2017/18 EFL Trophy Winners: Lincoln City
For me, the weakest of the trophies. Imagine a club that hadn’t seen silverware in 40 years suddenly winning four trophies, and a writer arrogant enough to deem one of them ‘the weakest’.
The 2017/18 season, for many, would be a huge success. We didn’t have the biggest League Two budget, but we were competitive, and we flirted all season with the top seven. That in itself, after winning the National League, was pretty important I think. We secured a play-off spot on the last day, then, a little depleted, went to Exeter and just didn’t quite have the firepower. They were there for the taking, in my opinion. We’d done them at our place a couple of weeks before but we went there patched up and a little short on bodies.
That lesson would be learned a year on.
The story of the season was Wembley. Everyone had been to Wembley at this point, even those famous for not going. Everyone, of course, except us. Growing up, the quiz question about which teams had not played at Wembley hurt me. I always maintained that because of 75/76, we were the best team ever (points tally nobody could ever beat). The counterpoint was ‘you have never played at Wembley’.
The cup run was good, beating an Under 21 team felt like a gimmee, but when you see what those players have gone on to achieve in world football, it wasn’t easy. Shrewsbury were flying in League One, the upper reaches of this alien land we knew little about.
Our support was incredible that day, but might I suggest why? 2016/17 attracted a lot of new fans, fans who had not been to JPT games, or AWS ties, or dead rubber matches in the FRT. This was a competition, a chance of Wembley, it was not beset on all sides by doubters and knockers. Some football fans felt Lincoln sold their soul when we travelled in huge numbers, but this is a side who got knocked out of the FA Trophy a couple of years prior against Bradford Park Avenue and Carshalton. When success came knocking, there was no pride, only redemption.
In terms of our trophies, this comes fourth, but you can’t tell me I didn’t feel utter elation when Whitehouse scored, because I bloody did.
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