This is very much a personal post focused on Lincoln City and not something deeper. One year ago wasn’t hugely special; we beat Burton Albion 1-0 thanks to a Sonny Bradley header. You might remember it.
I wasn’t there. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t. I was in the back bedroom of my childhood home in Wragby, hunched over my laptop while also sharing the screen on a little camping TV so my Dad could see. He was bedridden with brain and lung cancer, and every away game up to that point in the season saw me head over to his so we could watch football together.
I knew every game could be the last. I knew that Wrexham at home the season before had been our final match at the Bank together, and each time I stepped into the house, I knew it could be the last of any kind. I didn’t know this was the last, which is perhaps a comfort because if I had, I’d have paid little attention to the game.
Each time I went there, I tried to make it like a matchday for Dad. I’d taken him a Chinese on one occasion, and fish and chips on another. He was beyond Guinness, but I’d crack a can so it felt authentic. This game was fitting, as I picked up a big KFC from Louth and drove over. That was always a routine of ours on an away day journey home: find a service station with a KFC and chew over the game as well as the chicken. I had boneless, but Dad would sit there with his thick, workman’s fingers picking meat off the bone, grease everywhere. I’d give you everything I have in my bank account right now to watch him clumsily destroy a KFC in a soulless service station just off a motorway somewhere in the north of England.
He couldn’t manage bones by this stage: he was so poorly he had to be handed his chicken, but he was too proud to let me do it. This was a matchday, and while it might not include the Corn Dolly, Gwynne’s, the fan zone and maybe the Ivy, it did have routine, and it did have boundaries. I wasn’t going to feed him or treat him like an invalid, although he was fine with me dragging him up the bed a bit so he could get a better view.
I can’t remember the specifics of the game. I know Dad fell asleep a couple of times in the second half (just like the Kennedy years, I’m sure I joked) and at the end, I left the spare KFC for him to have in the week. We played Luton the week after, which I missed for a running event, then Chelsea, before beating Peterborough 3-0 the day before Dad died. We didn’t watch that together, as I had Covid and, rather ironically now I think back, I was worried it might be an issue for him.
I didn’t know what the second biggest change would be at that time. I knew the biggest was not having my Dad anymore. I think about him every day, usually within minutes of waking up. I dream he’s still here, and sometimes on TV, a plotline or some casual reference to someone’s Dad will have me fighting back the tears. Only one show, Extraordinary, has properly tipped me over the edge, and I had to leave the room in tears.
I expected that, or at least I knew it might be the case. What I didn’t expect was an almost instant change in the way I watch Lincoln. I tried a game or two in my seat with our football family, but I’d sit there and be aware of this gap behind me. Sometimes, with it being a spare seat, someone would budge up, and Dad’s seat would be taken, his spot filled by someone. Anyone. I struggled with that. I haven’t been into Gwynne’s since, and I think I’ve only had an actual pre-match beer once, maybe twice, in the last year.
I support Lincoln City; I always have and I always will. I just never realised how much of that support was entwined with my Dad. That might sound weird, and I knew that he and I bonded over football and it was a shared love, but I felt like we were pursuing our love of the club in the same place at the same time, and that made it our thing. I didn’t realise just how much my entire experience was driven by my bond with my Dad, if that makes sense. He took me to my first game, and that made my love of Lincoln as much about sharing something with Dad as a love of football. Over the years, I don’t think I just supported Lincoln; my Dad and I did. I can’t really put it into words, which is awkward for a man who pays the bills with words.
Perhaps a year ago, I wasn’t going to watch Lincoln with Dad to cheer him up, but rather to live out the final moments of our shared bond. I recall that at the time I’d suggested I watch home games with him as well, and he’d insisted not, and maybe that said something. Maybe that said he wanted me to start enjoying Lincoln City for just what it was, not because we shared it.
It’s crazy to think a year ago we celebrated our final goal. It feels like he’s been gone for much longer. Now, I watch Lincoln, and of course, I think of him every time- how he’d be loving the Championship, and I wonder what I’d be doing if he were still here. Back in 2019/20, I started covering games from the media box; I wanted to be a ‘proper’ journalist. I did a few, but I didn’t want to miss out on the time with my Dad, so I binned it off and went back to my seat. Would I be covering games from there now? I don’t think I would. I think I’d still be doing the Corn Dolly, Gwynne’s, the Treaty, maybe the Ivy on the way home.
The worst thing to ever happen in my life was, sadly, the key to unlock the one thing I’d always wanted. I always dreamed of being a proper old-school hack, covering the club like Julie Sherbourn, Maurice Burton, Brian Halford and Leigh Curtis. The only thing I valued more than that was my relationship with my Dad, because as a Mummy’s boy, my only real bonding with Dad began at age seven at Sincil Bank, and ended in front of the little camping TV, one year ago today.
I don’t know if I’ll feel as sad on September 28th, the first anniversary of his passing, as I do now, which might seem odd to some. My best times with my Dad were spent at football, in Wetherspoons in a town somewhere, eating breakfast. On a bus cracking cans, in the GBM Stand or at the Stacey West. I still visit him now, usually before every home game, on the memorial wall, or in Wragby cemetery. That’s a part of my new normal, a sad necessity of something I always dreamed of as I was growing up. The 28th is just the day he wasn’t here anymore. The 26th, thanks to COVID, was the last day I saw him; the 13th was the last time he got chicken all over his fingers, celebrated a goal and got bored (albeit thanks to the medication and not sideways passes) and switched off.
I think today is the anniversary I feel saddest about, because that was the last time we shared our thing. If he’s up there somewhere, he’ll take a crumb of comfort in knowing his passing was the catalyst for me realising a dream. I know he’d be proud.
But every so often, in a quiet moment in a press conference, or as the fans filter out of the Bank and I try to get a match report out, I think about Steve, Graham, Doddy, Gav, Nicki and the crew in Upper 3. I think about arguing over whose turn it is to pay for car parking, or him pretending to order a big breakfast when it was my round. I’ll think of him saying ‘are we having one more‘ as I drink up in the Treaty, or his delight at me finding ten minutes to pop in the Ivy for one with him on my way home. I think of the greasy fingers pulling apart a KFC, the bickering after we lost, the hugs lost in a moment as we score a goal.
I think of all those things, and I wish it were possible to live two lives simultaneously.
Miss you, Dad x
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