Why It Was Always Going To Be Chelsea

In our Discord Patreon chat on Tuesday morning, I predicted the future with astounding accuracy.

I said we’d beat Burton 1-0 (that bit was luck) and that it would result in us getting Chelsea at home (that bit was fate). It might seem dramatic, it might seem a bit Mystic Meg, but in my mind, it was never in doubt. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll tell you why and give you a glimpse into my mind in the process.

I have always been destined to do what I do, write about the club, be the mascot and all that. I firmly believe that.

The day before I was born, Colin Murphy took charge of his first Imps game, and it was the last to take place at Sincil Bank before I emerged. Prophetically, the referee was Mr Hutchinson. When I first saw that as a young kid on a programme collection, I thought it was cool. Years later, when I met my wife, it made more sense – Mr Hutchinson was from Bourn in Cambridgeshire. Fe was living in Cambourne, a new town which took its name from the nearby hamlet of Bourn.

Fate? Coincidence? Read on.

I first came to like football during the 1986 World Cup, and the following season, as punishment for swearing, I was made to go to the football with Dad one Sunday as Mum didn’t want a potty-mouthed seven-year-old around. We went to a game against Hartlepool. I loved it and decided I was a Lincoln fan. I’ve told the story many a time, but Dad suggested I also pick a big club, so I didn’t get bullied. He passed me a Panini sticker album and told me to choose. I suspect he hoped I’d pick Chelsea, his second club, or maybe the dominant Liverpool.

Nope. Luton Town. I shit you not.

For a couple of years, I was the ‘Lincoln and Luton’ kid until I realised that being ginger, I didn’t need a shield from bullies because they’d find me anyway. I slowly phased out the Luton thing, but still looked out for their results.

On the weekend of my 20th birthday, City met Luton for the first time in competitive action since I was born, which seemed fated. We were relegated at the end of the season, but remarkably, we drew them in the FA Cup the following season. The date of the game? 19th November, 1999. My 21st birthday. I couldn’t go, but as fate luck would have it, the game was picked for Sky Sports, and I watched it in another room of the Adam and Eve in Wragby, while my party went on next door.

Since then, we’ve met plenty, but it always stuck in my head that my two teams (as a youth, not now) meeting each other on my 21st birthday was just fate.

There are other, club-specific things that seem fated. We played at Southport on the way into the National League in 2011, and the way out in 2017. We won the GMVC to be promoted back to the league by beating Wycombe at home in 1988, only to go away to Wycombe for the first game back in 2017. Little things like that, not personal, are still an indication of football’s patterns.

Honesty time, many of you know my Dad is very poorly. He’s been my best friend first and foremost, and my Dad alongside that, and we’ve been to hundreds of games together, from October 5th, 1986, right through to May 3rd, 2025. He and I bonded over football, always, and alongside Lincoln, he supported Chelsea.

I say supported, he’s not been too crazy about them for a few seasons now, I think the Premier League lost him somewhere along the way, but he was Chelsea, picked to have a successful team alongside the poor City outfit of the late 60s and early 70s. My brother, Paul, took Chelsea as his team and for a while, Dad had a Chelsea room, packed with memorabilia. My offering? A programme from our friendly against Chelsea in 1973, in the absence of an actual meeting.

Dad is now bed-bound at home; Sincil Bank is not a place he’s going to be able to visit. I’m watching all the away games with him, but I haven’t been able to convince him I should stay away and watch the home ones there as well. He wants me at the Bank, and he won’t take no for an answer. Anyway, the cold, hard fact is he may not see another FA Cup Third Round draw. This was the last chance for us to get his other team in a competition.

That’s why it was inevitable.

The odds, roughly, of us getting Chelsea at home were around 1.6% by the way. This wasn’t like a regionalised thing. Sure, the European seeding did help, but we could still have drawn any team. I waited for it to start, watching it simply as a cup draw but, deep down, knowing it meant more to me.

Honesty time, part two. I cried when the draw came out. There is a reason for this, and in the spirit of constantly oversharing, I’ll tell you why. These last few weeks, and the weeks and months ahead, are fucking hard. I have experienced loss before, but not a parent. I’m blessed in that I can still see my Dad now, but going through a time like this makes you question everything. I think they call it an existential crisis, and I have lain in bed at night, wondering. After this, will I see Dad again? Is there a bar at the end of the world, where your loved ones wait for you, one in behind, ready for your arrival?

I pinned something on this draw. It’s stupid, I know, but in my mind, if there is something bigger than you and me, a plan, something else other than the here and now, then we’d draw Chelsea at home. Mock me if you wish, I’m not religious, but the other night I prayed for a sign that there was a better place, that beyond Dad’s suffering and the heartbreak, there was more, that his condition is temporary in the grander scheme of things.

When Chelsea came out of the hat, I got my sign. Perhaps the tears were not at the draw, but at finding some solace, maybe some comfort. Dad will hopefully get to see his two teams play, albeit on television, and maybe even share some of the absolute joy I’ve had alongside him with my brother on the evening.

It’s funny, the League Cup has always been the one I’d bin off, and I’ve never really been that invested – I found out we’d got Bristol City a few years ago the morning after. But this season, it’s a little different. This season, it mattered, and this season, it delivered.

The result doesn’t matter. The star-studded lineup doesn’t matter. The fact that we’ll be hosting the World Champions doesn’t matter.

All that matters for me is that I got my sign.

Up the Imps.