Defeat. Lincoln City fans haven’t tasted it that much in 2026, but back-to-back defeats have welcomed us into the Championship.
Last week we could forgive, but today’s defeat hurt. We haven’t conceded three at home since Wycombe in November 2024, and we haven’t lost by two goals at home since Wrexham on the final day of the 2024/25 season. It isn’t a nice feeling, and I’d forgotten what it felt like.
There is a horrible temptation after a defeat like this to look for something enormous that went wrong. A tactical disaster, a team that did not turn up, players who are not good enough, a manager who got something badly wrong. I am not sure any of those things really apply to the game. Instead, I think we have just had our first really uncomfortable demonstration of what life in the Championship might be like. We created moments, Portsmouth created moments, and they were better than us when those moments arrived. That sounds ridiculously simplistic, but sometimes football really is that simple.
The club put an enormous amount of effort into getting the game on. One staff member talked to me about a 17-hour day on Friday. Things weren’t perfect, but if the biggest moan we have is adverts on the scoreboard, then credit to the club. It feels like one of those moments where it goes right and everyone just accepts it, but if it had gone horribly wrong, it might have been different. I liked the video before the game, despite moaning about it at Boro last weekend, so I’m a perfect hypocrite. Turns out, when it is our history and our video, I quite like it.
For the opening ten minutes, I thought we were excellent. In fact, watching those early exchanges, I genuinely thought we were going to win the game. We were aggressive, energetic and playing at exactly the tempo I wanted to see. Portsmouth were being pinned back, we were winning second balls, Freddie Draper was scrapping for everything and the set pieces were coming thick and fast. There were corners, long throws and pressure, and Sincil Bank was responding to it. Everything about those opening few minutes looked like the Lincoln City we have come to expect, and there was nothing there to make me think Portsmouth were about to take control of the afternoon.
The problem was that we did not make it count. Freddie did brilliantly to create an opening for Ben House, and Ben found himself with the sort of opportunity that has to become a goal more often at this level. I am not going to dig Ben out because I thought he had a really good first half. His running caused Portsmouth problems, he occupied defenders, and he worked tirelessly, but there are moments now where being good is not necessarily enough. In League One, you can create that chance, force the keeper into a save and talk about the excellent movement afterwards. In the Championship, increasingly, I suspect the teams that survive are the ones whose forwards create that chance and then put it into the net.
Adam Reach then forced Nicolas Schmid into an excellent save from the free kick, and suddenly we had produced two significant opportunities without scoring. Portsmouth then went up the other end and Ryan Kavuma-McQueen scored with their first meaningful attack. That, for me, was the first little lesson of the afternoon. There was nothing especially clever about what Portsmouth had done before that point. They had not passed us to death, they had not overwhelmed us physically, and they had not carved us open repeatedly. They got a moment and took it. We had already had our moments and had not. At this level, that difference is enormous.
There was some fortune involved in the goal because of the deflection, and on another afternoon the ball hits Tom Hamer and goes somewhere harmless. Perhaps 80 times out of 100 it does exactly that. However, there is another way of looking at it. Maybe the quality of the strike is what turns a block into a deflection that flies into the net. Maybe that is what Championship players do slightly better. I do not know if that is stretching the point too far, but what I do know is that Portsmouth were suddenly ahead in a game in which we had started much better, and I thought the goal visibly affected us.
That was disappointing because the atmosphere before it had been excellent. There was a real sense of occasion around the place, that feeling that Championship football had finally arrived home. We had started like a team determined to make the afternoon memorable. Had Ben scored, or had Adam’s free kick beaten Schmid, the place would have erupted, and perhaps the entire complexion of the contest would have changed. Instead, Portsmouth scored, the atmosphere naturally dipped and, for ten minutes or so, we seemed to lose some of the composure that had made us so effective at the start.
Even the dependable Conor McGrandles gave the ball away a couple of times; we stopped looking quite so comfortable, and Portsmouth began getting onto us more quickly. Marlon Pack brought experience and know-how to the middle of the park, and suddenly their players appeared that fraction stronger and sharper in individual situations. That was perhaps the most surprising thing for me because I did not look at Portsmouth before the game and think they were streets ahead of us. I certainly did not see anything to suggest their players were considerably better than Middlesbrough’s last weekend, yet there were periods where Portsmouth made the Championship look a much bigger jump than Middlesbrough had.
Then came Adrian Segecic’s free kick. I have no complaints about the decision to award it, but I am still not entirely convinced by how easily it ended up in the net. It is close enough that getting the ball over a wall and down again is difficult, so once that wall is protecting one side of the goal, I would expect the goalkeeper to have a reasonable chance of covering the other. There is a slight deflection from Conor, but I do not think that is what prevents us from saving it. It is an excellent strike, certainly, but this is where the same theme comes back again. Give Championship players an opportunity to demonstrate quality, and they will do it.
At 2-0, I actually thought we responded well. Portsmouth had another threatening moment from a corner, but we were not going to play a Championship game without them creating chances. Those afternoons where we went 90 minutes barely allowing the opposition a sight of goal were always going to become much rarer after promotion. We are going to have periods where teams are on top of us, we are going to have shots flying towards our goal, and there will be moments where simply surviving pressure is important. What mattered was getting ourselves back into the game, and that is exactly what we did.
The penalty came from another set-piece situation, with us keeping the pressure alive around the edge of the area, and Reeco Hackett stepped forward to score it. I thought that took some character because he was getting plenty from the travelling Portsmouth supporters, although I am not entirely sure why. Reeco did not engineer his departure from Portsmouth in some controversial way and certainly did not deserve the reception he was getting, but football crowds do what football crowds do. He ignored all of it, put the penalty away and suddenly the whole mood changed again. At 2-1, I genuinely thought we were coming back into the game.
There were individual performances that gave me encouragement as well. Dom Jefferies’ work rate was absolutely phenomenal. There were moments where he was chasing balls that most players would have accepted were lost, forcing throw-ins and trying desperately to keep us moving up the pitch. Freddie was the same, battling for everything and refusing to give Portsmouth’s defenders a comfortable afternoon. That endeavour matters because we are going to need it every single week, but the other part of the equation is finding the extra quality to go alongside it. Work rate can get you a long way, and it got us an awfully long way last season, but Championship opponents are increasingly going to have players capable of doing something decisive when the opportunity arrives.
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