When I get a spare moment, as I sometimes do on a Sunday around 4 pm, I browse through some old newspapers and see what was happening around this week back in history.
With little to worry about, or get excited about on the pitch, I thought I’d delve back into the annals for a ‘what happened this weekend in’ article. I picked a random year (1989) and a 1-0 defeat at home against Rotherham United. We were in the Fourth Division, our first season back in the Football League, and Rotherham were champions elect, bouncing back into the Third Division at the first time of asking.
The game is unremarkable. City had won three, drawn two and lost three of their previous eight matches, and this was the second of four consecutive defeats. Promotion was all but gone, whilst relegation, in the days of one dropping out of the division, was also not likely to happen. We already had 48 points, and Darlington (who had beaten us the week before the Rotherham game) only got 42 all season. What struck me was the tone of the article, written by Neil Custis, and the coincidences throughout.
It alluded to the Imps not being good enough to trouble the top seven but also being too good to go down. It addressed spectator apathy and even had a reference to a supporter asking Neil what he’d write about this week. One passage, in particular, had me chuckling, because I’ve had the same conversations leaving the ground, this season, and in previous seasons.
Imagine, the middle of March, not good enough for the play-offs or promotion, but in the midst of a team-building exercise that should result in a much better campaign next time out. I’m trying to find a common theme, something that ties this season to that of 34 years ago, but however hard I look…
The parralells continue. The report takes about an eight-match unbeaten run that raised expectations, and a cup tie against Southampton that added to the hype, but how both felt a long way away. It’s spooky right? It’s going to get spookier – because on this weekend 34 years ago, Lincoln City lost a game, and they did so because of a mix-up between the keeper and left back. Seriously, I kid you not.
So, some bits for the nostalgia buffs. City lined up Mark Wallington, Clive Evans, Phil Brown, Dave Clarke, John Schofield, Tony James, Trevor Matthewson, Paul Smith, Bob Cumming, Gordon Hobson, Malcolm Dunkley and John McGinley, with Shane Nicholson as the unused sub. When you look at that side, only Wallington, Schofield, James, Hobson and Dunkley played no part in the GMVC season, and two of those (James and Schofield) had been signed from the non-league scene. We’d paid a club-record fee (at the time) for Gordon Hobson, who had bravely suggested weeks earlier we might get automatic promotion. However, as Neil Custis outlined, the team had been switched due to injury, notably to Graham Bressington, whilst Paul Casey, Ian Bowling and Willie Gamble were all said to be hungry for a game.
There was even some discussion around our strikers, with Malcolm Dunkley, described as ‘not looking like the prospect he did on his debut’, which does echo some themes from this season and perhaps Jack Diamond. Still, this was a Lincoln side building for the future, and to be fair, the following season we didn’t do too badly at first until injuries kicked in again. That said, there was a big argument around our style, something which would come to a head a couple of weeks after this game. Sometimes, we played football. Sometimes, we played hoof ball. The fans liked the nice football, but not when we lost. The fans only liked the hoof ball when we won, but not when we lost, then they’d rather lose playing pretty. If we lost playing pretty, then we needed more functional football. Until we lost. You get the picture – it’s a familiar story.
Rotherham took the lead through a goal that sounds farcical and very much like this weekend in some respects – a harmless cross should have been the keeper’s, but he completely missed it, and it took left-back Dave Clarke by surprise, hitting him on the chest and going in off the post. You can hear the Benny Hill music now, just as you could on Saturday as Roughan’s backpass rolled in the opposite direction of Carl Rushworth. To even further the coincidences, Rotherham went down to ten men, Tony Grealish sent off, but managed to still see out the result.
There are differences – City created lots of chances against the side that eventually won the title, but there was no killer instinct. Trevor Matthewson could have poked over the line but missed the chance (I’m thinking Gazza v Germany, 1996), whilst Tony James and John McGinley both had powerful headers wide. Kelham O’Hanlon in the Rotherham goal only had a single save to make, and that came from his own defender’s sliced clearance.
That meant a 1-0 defeat for the Imps, and the slowly dawning understanding of the fact we were midtable fodder in Division Four, not poor enough to go down, but just short of a top-seven assault. There were issues around the attack (lacking ideas up front, to put the exact words into my piece. Hmmm), and there were bright spells as well. In particular, the two lads from Gainsborough Trinity as they were known, James and Schofield were described with words like ‘superb’, ‘powerful’ and ‘energetic’, which are words I’d use to describe two signings this season, Erhahon and O’Connor.
I just found it astounding there were so many parallels between this weekend in 1989, and 2023. The following season, far from building, City failed to impress. A strong start saw us become promotion challengers, but injuries hit the side once again, and we lost some hugely influential loan players (Paul Groves, Paul Williams and John Cornforth) as we tried to find a pattern to take us forward. Ultimately, Colin Murphy left the club, Allan Clarke came in, and we found out the grass I not always greener.
Maybe there’s a moral to this story. Somewhere.
For me, it is ‘football never changes’. It might have more technology, different types of supporter, better grounds and a whole host of other things, but the game itself? It’s pretty much the same as it always was. Different years, same narratives, year after year.
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