Seat 140, Row F, Upper 5, GBM Stand, LNER Stadium, Sincil Bank, Lincoln. The name of the stand, and the stadium itself, may have changed occasionally over the years, but that particular seat has been home to my dad’s Lincoln City season ticket since the start of the 1995/96 season.
Ever since I can remember, my dad has been completely obsessed with Lincoln City. It is the thing he has always been most passionate about. An unadulterated love affair with the club. Whether it be the endless subject of his conversation over the years or cause for the type of mood he happened to be in, the fortunes of the mighty Imps would generally be at the forefront.
The first game he attended was on 14 January 1961, at nine years of age. He went to the game with a school mate, paid to get into the ground with pocket money he had saved up doing various chores for his dad, and he hadn’t even told his parents that he was going to the game. I guess things were a little different back then. City lost the match 2-1 to Sunderland that day, with Bert Linnecor scoring Lincoln’s goal. My dad was hooked.
That season, Lincoln were playing in the old Division Two (the equivalent of the Championship now) and it is the last time they have played at that level. They finished bottom of the league with 24 points from their 42 games that season, nine points adrift of second-from-bottom Portsmouth, and have not since returned to that sphere of the football pyramid.
Over the remainder of that first season and then for the next few years while still at school, my dad would attend as many games at Sincil Bank as his pocket money would allow. He would choose matches based on the likelihood of seeing a City victory, preferring to watch them play teams towards the bottom of the league, rather than saving himself and his money for games against any so-called bigger teams in the division who might be higher up in the table.
It was probably a tough job picking out winnable games, however, seeing as Lincoln finished third-from-bottom the next season (1961/62) and were relegated again. They barely fared much better the following season, finishing in 22nd place, by now down in Division Four. Was my dad some sort of a jinx? Who knows? But it seems to sum up his support of Lincoln City perfectly well – he certainly never got into it purely for the glory.
Once employed after leaving school, dad became a regular at all the home games and began going to watch the Imps at away games too whenever he could. Success during this period did not come quickly or often. Following those back-to-back relegations when he began his courtship with Lincoln, they spent the next fourteen consecutive seasons in Division Four, until they won the title in 1975/76.
I have been brought up on what seems like a broken record of repeated anecdotes from my dad about City teams and players from a bygone era before my own memories of the club began. Obviously, the Graham Taylor dynasty was a big mainstay of this. There are facts and pieces of information and players names that were ingrained into me at an early age, and will no doubt stay with me until the day I die. Sam Ellis, John Ward, Percy Freeman and Dave Smith are just a few examples of players I’ve heard much about without ever getting close to seeing them play myself. The points record in winning that Division Four title in 1975/76 is a key example – did you know that Lincoln would have got 106 points that season had the change to three points for a win been introduced at that time? I do. What I couldn’t tell you is how many times I’ve heard my dad mention it, because I lost count of that many moons ago.
Once he started a family (I was the first child to arrive, in 1979), the away days were scrapped and he had to make do with just attending City’s home games. Dad was quick to embrace us all with his love of football and, much to my mother’s dismay and my father’s immense pride, my first word was, “Goal!” Evidently, this coincided with the regularity of my dad repeatedly raising my arms aloft and excitedly saying that particular word when he was required to entertain me as a baby. It clearly hadn’t taken him too long to invest me into his passion for football.
City had only lasted three seasons in Division Three after that famous title winning season of 1975/76, before being relegated back down to Division Four following a woeful season where they finished bottom of the table with a mere seven league wins all season. However, the fortunes of his beloved team were about to improve as a new decade began, with the team securing promotion in 1980/81 with a second place finish and then narrowly missing out on a further promotion the following season, when they claimed fourth spot in Division Three. Other than that very first season as a nine-year-old when he watched them in the second tier, this remains the highest league position that my dad has ever witnessed Lincoln finish in.
