1984/85 is not a season that Lincoln City fans remember with much fondness.
It was a season of transition when Colin Murphy’s team of the early eighties finally broke up, and we took the jump towards successive relegations. There was a cup upset, beaten by non-league Telford United, and of course, it ended in the most tragic of circumstances. When Imps’ fans think of their favourite seasons, there’s no doubt this one does not register at all.
That does not mean there were no highlights, and one game against a team we’ll face this season has jumped out at me. I wanted to cover matches against teams we will see in the next 12 months, but haven’t for a while, and Reading were an obvious choice. Meetings between the Royals and the Imps were non-existent before the seventies, then they were as regular as clockwork for a decade. In my Imps supporting lifetime, we’ve met twice and failed to win, but overall, in our 24 meetings, City have won eight, lost seven and drawn nine. Our last home win against the Royals came in October 1984, and it came in some style.
The Imps were already struggling, something that would become more evident as the season went on. We sat in the relegation spots, 22nd in the division, with ten points from 11 matches, the same as Swansea in 23rd. We had a game in hand over most clubs, with a win able to lift us six places. Ian Branfoot’s Reading had been promoted the season before, and he was 18 months away from guiding them to the title with 94 points. However, for their maiden season back in the third tier, they sat 13th, with 17 points from 12 games.
City’s start had been nothing short of horrible – we didn’t win a game until October 6th and were only kept off the bottom by a terrible Cambridge team. Just 1,906 fans turned up to watch us play Preston on that date, and they were rewarded with a 4-0 victory. Going into the Reading clash, we’d amassed seven points from four matches, a brief revival halted by Millwall, second in the table and 2-0 victors at the Den the previous week.
There was some joy before the game as City confirmed a signing. John McGinley had technically been on trial since the summer, signed on loan until mid-October. He’d had some joy – netting on his first start for the club against Preston. Colin Murphy had seen enough, and £2000 was all it took to bring him from Charleroi in the Belgian Second Division to Sincil Bank. Not only would he feature against Branfoot’s side, but so would Ross Jack, a striker who had bagged a hat trick on the final day of the previous season but who had been absent for the previous two matches (Bournemouth 0-0 at the Bank, and the Millwall defeat).
The Imps team had an evolutionary feel to it. David Felgate played in goal, with the ten outfield players being Neil Redfearn, Phil Neale, George Shipley, Alan Walker, Steve Thompson, John McGinley, Phil Turner, John Fashanu, Ross Jack and Gordon Mair. Phil Turner would go on to play top-flight football for Notts County; Gordon Mair had come to us after having done so. John McGinley would be playing in the GMVC with us three years later – Shipley and Thompson would be in the First Division. The Reading side included Trevor Senior, who had scored 36 goals in all competitions the season prior, and Lawrie Sanchez who would head a winner in the FA Cup final for Wimbledon two years later, as a teammate of future England international Fashanu.
For 30 minutes, the Imps team were dire. Reading took the lead as early as minute 13, Senior nodding home from a Dean Horrix cross. Moments later, it was Horrix on the end of a cross, nodding narrowly wide of David Felgate’s goal. The crowd, a ‘bumper’ 2,422, were not being treated to a classic, and Branfoot’s Reading seemed happy to sit on their one goal led. Without a goal in 180 minutes of football, the Imps were to go another 45 without, as Jack, Mair and Fashanu toiled hopelessly against a Reading defence marshalled superbly by future Premier League defender Steve Wood.
Colin Murphy clearly got into his team at half time, because the red shirts came out firing on all cylinders and immediately took the game to Branfoot’s side. Gone were the loose passes and shot-shy strikers – supporters got a glimpse of the past, the free-flowing attacking football Murphy had overseen at the start of the eighties. it was almost like the last waltz, the final hurrah of a dying era. City wouldn’t score five at home again until Halloween 1987, and by then we were a non-league club.
On 48 minutes, City levelled. Celebrating his new contract, McGinley whipped a corner onto the head of Walker, who flicked it up and over the defence. Fashanu arrived late at the far post, his header beating Westwood in the Reading goal, hitting a post, and dropping over the lines. City smelled blood, and having struck a blow, it was time to go in for the kill.
Fashanu was at the heart of the second – Mair’s ‘class centre’ found the striker in space, but before he could get a shot away, Martin Hicks bundled him over. Ross Jack stepped up to take the penalty, smashing it straight down the middle for the second. The sparse crowd celebrated taking the lead, but more was to come, much more.
City then bagged three goals in the space of four minutes to give the scoreline some real gloss. 75 minutes had barely passed when Phil Turner picked up the ball and weaved his way into the area before driving a low shot beyond Westwood. Turner was fouled a couple of minutes later and Mair’s free kick found Alan Walker. Maurice Burton said he had ‘time to read the printing on the ball’ as he rose to meet it; such was the precision. The outcome? 4-1 City. Walker had been struggling for form, suffering ‘anxiety and frustration’ according to Burton, which he wiped away in a moment.
Just a minute later, Shipley rounded off the rout in style. He bagged his 50th goal for the Imps, and kept him ahead in the club’s leading scorer charts. Spotting Westwood off his line, he lifted an exquisite lob over the beleaguered keeper, who could only help it into the net as the crowd looked on. Five goals, five different scorers and the Royals we dethroned.
Maurice Burton noted the 11 players that put five past reading had only played together once previously, the hammering against Preston North End. Sadly, they would play just one more game together – Fashanu was sold weeks later to Millwall, Felgate followed to Cardiff on loan not long after, and Steve Thompson, Ross Jack and Phil Neale were out for spells with injuries. Within a year, Reading were on their way to the Second Division, and we were on our slide towards being the first club to be automatically relegated out of the Football League.
It just shows you can never read too much into a single result!
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