A decade ago, Lincoln City unveiled Danny and Nicky Cowley as managers of the club. I was riddled with pain thanks to my deteriorating back, so I tuned in at home.
For five years, we’d meandered about in the National League, never really troubling the upper reaches. Gary Simpson’s squad should perhaps have done better. Chris Moyses was let down by certain players, eventually finding the threadbare squad not quite sufficient for a 46-game season.
17th, 16th, 14th, 15th and 13th. Those were our finishing positions, and we had won just once in ten matches going into the end of the season, loanees Robbie McDaid and George Maris helping us beat Chester. In that time we lost to Woking (3-2), Cheltenham (3-1) and Dover (4-1). We hadn’t won away since November 21st, a run of 174 days (ironic, our last defeat this season came on November 22nd).
This isn’t meant to be detrimental to the people at the club at the time; in fact, this was our best finish for five years. I want to paint a picture of how things were when Danny and Nicky arrived at the club.
“I know it’s early days and it is very easy to get caught up in hype, but there is no doubt Lincoln City FC have pulled off quite a coup by securing the services of these talented young men,” I wrote, ten years ago today.
“They’re sports scientists and professors of their craft. They understand success doesn’t just come from a motivational speech and bigger wages than the next team. They know there is a pattern and a method to achieve success, a combination of both hard work and fully understanding how and why everything is happening on and off the field.
“I’m confident they can use that to bring success back to Sincil Bank.”
I really like that line about understanding that success doesn’t come from just outspending everyone. That’s Lincoln City 2026, and you can see those roots further back than this. Chris Moyses couldn’t outspend as we were skint, and even after Clive arrived, we never tried to be the richest. Sure, we did spend well in League Two and the National League, but it always had that underpinned work ethic.
Danny and Nicky changed this club. They were the front-facing, customer-friendly facet of a club slowly being reborn. Danny would shake hands in Morrisons. They’d have a word for everyone, they remembered names, and I suspect they’d have gone to the opening of a fridge door if they were invited. They spread this Lincoln City infection into the city, and then added the catalyst of winning football to help it grow.
Ten years ago today, our club took the second or third step towards where it is today. From the nadir of five bottom-half finishes, they took a club that had tanked and rebuilt it, bit by bit. The first season was historic, with the FA Cup run, but that overshadows the hard work of grinding out win after win in the league, 46 matches and a single promotion place. On the field, we were outstanding for the level, but off it, it creaked a little under the success. The board built the club alongside the football, but the football’s success outstripped everything.
In Dan and Nick’s second season, I felt they proved more. They knew they were good in the National League; they took Braintree to the play-offs, no small achievement. They finished third in the season Dan and Nick were there, and they were relegated the season after. Still, now we were into uncharted waters, the Football League. We knew what it held, despite it now being the EFL, but they were supposedly just PE teachers.
Danny and Nicky Cowley In The EFL
12 months later, we’re in the play-offs and sitting on a second bit of silverware, the Checkatrade Trophy. More importantly, the EPC was built, we had a CEO shaping things off the field, a fan zone for supporters to enjoy, a new ticketing system, and a whole new club. Same people in many instances, but a club moving as fast off the field as it was on it.
12 months later, and we’ve got our first EFL title since 1976, in a division of big spenders. Mansfield and MK Dons certainly spent more, but thanks to football fortune, we were able to compete. Players like Harry Toffolo, Bruno Andrade and John Akinde might not have been cheap options, but they were the new face of the Cowley era. I think only Anderson and Rhead survived the second season in the EFL, and again, that is a credit to Dan and Nick. They had to rebrand to a degree, become a different beast than in the National League. We were maybe underdogs for a bit of 2017/18, but in 2018/19, as beaten play-off semi-finalists, we were among the favourites, and given that we stuffed Exeter 3-0 within weeks of the season kicking off, we made a statement.
We’re going up, and we did.
I’m told sometimes the football wasn’t pretty, but it won matches. It wasn’t quite John Beck, but we did prefer a back-to-front approach, something that seems fashionable today. We liked 4-2-3-1, the same formation many prefer today, and it feels a little like our management were ahead of the curve. Joey Barton made a jibe when facing the Cowleys later in their career that they still played four at the back, and nobody did that anymore. Hindsight is great.
When I see 2019/20 written down, I see the post-Christmas struggle for points, Conor Coventry and Tyreece John-Jules struggling for form. How different it might have been had Danny and Nicky not left on September 9th, 2019. We won four on the trot at the start of the season, scalping Huddersfield in the League Cup.
