Wednesday 2 April 2008

13 months of suffering

by Cathedral Imp

I have supported the mighty lads in red and white vertical stripes since 1985 when the first match I witnessed was a 4-0 home thrashing by Cardiff City, but never have I known us suffer so many thrashings over the period of 12/13 months as recently. Who am I discussing? Lincoln City, of course. The disinterested reader now clicks on another web page.

Last November after a 1-0 win at Swindon Town put us top of League 2 we could have been forgiven for thinking that years of stagnating in the Football League's basement division were finally going to be behind us. However, we didn't manage to score more than two league goals in a game for the rest of the season and a 4-1 home thrashing by Hereford United was the start of many poor results. This season has seen us concede 4 or more goals on 9 separate occasions. In October we changed our manager, getting rid of John Schofield and bringing in a man with experience at this level in Peter Jackson. His immediate aim was to save the Imps from relegation. That appears to have been successful now.

However, Peter's biggest battle is currently away from football when about 6 weeks ago he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Obviously my best wishes are with him for a full and speedy recovery. Temporarily in charge of the Imps now is Iffy Onuora and since being in charge he has overseen six games, three of these being heavy thrashings.

So is it the player's fault or the manager's? Certainly Peter managed to get the best out of the players before leaving for his cancer treatment, as we went on a great run of results, getting seven wins in nine games. Let's hope that on Peter's return he can get the lads to return to winning ways and hopefully mount a reasonable charge for promotion next season.