He clearly had very fond memories of this period and has often since eulogised about some of the players from that team. One in particular is Glenn Cockerill and he tells a story of how he managed to grab a word with him a few years ago at a Lincoln City function where Glenn attended as an After Dinner Speaker. Despite being in awe of one of his favourite ever players, he composed himself enough to talk about that era and how much he had admired him as a player. He even mentioned that one of his sons had been born around that time, intimating that this had influenced the choice of name. When a flattered Glenn asked if the son had been named after him, my dad promptly answered, “No, we decided to call him Andrew in the end,” with a huge grin on his face. Dad’s sense of humour has never been to everyone’s taste and the likelihood is it probably baffled Glenn Cockerill somewhat.
Continuing a theme of eulogising about ex-City players from this era, I remember watching the 1987 FA Cup Final together with my dad at home. My abiding memory from that game is not Keith Houchen’s famous diving header, but the fact my dad spent almost the entire game banging on about Trevor Peake and reminiscing about his performances for Lincoln in the early 1980’s. For the record, and in his opinion, the central defensive partnership of Peake and Thompson is the best in his lifetime and Trevor Peake is the best centre half he’s ever seen pull on a City shirt.
Having said that, anyone who has ever pulled on a City shirt has generally been a hero to my dad. At least while they have remained an Imp, anyway. I can honestly say that I’ve never once in my life heard my dad berate or ridicule a Lincoln City player and he would certainly never consider booing the very players he had attended a game to support. He just would not countenance saying a bad word against someone playing for the team, or anything (or anyone) involved with the club. Some people (myself included) may have at times accused him of blind loyalty, but his stance is certainly a refreshing anomaly in comparison to the way many fans behave these days, where constant criticism, at times often unnecessary, unhelpful and unwarranted in various measures, is shouted from the stands and from behind phones and keyboards all too quickly at and about players and officials of the club.
Being so passionate about Lincoln City, it is clearly little surprise that he was keen to showcase his true love to his children. I have very little, if any, recollection of the first football match that dad took me and my brother to at Sincil Bank. It was on 14 December 1985 and Lincoln were at home to Cardiff City. I was six years old and had been forced to wait to attend a game with my dad until my younger brother (two years younger than me and not called Glenn) was deemed old enough to go as well.
I have absolutely no idea why my dad chose this specific game, deciding to wait until a match in mid-December to take his two beloved sons to stand on an open terrace for a couple of hours on a presumably bitterly cold Saturday afternoon? Possibly this was a test – how much do you really want to go to a game? Maybe it was a lesson that being a football fan was something to be endured rather than enjoyed? Either way, my brother hated it and wanted to go home within minutes of the game commencing. My dad eventually relented with about ten minutes of the game remaining and the three of us headed home with Lincoln 1-0 down. I imagine this must have really irked my dad at the time as I cannot recall him ever leaving any other City match before the final whistle has sounded.
Apparently, when we arrived home, my mum commented that she assumed my dad would be in a terrible mood. He realised what she was referring to when he checked the final scores to see that Lincoln had eventually lost 4-0. It turned out that my brother’s protestations at being there and our earlier than planned exit from Sincil Bank had relieved my dad from witnessing three late Cardiff City goals. A somewhat minor silver lining, but one all the same.
That particular season saw Lincoln relegated from Division Three after a five-year stint at that level, and worse was to come. For the second time as a supporter, my dad witnessed back-to-back relegations, as Lincoln dramatically and devastatingly finished bottom of Division Four in the 1986/87 season and became the first club to be relegated out of the league and down to the GM Vauxhall Conference following the introduction that year of automatic promotion and relegation between the two divisions.
It was around this time that I found out that my dad smoked, having never previously been aware this was an occupation he partook in. Looking back, I can barely blame him considering the situation that was unfolding to his beloved team. City somehow managed to go from Play-Off hopefuls sitting in seventh position in January of that year to dropping like a stone and landing on that bottom position in the table for the first time on the very last day of the season. During those latter months of the 1986/87 season on Saturday afternoons when City had an away game, after we had watched Final Score on Grandstand, he would quietly skulk out of the back door of our house. For obvious reasons, he tended to need some time alone after hearing the results, and I remember watching him from the window as he paced up and down our back garden with only a cigarette and his legitimate worries for company.
