The first game of the season is always one of the highpoints
of the season and something that fans of all clubs from Real Madrid to Ashland
Rovers all look forward to as soon as the fixtures are released. For this
season though it seems even more special for several reasons.
I will start with the obvious one. Apart from last seasons playoff final this is the first Lincoln game I have attended since the Imps beat Burton 3-2 back in March 2020. Added to that it is the first Lincoln away game I have been to since a 3-1 kicking at Sunderland on the 4th of January 2020 (My birthday no less) It is also over a year since Baz, Felice and myself all attended the same match which given how many games we have done together since 1999 seems a totally crazy statistic. There have been plenty of false dawns during the pandemic and I for one am not thinking that this whole shit show is over but it does feel like better times may just be upon us and just getting to spend a day with friends, taking the piss out of each other all day, eating bad food and watching 22 blokes kick a bag of wind about for 90 plus minutes seems like a big step back on the road to recovery and something I don’t think fans up and down the land will take for granted again in a hurry.
Another reason is that I have always felt there is something
special about being away from home on the first day of the season and have
always thought its an advantage to be away on the opening weekend. My theory
for this is that if you lose an away game, you have a home game next up to get
back on track quickly. Get a poor result at home you then have one (or
sometimes) two away games up next and normally most sides find results away
from home harder to get than ones played in their home stadiums. Thus, a home
defeat can quickly turn into 2 or 3 games without a win and whilst its true the
league is a marathon and not a sprint its always important to get that first
win just to calm everybody down and keep both morale and confidence high. Over the past few years Lincoln seem to have
had quite a few “Home openers” as my American friends would say with only one
away opener since Lincoln came back into the Football League in the 17/18
season.
Thirdly over the years we have had some great trips on the
opening day of the season. Ranging from the jolly boy’s weekend at Bournemouth
in 99(which ended in a 0-2 defeat), the start of the Keith era at Kidderminster
(1-1) and the two wins in the respective recent title winning seasons, Woking
(3-1) in 2016/17 and Northampton (1-0) in 2018/19) The last time Lincoln were
away on opening day was the 1-1 draw at Wycombe on the Imps return to the
football league in 2017/18. I can
honestly only remember two duff away trips on the opening day of the season and
they both came at the Don Valley stadium when Rotherham beat Lincoln both times
when Jacko was in the dugout in 2008/09 and Chris Sutton in 2010/11. The Don
Valley was the worse ground I have ever watched League football at (it’s even a
contender to the worse place I have watched football at full stop) and given
Lincolns record at Rotherham is dogshit its perhaps not surprise that both
trips were stinkers.
 |
| The Don Valley. An awful place to watch football. |
The final reason is a more personal one and nothing to do with football. Being single now for over a year and for the second time in 4 years I have found Saturday night and all-day Sunday to be by far the most challenging for me mentally. For some reason Saturday seems to be couples’ night in pubs etc and has a different feel that other nights of the week. Add in the fact that Saturday TV is to be blunt shite it all adds for an awful feeling once the post-match reaction football shows have finished on the wireless. I mean I could paint Warhammer models and knock back a few German Biers, but this seems to only add to the sense that my life now seems a million miles away from somebody who is 42. With this match being a decent length journey wise it was a most welcome respite from this world I have been living in since May 2020. It means more conversations for longer into the day and generally keeping my mind was thinking about random crap.
With my personal income still reduced due to the pandemic I
am having to think carefully about away games and before the season I drew up a
priority list of away games that I would like to attend. This was before the
fixtures was announced and was based purely on grounds I hadn’t yet visited or
grounds that I knew would be great trips. Its fair to say that Gillingham were low
on the list and had this not been on opening or closing day or a relegation or
promotion decided I would have given this a bigger swerve than Felice gave
Nantwich town and Colyn Bay. This is not a particular slur on Gillingham as a
place, it’s just that there are about 20 odd places in this division that I
would rather visit. I have only been to “The land of shouting men” once before
and that was to see Lincoln take all 3 points back in 2008/09 on a cold evening
game courtesy of a last-minute winner. I don’t remember much about that night
bar the winner, a cracking goal from Geoff Horsfield and some decent pre-match
fish and chips.
But that was 2009 and this is 2021 so on with the show as it
were.
