It has been a long old time now since Lincoln City last tasted success with the EFL Trophy win, followed by the League Two title in 2018/19, but the domestic 2025/26 League One campaign under 43-year-old manager Michael Skubala has been nothing but phenomenal.
On Saturday afternoon, our first team squad welcomed midtable side Wycombe Wanderers to Sincil Bank, and Imps fans up and down the country knew that it would be a day of celebration regardless of what ultimately happened across the course of 90 minutes. A day that we would all hopefully like to repeat as soon as possible, as there will be some fans who are relishing their chance to find out how much are Premier League tickets in the next few seasons.
As it was, the game was quite the emotional rollercoaster with goals from Jack Moylan, a brace from Reeco Hackett and a final effort from Tendayi Darikwa taking us to a 4-3 victory – it also took us to the always desired and celebrated points tally of 100 and not only have we absolutely nailed promotion back to the Championship with the League One title this year, doing it with 100 points with a complete dead rubber to come against Port Vale is just doing it in style.
With the Valiants clash away from home in the curtain-closing final day of action this year, Saturday afternoon was always going to be just a massive party, so coming out with that win to notch up 100 was just the icing on the cake and the cherry on top really.
Since reaching the Play Off Final and missing out back in the 2020/21 campaign, we had been slowly building and edging ever closer back to a more sustained Play Off push with 17th, 11th and 7th place league finishes coming in more recent years – but we absolutely blew it out of the water this term by quite the margin with only five defeats suffered, and 41 goals conceded (both are league bests).
Once fans recover from this round of celebrations and the build-up quickly begins for the Vale clash, everybody will begin to turn attentions to the coming 2026/27 Championship campaign and life back in the second tier of the English game – our first for 65-odd years. We all know it will be tough and when you look at the wider world of football and the modern game, then the odds will be stacked against us in many way, particularly the financial sides of the current game, but no one should be kidding themselves as to how monumental just simple survival and consolidation would be as the club continues to grow.
Whether or not that comes to pass remains to be seen, but there will be few at all who are associated with Lincoln in any way who are not crossing everything and hoping beyond belief that this will be the eventual outcome, irrespective of how small a margin it may be achieved. If not, we dust ourselves down and go again with hopefully a small boost to the coffers over all, as well as a chunk of experience that players and staff can build on in the years to come as we look to correct whatever avoidable mistakes we may make at this time of asking.
And we can just enjoy it.
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