The following season, however, brought success with Lincoln securing an immediate return to league football after winning the Conference title. This was the first season that I began going regularly to the games with my dad and memories of that season are firmly and fondly embedded in my head. My favourite player that season was Phil Brown, who finished as the top scorer with 20 goals. For dad, it was all about the returning saviour, Colin Murphy. He would later hand me copies of the Lincoln City fanzine, The Deranged Ferret, to help explain his affection for the man. Obviously, the last game of the season against Wycombe Wanderers when we won to take the title is the main occasion that resonates most from that season. My man, Phil Brown, got the decisive second goal and then there was the pitch invasion at the end of the game to celebrate. I thought it was going to be like that every season.
My dad, though, reasoned with me that, from his experience, success wasn’t always likely to be guaranteed. One of his mantras over the years has been, “The defeats make the victories taste sweeter.” I guess that when you have supported a team for such a long period and have been witness to more than your fair share of lows it does put some perspective on how you treat all those defeats and how you enjoy the highs when they do come along. Over the years, I have tended to point out to him in much more blunt terms that as a Lincoln City fan for so long, he needed to find some positives from all the games he’d seen them lose.
Back in the Football League and home games at Sincil Bank became a family affair, with season tickets purchased by dad for him and his two eldest sons, along with his own parents, in the St Andrew’s Stand. There then followed ten consecutive seasons in the fourth tier of the football pyramid with only the occasional hint of a realistic promotion charge or a relegation scrap, until the 1997/98 season when City finished third in the table and squeezed into the final automatic promotion spot.
Until then, the main highlights during this decade of football had been Lincoln moving up a division, from Four to Three, by virtue of a name change after the Premier League was introduced, and the building of the Linpave Stand (now known as the GMB Stand) on the Sincil Bank side of the stadium, which dad moved into at the beginning of the 1995/96 season. Additionally, there was the John Beck managerial era, which brought with it a fair share of interesting aspects, not least him being arrested by HM Customs and Revenue moments before the start of a home game. He was certainly a manager who divided opinion amongst the fans during his stint at the club but, as long as he was the man in charge, he received my dad’s unequivocal support.
This period also involved dad taking a keen interest in football beyond Lincoln City, with him following the exploits of his two eldest boys in the local youth football scene. Imagine my dad’s delight when, many years on from that very first game he went to watch at Sincil Bank, he realised that my brother was playing in the same team as Bert Linnecor’s grandson. He would spend most of the games stood with Bert on the sidelines chewing his ear off about matches he’d seen him play in during those early days as a City supporter.
When I was twelve, Lincoln City entered a team into the youth league that I played in and our league match against them was chosen to be played at Sincil Bank. Afterwards there was a reception held in the Directors Lounge to celebrate their new team joining the league. I assumed dad would love the whole occasion, especially seeing me play on the hallowed turf of Sincil Bank. However, we beat them 4-1 and dad later admitted that he’d found it extremely difficult to support the other team when it was Lincoln involved in the game, despite his supposed family loyalties. This comment and his devotion to the club was not altogether unexpected though, having witnessed his passion for Lincoln City at such close quarters.
Having finally climbed out of the fourth tier of English football, City lasted a meagre year before immediately making a return after finishing the 1998/99 second from bottom in Division Two. The Chairman, John Reames, appointing himself as manager following the departure of Shane Westley three months into the season is probably one of the more memorable and unusual elements of that year. My dad would go on to watch his beloved City play in Division Three (and then League Two when it was renamed again in 2004) for the next twelve consecutive seasons, but it was not without incident.
In May 2002, Lincoln City entered into administration and there was a huge possibility that the club could fold around this time. My Dad was obviously extremely worried about this bearing in mind how much he lived and breathed the club. By this stage of his life he had given up smoking, but it would not have surprised me if the troubles that Lincoln were in had forced him to re-evaluate that particular decision. It really hit home exactly how much the club meant to him though when I talked to him about it and the chances that his club could fold, and he came out with what, for me, are his immortal words, “I like you and your brothers, but I love Lincoln City.”