Alas much of the back end of the of the past week had been
waiting for the tickets to arrive. For the vast majority of games these days
tickets are required to be bought in advance instead of paying cash on the gate
thus it means ordering tickets in advance and waiting for the jolly postie to
deliver them. For the past 4 seasons this has been fine, and I have encountered
zero problems ordering said match tickets. However due to Gillingham sending
the tickets late it meant that tickets only went on sale 8 days before the
match. And when it got to Thursday and the tickets still hadn’t shown up, I
must admit I was a tad nervous. A quick check on twitter however seemed to
prove that many others were in the same boat. This seems to be down to the fact
that the post office is having a few staffing issues at the moment. Having put
out a tweet about it I received a couple of condescending replies about being
in a pandemic which completely missed the point of my original tweet. In much
the same way England’s top three batsman have been missing the ball in
England’s test matches this summer.
Then just after 1.00pm it was announced that the event of
any tickets not arriving Gillingham would be able to re-print them off at the
away upon arrival. Now on the one hand this was great news, but I must admit
that at the back of my mind was the feeling that things could still go tits up.
As most fans who are well travelled in the footballing world will tell you away
stewards etc can be known to make things as awkward as the can for away fans. However,
I am delighted to say that the chap dealing with this at the away turnstiles
was first class and gaining admission to the ground was a doodle.
The day featured a 10am departure time and with the spirit
of the Duke Of Edinburgh in our hearts we made good time. The only real awkward part with a trip to
Gillingham is that parking appears to be a bit of a pain in the arse. We
arrived just before 2pm and it took a good 15-20 mins to find a space. It’s one
of those grounds where local knowledge would be a bonus. Failing that some
pre-journey research would have helped, alas we had neither. We did manage to
get parked up about 10 minutes’ walk from the ground, but I wouldn’t have liked
to rock up 30 mins before kick off and be looking for somewhere to park. However
awkward they are too park at I much prefer grounds to be in the centre of the
town that on the outskirts with nothing but overpriced fast-food outlets
surrounding them.
As todays blog is a tad longer than normal, I will go into my
thoughts and expectations for the Imps this season on next weeks blog and just
talk a little about this match. Before a ball was kicked, I would have taken a
point at Gillingham. The Gills are managed by fan favourite Steve Evans of whom
plenty has been written about so there is no need for me to add to the coverage
he gets. What I will say though is you know that apart from all the touchline
antics and mind games he comes out with you know his sides will be organised
and have a game plan. It’s a very basic plan and its one that a “Footballing
mind” should be able to out coach in theory but in reality, a very tough one to
overcome and requires a lot of mental strength not to fall into his traps. In a
way it’s like the John Beck system but not quite as good. Steve Evans may have
lost his knack of getting teams promoted and you can forget about blooding
youngsters into a team (see his work, or lack of it at Mansfield for this) but he
won’t get a club relegated and will just about keep them in the hunt for a top
half finish.
Lincoln started the game much the better side and were
knocking the ball around nicely. After not being at games for so long it took a
while to work out who was who etc but that didn’t really matter as it just felt
fantastic to be back at a game. When the Imps took the lead after only four minutes
it felt like they would pick up where they left off last season after having
the best away record in League One. Sadly, from our perspective Gillingham
started to get into the game and it wasn’t a huge surprise when they equalized one
minute before the break. It was a sloppy goal to conceded and only just
squirmed over the line, but they all count as they say. Quite often in football
a goal just before halftime can really be a hammer blow for the side that conceded
it but thankfully this Lincoln side is made of sterner stuff. There were one or
two half chances for the hosts in the second half but at the final whistle a
point each was fair in my view. I know todays write up on the actual game was
brief but today felt more about the day than the game is you get my drift.
We had decided that we would be eating post game instead of
pre match given that none of us had any plans for the evening (That’s been the
story of my life for much of the last 18 months) Gillingham didn’t really
appeal as a place to dine and once you get to the A1 motorway heading north you
are very limited, so we decided to head for the town of Bishop Storford to get
our first kebab of the season. Back in 2010 Baz and I attended a pre-season
game between Bishop Storford and Lincoln and had a pre-game kebab at the
wonderfully named “Kebabery” takeaway. After a quick detour to park up at
Sainsburys we were soon munching on large Lamb donners that came in at £8.50
and came will tubs of sauce and salad for you to add yourself instead of being poured
on by the chef. Somehow this made them taste even better.
So, all in all a decent start to the season. The Imps didn’t
lose, we ate well, and fun was had by all. After the past 18 months today felt
better and hopefully a sign of things to come. Now if England could just get
better at batting and a could get a reply from a facebook message or two that I
have sent then things really will be looking up!
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