Looking Back: Imps Manager Arrested Three Minutes Before a Game

Credit Matthew Morton

I think of all the managers the Imps have had, John Beck was the most divisive. That might seem unusual given last season, but it’s true. You either loved him, or loathed him, and he wasn’t without his controversial attributes.

He made us horrible and looked for marginal wins long before Danny Cowley made it a thing. However, instead of on the pitch like Danny, Beck would look for the advantages off the field, by flooding changing rooms, putting salt out instead of sugar for tea, and a host of other things. He moved the away dugout down the touchline at one point to give the opposition a poorer view of the game. Some people revelled in it, others, not so much.

City v Newcastle

The 1996/97 season started with the Imps on the crest of a wave. We’d finished the previous season by thumping Torquay 5-1, and the summer saw three Premier League sides visit the Bank. The most high-profile of those was Newcastle United, with Kevin Keegan bringing a full first team including £15m world record signing Alan Shearer. That didn’t immediately reflect in results – a trip to Torquay on the opening day of the season was supposed to see another emphatic victory. They were the league’s crisis club, finishing 11 points adrift at the bottom of the table and saved only because there was no promotion from the Conference that season. City led after seven minutes, but after a 24th-minute leveller it looked like finishing as a draw. Instead, on 93 minutes, Rodney Jack smashed home a winner for the hosts.

More woe followed in the Coca-Cola Cup. City dominated at Hartlepool, leading 2-0 with just 15 minutes left, but crumbled to finish 2-2. A shot-shy strike force managed just two against Torquay, so Beck moved to bring in a loan signing, 20-year-old Jae Martin from Birmingham. He’d performed well in the reserves in midweek, helping City to a 1-0 lead at half time, only for the game to end 4-1 to Walsall. Martin was brought in over John Taylor, an experienced striker who we were pursuing on a two-year deal. Sadly, he had issues with his back that prevented a permanent move, meaning it was Martin, not Taylor Beck hoped to see in action against Orient. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t get the chance.

I was at the game, my Uncle Keith had travelled up from Exeter and we took our place in the Stacey West End hoping for a big result. Orient had lost two on the spin, and had a few notable names for those who know their 90s football. Les Sealey was in goal, although he missed the Imps game, the only league match he missed for them in the first part of the season. Andy Arnott and Colin West were biggish names on the lower league scene, but Orient had finished below the Imps the season before. It should have had home win written all over it.

As usual, the teams were announced as Beck warmed the players up on the pitch. City lined up Barry Richardson, Steve Holmes, Jon Whitney, Tony Dennis, John Robertson, Kevin Austin, Gareth Ainsworth, Terry Fleming, Gisjbert Bos, Worrell Sterling and Colin Alcide, with Jae Martin, Mark Hone and Jason Barnett on the bench. Ironically, in his programme notes for the game, Beck suggested there might be a few ups and downs through the season. He wasn’t wrong.

At 2:57 pm, as the team emerged for the game, John Beck did not. Reports suggest he was arrested by Customs and Excise officers on the pitch, although personally, I didn’t see that. It was immediately noticeable that he wasn’t in the dugout, and in the days before social media, gossip spread like wildfire. He had been caught putting in dodgy petrol receipts the season before, and some suggested he might have been fired.

He hadn’t, he’d been carted off to Leyland for questioning. Frustratingly, he was released after 20 minutes, and nothing ever came of the allegations. It was in connection with a VAT fraud on whiskey, and two people were charged. Beck was not one of them.

John Reames wasn’t impressed with the move, and had to explain to fans after the game what had happened. “I will be asking questions about the timing of the arrest,” he raged. “Surely they could have left it until after the game.” The presence of police on the sidelines after the game might have been useful given how events on the field turned out.

Beck was his usual belligerent self when it came to the events. “The incident will have no effect on my efforts to drive Lincoln City up the Third Division,” he said. “We have a game tomorrow night and, as far as I am concerned, it’s business as usual.” Of course, business as usual in the world of Team Lincoln, the monicker coined to define his era, was never straightforward.