I’m sure he was just caught up in the moment and the situation, but I respected his honesty and admired his passion for the club. To be fair, he also claimed that, while they were still married, my mum had once complained, “You think more about Lincoln City than you do about me,” to which he had replied, “I think more about Grimsby Town than I do about you!” I think this helps to emphasise the level to which his devotion to the club rests and the pecking order of his priorities (and why his marriage didn’t last!).
Fortunately, City were able to continue existing and the administration they were forced to enter into to survive was prior to the point deductions subsequently introduced by the Football League for similar discrepancies. Incredibly, despite being one of the relegation favourites, City went on to reach the Play-Off Final the following season, losing 5-2 to Bournemouth at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. Having never played at Wembley before, I think there was slight disappointment for my dad (and many other Lincoln supporters) that the new Wembley Stadium was being developed at that time, so they didn’t have the opportunity to play the game at the home of football. However, it was just a relief for him and cause for celebration that the club was still around to participate in a game of this nature.
Remarkably, City would end up finishing in the Play-Off places for five consecutive seasons during this period but were unable to gain promotion on each occasion. They were back in Cardiff two years later for the 2004/05 League Two Play-Off Final, but were beaten again, this time by Southend United in extra time.
The last of these five seasons making it into the Play-Off places was completed with John Schofield at the helm as manager. ‘Schoey’ had been a major favourite of my dad’s while he had been a player for City in the early 1990’s. He was a very combative midfielder, bought from non-league by Colin Murphy, who loved a tackle and was always up for scrapping for everything, and my dad loved him for it. He tells a story of watching a game once and he scanned back down the pitch after City had cleared the ball up field to see Schoey give an opposition player a quick right hook, knocking him to the ground while the referee was running off to keep up with play and completely oblivious to the offence behind him. He literally liked a scrap and played in an era where there wasn’t an array of cameras at every ground to capture every moment, so you could get away with things like that at times. Schoey seemed to go up in my dad’s estimations purely for that particular act.
Any thoughts that it was just a matter of time before the Imps inevitably took one of their chances and gained promotion to League One never materialised. City slowly regressed in the proceeding seasons until 2010/11 when, after twelve years in League Two, they finished in 23rd place and were relegated. In echoes of the fateful 1986/87 season, a dismal end of season run saw them gain just one point from the last 10 games, dropping like a stone into the relegation zone and heading back to the Conference. The one positive is that my dad resisted the urge to take up smoking again this time.
Unfortunately, there was no immediate and triumphant return to the Football League as there had been the first time around back in the late eighties. In fact, City looked destined at times to drop further down the footballing ladder, spending five seasons in the lower half of the table and often hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone.
I noticed a slight change in my dad around this time. He was still unequivocal in his support for the club, and he still persisted with his annual bet at the bookies that Lincoln would win the league. However, he seemed to have mellowed a little and City’s results began to have a little less impact on his mood as they had always done before. There was an acceptance of the position the club was now in. He was still in his seat at Sincil Bank every week and was always unanimous in his undying love for the team, but he could see that things weren’t going well. He once insisted, “I would still buy a season ticket if City played their home games on the Cow Paddle!” Although very much true and a sign of his endearing loyalty that he would still be willing to pay to watch them even if they were playing on common land near Sincil Bank, it highlighted to me that even my dad was struggling to look onwards and upwards about the fortunes and future of the club.
And then it all changed again. The Cowley brothers swept in, and the club (and my dad) were completely revitalised. I’ll be honest here; I am one of the many City fans who jumped back on the bandwagon during the 2016/17 season. I had long since relinquished my season ticket and left my dad to it. Lots of people had, with average attendances of 2,500 at best for the previous five seasons before the Cowley’s arrived. Prior to that, I’d moved away and then done some travelling, but for the majority of those five years of City struggling in the Conference/National League I was back living in Lincoln. I attended no more than two or three games each season during that period, and that was mainly used as an opportunity to catch up with my dad and then enjoy a few beers with him in The Shakespeare after the match.
