Tomorrow we go to Boston for a friendly, certainly not for the first time. Clashes between us and Boston have been numerous over the years.
Our first visits to Boston were not to play United – instead, it was Boston Excelsior we beat 11-0 in our first Lincolnshire Cup game in 1884. We faced Boston Town next, winning 9-0 in the FA Cup in 1889. It wasn’t until 1958 we first played The Pilgrims, 25 years after their formation. We won that game 5-2 in the Lincolnshire Senior Cup. The following season, they beat us 2-1 in the final.
Officially, we have met 13 times, excluding friendlies and the Lincolnshire Cup. The first game was in 1976 when Percy Freeman gave us a 1-0 win in the FA Cup. The last time was Boxing Day 2006, when Mark Stallard and Jeff Hughes helped us to a 2-1 win. There have been wins for the Pilgrims, all on their own ground, starting with their 2-0 victory on our first Football League meeting in 2002.
The games that will always stand out for me are the two matches in the 1987/88 season, our first competitive league fixtures. We finished bottom of the Football League the previous season, having been in Division Three just 13 months before. Boston finished sixth in the GMVC and had been beaten FA Trophy finalists in 1985. It meant our Boxing Day clash in 1987 was big news across the country.
The Imps were seeking promotion at the first attempt and were the only professional club in the division. Boston were ambitious but were 14th in the table when Colin Murphy’s side rolled into York Street. The Imps trailed Barnet in the table by five points and had Weymouth above on the same points but with a better goal difference and a game in hand. Extra spice was added by the presence of George Kerr in the Boston dugout – he’d been sacked twice as City manager and had a hand in our drop out of Division Three in 1986 and Division Four in 1987.
“It’s the most eagerly awaited game of the season,” he said in the run-up to the fixture. “Players have been talking about it for weeks, but they must realise it’s a football match and not a war.”
Few would have agreed with Kerr. The Imps needed points to fuel a promotion bid, and Boston were hoping to put the previous two years’ Lincolnshire Cup games into practice – they won 4-0 in the final in 1985 and 3-0 in the first round in 1986, with Kerr in the Imps’ dugout.
Boston featured former Imps Ged Creane, David Beavon and Warren Ward in their line up, as well as future full back Paul Casey. Chris Cook, linked with the Imps in the summer, also played. Paul Wilson, with nine goals to his name, was the dangerman for the home side.
City lined up Nigel Batch, Clive Evans, Shane Nicholson, Graham Bressington, Trevor Matthewson, Steve Buckley, Gordon Simmonite, Bob Cumming, Phil Brown, Paul Smith and John McGinley, with Dave Clarke and Mark Sertori on the bench. The appearance of Simmonite was a surprise – he’d left the Imps two months previous to take up a position with the police and had been turning out for Gainsborough. There was no Andy Moore, ever-present in the first half of the season but destined only to make a handful of appearances in the second half. It was the first completed 90 minutes for Bressington also.
A GMVC record was broken – 5,822 turned out to watch the game, which was the first attendance record the Imps were involved in breaking (but not the last). They weren’t disappointed – our first visit to York Street as divisional equals brought a cracking game, although the Imps tactics did little to feed into that at first.
Simmonite dropped into a back five, with the Imps employing an offside trap that frustrated the home team, and the Echo suggested United always looked like snatching a goal. Just a minute into the game, Wilson went down in the area under Clive Evans’ challenge, with nothing given. After two minutes, a goal had been disallowed – Cumming’s free-kick beat McKenna in the net but was ruled out for an infringement.
Both teams toiled hard, the Pilgrims coming closest. A free kick from Doug Newton brushed the bar, and then, on the stroke of half time, one of our former players had a golden chance. Ward sprung the offside trap and went one-on-one with Batch. He nudged the ball beyond the keeper but was brought down as he sought to finish with a goal. Batch got a booking and was booed off moments later after the free kick came to nothing.
The first half had incidents, the second half had goals, three of them. The Imps came out with their tails up, realising the game was there for the taking. Cook, a player City desired in the summer, was hauled off after an ineffective display, but it changed little. Bressington and Cumming ran the midfield, Brown and Smith proving to be a constant menace up top. John McGinley is described as drifting ‘from wing to wing’, winning the ball in the air, beating men and pinging crossfield passes at will. It was McGinley who helped break the deadlock with 17 minutes remaining. Buckley’s free-kick was flicked on by the big man, and Richard Dawson turned it past his own keeper. 1-0 City.
Boston had barely ventured out of their half, but with a minute left on the clock, Casey swung a deep cross into the area, and Newton headed home. Their supporters erupted as the first meeting between the two looked to be giving them a share of the points. Doubtless, a few were still cheering when Bob Cumming, a Rolls Royce of a footballer with no business in the GMVC, picked up the ball just inside the attacking half. He shrugged off a couple of challenges and slipped the ball through to Phil Brown, who lofted it over McKenna and into the back of the net. 2-1 City, and barely time for kick-off before Graham Makin blew on his whistle. Happy Christmas.
After Christmas, people tend to look to Easter for their next break, and Easter would bring the two teams back together. Things hadn’t changed a huge amount for the Pilgrims. They were still 14th, and their Easter fixtures looked tough – leaders Barnet at home and then second-placed City away. City travelled to Fisher on Good Friday, April Fool’s Day, and sat five points behind Barnet with two games in hand. A 1-1 draw saw us move to four points behind with a game in hand, the Bees facing Boston on Saturday 2nd. All eyes would be a York Street – would Barnet go seven points clear?
No. Allen Crombie, loaned by the Imps to the Pilgrims, netted as they won 2-1. He scored the opener with a 20-yard effort and then landed started a move that saw Nuttell grab a winner two minutes from time. Some Imps’ eyes were literally on York Street – a contingent in red and white made the journey to watch the Bees get stung.
