You always remember your first, right?
For most people, probably not, but I’m a man of firsts. First love, first game, first night game, first FA Cup game, first game as Poacher, first League Cup game… the list goes on. Actually, maybe it’s just football I remember. And Rebecca (surname omitted due to her actually being a real person).
I remember my first FA Cup game – we played Crewe Alexandra in 1987. At the time, City were a team languishing in the GM Vauxhall Conference, and we had to qualify for the first round. I did know what the FA Cup was, though. I’d marvelled at the 1987 final, Coventry and Spurs, not least because of Trevor Peake’s involvement. Anything Lincoln-related got me buzzing back then, as now, and to be in the actual FA Cup, which I’d seen on telly, gave the Imps a bit of credibility around school.
I also think it was the opening of the new St Andrew’s Stand (having found the Echo report, I can confirm it was). That’s odd in itself, because the next time I watch Crewe was from that stand, the first time I went in it (another first) and we lost 4-1. That was woeful, but luckily, November 1987 was not.
We won this game 2-1, and I remember a goal going in right in front of me at the Railway End of the ground. I’d be lying if I said I remembered much more – I actually misremembered, as I thought Geoff Thomas and Alan Pardew had played. Pardew was never even at Crewe, so where I got that from, I don’t know.
David Platt played, and he was involved in their late consolation, while John Pemberton was also part of their team. Seeing Platt was something of a bonus, because at the end of the season he was playing for Villa, and two years later he represented England at the 1990 World Cup. I remember the goal against Belgium he scored, the last-minute, last-gasp winner, and me telling Dad excitedly that we’d seen him play. Dad, never one for learning opponents, wasn’t really fussed.
Still, the win excited me, and I had a knack for going to wins – I’d seen us beat Enfield 4-0, Bath 3-0, and Barnet 2-1 that season, so I thought we were pretty much invincible. We drew Mansfield in the next round, a team I’d never heard of, so I imagined we’d be going on to play someone else after.
Sadly, confined to our living room at Chamber’s Farm Cottages, I had to listen to the 15-minute updates from Radio Lincolnshire – we didn’t even have a TV with teletext then, so me and my brother just kicked a makeshift football (two carrier bags done up tightly in elastic bands) around the room until we got told off for hitting the fish tank. City lost 4-3, which gave me my first taste of disappointment in the FA Cup.
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