I can remember hearing the renewed enthusiasm back in my dad’s voice very early on in that season, reinvigorated, raving about this new management team and how impressed he was with the way the team was now playing. His words convinced me to get back down to Sincil Bank on a regular basis to see it for myself. It was an incredible season, and I was so pleased for my dad more than anything.
Since I first began going to the games as a kid with my dad, he’s always said that he wanted to live to see City win the cup. My memories of those early years mainly involve disappointing early round defeats against lowly opposition and my dad’s always positive spin on this that, “We can concentrate on the league now.” Well, here we were, in 2017, sat together at the Emirates Stadium watching non-league Lincoln City playing Arsenal in the quarter final of the FA Cup. Okay, so we didn’t actually win the cup, but it was an incredible achievement nonetheless, with some thrilling upsets along the way. And the National League title was clinched, returning City to the Football League, which was the most important thing.
The following season, City finally had their first trip to Wembley and my dad did get to see them win the cup. Admittedly, he may not have originally been referring to the EFL Trophy, however, beggars cannot be choosers, and it was an amazing experience to witness Lincoln triumphing for the first time in a cup competition following a 1-0 win over League One’s Shrewsbury Town. They were nearly back at Wembley for a second time in the space of just a couple months having finished the season 7th in League Two but were beaten by Exeter City in the Play-Off semi-finals. For dad, it was still another incredible season, made even better by the introduction of his new favourite player, Michael ‘Bozzy’ Bostwick, who had joined the club that summer. Tough tackling, putting his head in where it hurts, wearing his heart on his sleeve, you name the cliché, my dad said it and loved it about him.
The club did not have too long to wait for further success, with City winning League Two in 2018/19. It was just the fourth time my dad had seen them clinch the title and they had managed it twice in the space of three years. Despite the Cowley’s jumping ship to take over at Huddersfield Town shortly after the 2019/20 season commenced, City have since cemented themselves respectably in League One. This is now the longest period Lincoln have spent at this level of the football pyramid since my dad began supporting them, surpassing the five seasons when they were in the old Division Three in the early eighties.
Dad sadly passed away from cancer in July 2024. He spent 64 seasons avidly supporting the mighty Imps.
Although he had his usual season ticket for his final season in 2023/24, he only made it to Sincil Bank on a couple of occasions early in the season and then had to settle with watching his beloved City via iFollow once his chemotherapy commenced. He said that he actually didn’t mind it too much as he had got used to watching the games on television during the Covid pandemic.
If you discount his first ever season when he watched them in the old Division Two but saw them relegated, arguably the highest City have finished during all his years of supporting them is the 2020/21 season when they reached the League One Play-Off Final at Wembley and were one game away from returning to the second tier of the English Football League. Sadly, they lost the game 2-1 to Blackpool. It is somewhat ironic that in what was in many ways their ‘best’ season while he was a supporter, my dad didn’t get to watch a single minute of it live from his seat at the ground as fans were not allowed to attend due to the aforementioned pandemic.
Looking back at those 64 seasons my dad spent supporting Lincoln City, it’s fair to say that he had to take the rough with the smooth, with a fair amount of mediocre in between. Not that he would ever admit that or have it any other way.
Dad saw City win promotion six times in total (including those four league titles), but they endured relegation on seven occasions, including going out of the Football League twice and suffering back-to-back relegations twice. They reached the Play-Offs on seven occasions since the format was introduced in 1986 but were never promoted via this route, losing all three of the finals they played in.
The Imps spent essentially two-thirds of that time (41 seasons) in League Two, or the equivalent based on name changes. They were in the third tier of the English Football League for 15 seasons and just one (his first season going to watch them) in the old Division 2, now the Championship. City also had seven seasons in the Conference/National League after twice dropping out of the Football League.
City’s cup form during those 64 seasons has often failed to live up to the hopes and dreams that most fans have about a cup run helping to invigorate a season. Although some (my dad) would consider this a blessing so that the team could concentrate on league performances.