The gap was now four points, but Barnet had a vastly superior goal difference. City needed goals against Boston and three points. There was also the hint of a record crowd, but as the Echo reported the day before the game, apathy seemed to have struck Boston fans. Early estimates suggested they’d bring fewer than 300 to the Bank. Their win against Barnet clearly changed some minds because the record did fall, 7,542 packing into the ground. The record would last a month.
Boston again fielded some former Imps – Creane, Beavon and Ward were joined by Bobby Mitchell, a mainstay of the Imps team that earned relegation the previous season. They were injury-ravaged; Kerr had to name keeper Bobby Millar as a sub, despite there being no requirement to do so. City’s line up looked formidable – Nigel Batch, Clive Evans, Dave Clarke, Paul Casey, Trevor Matthewson, Steve Buckley, Gordon Simmonite, Bob Cumming, Phil Brown, Mark Sertori and John McGinley, with Graham Bressington and Tony Simmons on the bench. Paul Smith missed the game injured, and interestingly it would be Simmonite’s final game of the season. Andy Moore was suspended, yet again missing the big derby.
The game was a no-contest from the start. City, on a 14-match unbeaten run, smelled blood from the off and were ahead after just eight minutes. Mark Sertori threaded the ball through to Casey, who lofted a deep cross over the top for Matthewson to smash home. It might have been different had Wilson scored for the visitors – a long ball from Beavon found him in space, but Batch pulled off a fine double save at the Clanford end of the ground.
On the quarter-hour mark, City were 2-0 up. David Vaughan took the ball from the feet of McGinley 20 yards from goal and looked to roll it back to McKenna, but instead, he slotted it into an empty net. It was a bizarre own goal, but Imps’ fans didn’t care. McKenna was left sitting on the floor as the ball rolled past him on an angle and nestled in the net.
Boston looked tired, and had trouble putting passes together. Mike Brolly played with stitches in his ankle and was a passenger for much of the encounter. It was a surprise the Imps didn’t win by more, even with Simmonite withdrawing on 25 minutes, with Bressington his replacement.
The Pilgrims didn’t go down without a fight though, and just before the half-hour mark, they got one back. It was soft, to say the least, Matthewson passed back to Batch, who could pick the ball up in those days, but he fumbled, and Paul Wilson brushed past and bundled the ball home. It was tough to take – I had my nine-year-old chin resting on the granite wall behind the goal as it evaded Batch.
The deficit was only a single goal for a matter of minutes. City were pressing hard, and the impressive Beavon (words not written during his Imps spell) stopped a Clive Evans effort by hacking it off the line. Sadly for him, it fell to the feet of John McGinley, who gleefully converted to send the Imps in 3-1 up at the break.
Brolly’s injury ensured he didn’t come out for the second half, and Boston even replaced their keeper during the second period as well. Kerr, who had watched the Imps beaten on Sincil Bank quite a few times in the home dugout, was desperate not to see the same happen again, but he was bang out of luck.
After a second period in which the Pilgrims never looked like getting back into the game, the Imps went for the kill. David Beavon had cleared off the line no fewer than three times to keep the score respectable, but his efforts were in vain. It took more than forty minutes for City to kill the game, but it happened in style. Two minutes from time, their former hero stabbed them firmly in the back. Casey rampaged down the right flank and fed in Sertori, who turned his defender before slotting the ball past Millar.
With 90 on the clock, Casey was at it again, feeding in Sertori once more. This time, the striker strode free of a tired defence before sliding past the keeper from 15 yards and into the back of the net to bag himself a cheeky brace. When Mr Cruickshanks of Hartlepool blasted on his whistle, the score was 5-1 to the Mighty Imps.
“Boston’s back line had produced little to cope with City’s long balls and displayed and end of season tardiness,” wrote Julie Sherbourn in the Echo. “They could produce little to fend off Bob Cumming’s determination, whilst their forwards had few chances against the Imps’ well-drilled defence, particularly Matthewson’s aerial power”.
“Lincoln wanted to win more than us,” conceded Kerr. That is the difference between full-time and part-time in the overall approach. It’s a poor reflection on the rest of the team when Bobby Mitchell, coming to the end of his career, was Boston’s best player.”
To a degree, the win meant very little because a vivacious Barnet had smashed Maidstone at Underhill, winning 2-0 in front of a big crowd of 3510. City had two games in hand, but the win sparked a brief stumble; we drew at Cheltenham a couple of days later, then lost at Macclesfield. The fiery win against Wealdstone gave us hope, but back-to-back defeats at Bath City and Runcorn left us on the edge, as did a draw with Maidstone. Barnet’s form was terrible too; they picked up a meagre haul of two points from matches against Weymouth, Northwich, Wycombe, and Kidderminster. That left it all to play for with two matches to go, City on 76 points, Barnet on 77.
The Bees ended with Runcorn at home, who were fifth, and Welling away, who were fighting for their lives in 19th. City had two home matches, Stafford (4th) and Wycombe (18th). On April 30, my Nan, Granddad and almost all of my family lined up as part of the 4,402 fans at the front of the Railway End as City turned Stafford over 2-1, courtesy of goals from Phil Brown and Clive Evans. The tannoy told us that at Underhill, Runcorn had secured only the second win of any visiting team at Underhill, in front of 5,143 fans.
As you probably know, that meant all change at the top – City hit the summit for the first time in the season and knew a win against Wycombe would secure a return to the Football League at the first time of asking. You know the rest. I doubt very much we’ll get quite the same drama tomorrow. Let’s just hope we do a bit better than our last trip to Boston’s new ground.
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