However, we had also won just one in six, with five defeats, and while the timing took us by surprise, I think the years that have since passed have added some context. Still, it didn’t stop tears, hand-wringing, and an outpouring of hate for two men who had taken us up two divisions and delivered three trophies and two semi-finals (FA Trophy and play-offs) in a little over three years.
Cowley Legacy
What is strange is that once they left, their on-field legacy was quickly dismantled. They had an older squad, Bostwick, Shackell, Frecklington, O’Connor and Eardley springing to mind. Michael Appleton quipped that it felt like Dad’s Army at the EPC, and within months, he reshaped the squad. Quickly, sure. Too quickly? Maybe. It was brutal, and by the time the 2020/21 season kicked off, the Cowley legacy, on the field, was ashes.
Off the field? It’s everywhere. The EPC is their legacy. Now, having a training ground feels natural; it feels like something we have always had, but that was them, pushing, fighting, maybe just stopping short of demanding better facilities. They knew what a proper football club needed, even from their ‘humble’ backgrounds in non-league. They were an early catalyst for structural improvements that have since been a cornerstone of our off-field development.
Their legacy runs beyond bricks and mortar. It runs beyond players in a squad. Their legacy is the support. The last time we had a sub-4,000 attendance for an EFL game was in 2011. They brought the club and the city together like never before. Again, I credit Chris Moyses with starting that, but nothing glues a club like wins and trophies, and in the decade since, it hasn’t dropped off. How many of today’s supporters started coming in 2016/17? I don’t look sneeringly at that, I see that as the point the club began to finally turn into the butterfly, after twenty years of being the caterpillar.
I regularly hear people talk about their ‘first game back’, and that’s Danny and Nicky’s legacy. They made Lincoln cool; they made it acceptable to wear red and white in the city. They often talked about Lincoln shirts springing up on the astroturf or in the supermarket, and that has never gone away. That should never be forgotten.
What Might Have Happened If They’d Have Stayed?
It’s a question I get asked a lot, and I can only answer with a guess. Nobody knows what would have happened. Danny and Nicky were great managers, and they are good people. They’re honest, always humble, and hopefully, if they read this, they’ll understand my point.
They’ll tell you they maybe shouldn’t have left, but I think for Lincoln City, it came at the right time. Yes, we were fifth with 12 points when they left, but there were cracks appearing. Wycombe had brushed us aside, 3-1, our third away defeat in a row. There was perhaps a feeling that the ageing squad did need some churn, but would Danny have done that? Even after he left, interviews with key players suggested we needed to ‘just do more of the same’. Would that have been enough?
The elephant in the room is Covid. Michael Appleton was brutal and not always complimentary of what he was left with. If we’d gone down over the 46 matches, then we’d have been in serious trouble, but March 2020 brought Covid. It brought a wage cap, and suddenly we were in a great position, having moved on many bigger earners and not renewed the contracts of the others. Covid was the curveball that turned what seemed like a decline into a solid opportunity.
I’m not saying the writing was on the wall for Danny and Nicky, but I do think both parties saw the future and increasingly realised change was needed. They didn’t want consolidation. I seem to recall they banned the word, or at least pulled people up when it was mentioned. The board saw a different track, needing to develop younger players, make us more financially sustainable while also keeping bums on seats. That philosophy wasn’t something that seemed to fit, and off the brothers went.
Conclusion
Ten years ago, two men came into our football club, and did a job nobody could have foreseen. I joked once in 2016/17 that we’d be in the Championship in ten years with them, and while they didn’t stay for the full journey, their stint in charge gave us the platform to go where we have gone this season.
When they left, it hurt, more than any manager leaving ever has. They almost felt like friends, they felt like part of the club, just like the Stacey West End, or the Imp. That was their personality, their culture, and when they left it felt like part of the club had been ripped out. It stung, and there was bitterness, a little from me, a lot from elsewhere.
Now, ten years on, it’s far easier to be objective. It’s far easier to see what they did, celebrate it, and acknowledge their role in making Lincoln City Football Club what it is today. I wish them all the best for their time at Colchester. I’d love to see them be a success once again, because they deserve it.
Also, part of me does miss seeing ‘Danny Cowley’ pop up on my phone, and knowing instantly I was about to lose an hour of my day to the sort of insight and honest analysis that every fan dreams of!
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