Ainsworth gave City the lead

Undeterred, the Imps faced the O’s without their boss, Shane Westley taking charge in a move that would foreshadow events 18 months later. For the first 40 minutes, things went well for City who controlled an ill-tempered affair. It is described as having ‘on-running spats all over the field’, and that might not surprise City fans who recall the time. Those small margins often involved winding the opposition up, tough challenges, and seeking to disrupt the game. Orient, with two defeats under their belt, would not go down without a fight.

After an early Ainsworth header went over Caldwell’s bar, the Imps took the lead. It wasn’t a classic game, but a goal described by Westley as a ‘classic Team Lincoln’ goal put us 1-0 up. Worrell Sterling, not a name Imps fans recall all that fondly given his minimal outings, whipped a free kick into the area and an unmarked Ainsworth rose highest to power the ball past Caldwell in the sticks.  Despite the nature of the game, there was only a single booking in the first half, with Tony Dennis being cautioned by referee Tony Leake.

The second half wasn’t a classic. The absence of the Imps manager didn’t affect the flow of the game too much, and Bos could have finished things off on 82 minutes. Ainsworth, a player who always stood out, worked a cross into the box, but the big Dutchman nodded into the side netting, rather than the back of the net.

It wasn’t all one-way traffic – Orient did push forward, but City were resolute. Robertson and Whitney are singled out for praise in the Echo report, but it was a committed and determined defence that stood firm to anything thrown at them. With the ghosts of Torquay the previous week still in the air, the game entered added time, with fans hoping we’d hang on to get all three points, after dropping one in Devon.

Back then, added time was an undetermined length decided by the referee and known only to him. It’s why there was uproar when Crystal Palace scored after seven minutes in the League Cup, and why Torquay’s 93rd-minute goal was marginally controversial. It was only injury time, there was no provision for subs or goals, so usually, you saw two or three minutes. Anymore saw fans get jittery, whistling and on edge.

Four minutes passed, and all around us, there were whistles for the end of the game. It seemed to be coming, and when Dave Martin picked up a booking on 94 minutes for them, it seemed we’d pump the ball forward and hear the whistle. We took the free kick, but the referee kept on playing.

94 minutes turned to 95. Then to 96. Then to 97. It seemed as though Tony Leake wanted to play until midnight. Barry Richardson didn’t, and as he gathered the ball on 97 minutes, he took his time delivering it back out. Leake didn’t like that, and inexplicably, awarded Orient an indirect free-kick in the area, as well as booking our keeper. We were seven minutes into unspecified injury time, and Leake had seemingly gone outside of the rulebook to make sure Orient scored. “Though Richardson was within the laws, an indirect free kick was awarded to Orient 15 yards out,” wrote Echo reporter Brian Halford.

Of course, the free kick was rolled nonchalantly to Ian Hendon, who blasted it into the back of the net for 1-1. Shock horror, the whistle immediately sounded to end the game as a draw.

Absolute pandemonium broke out. My uncle flew (not literally) down four rows of seats in anger, looking to get onto the field. Jason Barnett raced onto the pitch to restrain Richardson, who had lost his cool and was chasing after Leake as he tried to exit the pitch. City players either slumped to their knees are angrily shouted at the berk in black. The ground was stunned, not just by the events on the field, but the uncertainty off it.

Of course, all became clear later, on the way home. The Sports Report show on Five Live covered Beck’s arrest, and luckily my uncle didn’t make it onto the pitch, so he drove me home. Beck was back for the Tuesday night draw with Cambridge, but Richardson was not – his reaction to those final few moments was enough to earn him a two-match internal suspension from Beck.

That was the Imps and Orient 1996. Beck was back in the dugout, and a week later the season was up and running courtesy of a 2-1 win at Swansea. Eventually, the Imps finished 9th, and those dropped points proved costly. Indeed, had we kept it tight against both Torquay and Orient or those games finished on 90 minutes, we’d have finished on 69 points, not 66, enough to lift us from ninth to our first-ever play-off to seventh, joint with Cardiff but above them on goal difference.

What if, two of the most frustrating words in football, and ones uttered later in the season after a further refereeing injustice.