In the FA Cup, the Imps only failed to make it to the First Round proper once (in 2011/12) during their time outside the Football League, however, they were knocked out at that stage on no less than 34 occasions. There were 15 Second Round exits, and City only made it into the draw for the Third Round with the ‘big boys’ on a total of 14 occasions, 11 of those matches ending in defeat. The three times they have made it beyond the Third Round include two Fourth Round exits – losing away to Sheffield United in 1960/61 (two weeks after dad’s first ever visit to Sincil Bank) and a defeat away to West Brom during the triumphant 1975/76 season – and the famous run to the Quarter Finals in 2016/17 as a non-league team when they were eventually beaten by Arsenal.
Dad got to see City fare no better in the League Cup. They were not involved in the competition for the seven seasons they spent in non-league, but in the 57 seasons they were entered, City were knocked out in Round One 30 times. There were 15 Round Two defeats and 10 exits at the Third Round stage. The best Lincoln managed during his supportership were two defeats in Round Four, the first against Derby County in 1967/68 when City recorded their all-time record attendance of 23,196 at Sincil Bank, and in his second-to-last season (2022/23), when they were beaten 2-1 away at Southampton. He did at least have that EFL Trophy victory to celebrate during the 2017/18 season.
Even as his health deteriorated last year, dad’s passionate support for Lincoln City still shone through. While having a spell in hospital shortly before his death, whenever a nurse asked him if he had any allergies when required to take medication he would, without fail, immediately state, “Grimsby Town” with a smirk on his face. When my brothers and I asked him if there was anything he would like to do or see before his time was up, his first thought was that he would have liked to have a look around City’s new training facility. Unfortunately, by the time we were in communication with the club to try and arrange a convenient date for him to visit it was too late. However, City staff did provide us with club ties for his sons and grandson to wear at the funeral, and his wake was held in the Legends Lounge at Sincil Bank. We have also added his name to the Memorial Wall at the ground, all of which he would have wanted.
One of dad’s other last requests was for me to have his seat at the ground. I guess that he wanted his legacy to continue having watched all those matches from the same seat ever since the stand was built back in 1995. I was able to tell him just a couple of days before he passed away that the club had confirmed my request for a seat swap as part of my season ticket renewal, which clearly made him happy.
The 2024/25 season has been a strange and difficult one for me. Memories of my dad have been central to my thoughts at each home game, and it has felt odd him not being at the matches or around for a post-game review over a pint or two at The Shakey afterwards.
The first home game of the season was really tough, and I found myself welling up even as I was leaving my house and beginning my usual walk towards the ground. A couple of pre-match drinks with the lads in Gwynnes Social Club helped steady my nerves a little but it still wasn’t easy taking his seat for the first time for the game against Barnsley and having to explain the circumstances to the regular season ticket holders seated next to and nearby where he’d always sat.
I have caught myself a few times during the season wondering what my dad’s views are on a particular performance or a new signing and then realising that I can no longer pick up the phone or pop round to see him and hear what he has to say on his favourite subject; Lincoln City.
There have been certain moments and passages of play during games when I have immediately thought of him and what he would have been thinking about it. It felt quite ironic on New Years Day when we played Rotherham that there was a minute’s applause before the game for those who had passed away during the last year, which was unsurprisingly a pretty emotional moment for me, and then, in their memory, the City players produced one of the most turgid and awful games of football I’ve ever witnessed at Sincil Bank and they were roundly booed off at the final whistle. I had to have a little chuckle at that because I know what my dad’s thoughts were on supporters booing their own players.
As the season draws to a close, there are mixed feelings amongst supporters about how it has panned out and our mid-table position in League One. I know for a fact that my dad would be saying that we’ve never had it so good, having retained our place at this level for a seventh consecutive year. After all his years as a fan, he understood that this is success, but he would definitely be hopeful, deluded and biased enough to put his money on Lincoln winning the title next year. And, just for the record, I’m almost certain his Player of the Season would have been Sean Roughan. He was raving about him ever since he made a couple of appearances as a 17-year-old and is the type of committed player he always loved.
As for me, I have renewed our season ticket for another year and dad will be there with me in spirit again next season come rain or shine, win or lose, ever hopeful. The defeats make the victories taste sweeter.
Rest in peace, Dave Barber; Forever An Imp.