4. ‘Pesky Imps’
This one is entirely personal, and I can’t pretend otherwise. Whenever I see “pesky Imps”, something inside me recoils.
Wasps are pesky. Flies are pesky. That itch you can’t quite reach is pesky, and none of those things strikes me as a particularly stirring identity for a football club.
“Teams like Lincoln” makes sense to me because it reflects something we’ve heard from opposition supporters. “Little old Lincoln” has a similar appeal when we’re upsetting somebody who believes we ought to know our place. I understand where those come from and why people embrace them.
“Pesky Imps” sounds like something a villain in a 1930s comic would shout after we’d foiled his plan to steal the village fete takings. I can’t imagine an opposition dressing room genuinely lamenting the prospect of facing those pesky Imps.
Perhaps there’s an origin I’ve missed, but it feels like we’ve given ourselves a nickname and then insisted everyone else use it. It’s the football equivalent of the kid at school announcing that, from now on, everyone should call him Ace.
You might love it. I just want it to stop.
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