 3-0 win which was the biggest of the season so far. Unfortunately, it was witnessed by what was to be the lowest attendance of the season – just 3,205 of us turning up, which was a thousand down on the previous game. City went ahead in the first half with Terry Cooper heading in a Jones corner for his first goal of the season. Some strong defending then kept the visitors out until Mick Harford, who had not been having the best of games up to that point, sealed the win with two goals in the last ten minutes. The two points enabled a rise of another place in the league table and a three-point gap to the relegation zone.
February
A further rise of two places to 15th came the following week at Peterborough when unfazed by the muddy conditions, City could have won more convincingly than by the 1-0 score-line which was thanks to a 19th-minute free kick from Alan Harding.
After eight games, the last three of them won, the Imps now suffered their first defeat under Willie Bell. Perhaps due to the effects of the battle at London Road three days earlier, they could not hold onto a first-half lead from an Alan Jones goal and went down 3-1 at Walsall. Meanwhile, over the weekend Bell had attempted to strengthen the squad by signing Leeds United reserve striker David McNiven for £25,000. However, the deal fell through – reportedly thanks to the player’s wife who decided she did not want to move away from their home in Bradford.
Another goal from Jones was enough for both points at a snowy Sincil Bank the following Saturday against next-to-bottom Portsmouth as the attendance crept back above four thousand again. There was also the welcome reappearance of Dave Smith in the squad as he came on for the injured Alan Harding at half time. The win kept City in 15th place, six points off the relegation zone but with only three points separating them from sixth place as it was wide open in the middle of the division.
With the following Saturday’s scheduled visit to Chesterfield a victim of the weather City were next at home again in a Friday night match against promotion-chasing Wrexham. No doubt boosted by travelling support from North Wales the attendance jumped to over 6,000, but City went down to the only goal of the match scored by the visitors’ prolific ex-Imp Dixie McNeilLooking Back At: 1977/78 (Part Three).
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