Michael Skubala’s Lincoln City took another huge stride towards Championship football with a hard-fought 1-0 win away at Exeter City.
City spurned a number of chances, with one coming as early as the first minute, but took the lead before the half-hour mark through Tom Hamer’s header. Thirty minutes later, the home side found their top gear, and it turned into a nail-biting finale, which we rode out.
With Cardiff drawing at Barnsley, it left us four points clear at the top of the table, but as Michael Skubala said post-match, it should have been more comfortable for us as the seconds wound down.
“I thought for 60 minutes we were great,” he told John Helm. “We looked the dominant team, we looked like we could score more, go and get the goals.
“Then in the second half, they started to get on top of us and risk more things, but without really creating any big opportunities.”
Exeter did pile forward after the break and probably caused us a few more heart-in-mouth moments than Cardiff City did. It was a fresh test of our promotion credentials, and one we passed with flying colours.
“They had lots of territory and they could risk things,” added Michael. “They could risk throwing bodies forward, centre-half stepping out higher, eights rolling outside the game and causing you a lot of problems.
“But we dealt with it well and the changes and the subs dealt with it well.”
The subs included Deji Elerewe, making his first appearcne for the Imps as the aerial onslaught commenced in the final moments. That is one part of the story of the game, and as Michael said, this game certainly had a different story from the Cardiff victory.
“Each game has a different story,” he concluded. “You have to come away. It’s been a long travel. We’ve travelled down to Cardiff. We’ve travelled down to Exeter. But I thought there were some unbelievable performances today as well.
“This game could have been 4-0. easily, but we didn’t quite get that, but in the end, you have to grind it out, and I think we ground out we were solid without them looking too threatening.”
Grind it out we did, and that fight continued after the final whistle with some pushing and shoving between both sets of players and staff. Michael, of course, was a peacemaker and settled things down, just as he plays down anything other than the last three points and the next three points.
However, he’s certainly on course to write his name into Lincoln City record books, whether that is with a 1-0 win, or a 4-0 win. Ten games to go to make history.
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