Friday 29 May 2009

Lincoln City 1987/88 GM Vauxhall Conference (GMVC) Champions

The 1987/88 season was the season I became a regular at Sincil Bank. I had become hooked and needed my regular fix. I only attended home games as dad didn't go to away games and I wasn't old enough to go on my own I had to make do with just the home ones. What a season to become addicted to Lincoln City though - we had just become the first team to get relegated out of the Football League, under new rules and had been replaced by Scarborough. It was not the first time we had tasted non-league football though as we had been relegated from the Football League a couple of times in the early 1900s only to win our place back immediately.

Colin Murphy was manager and he had brought in virtually a new team having cleared out most of the players who got Lincoln City relegated. I think the only player who remained was 16 year old Shane Nicholson who returned to play for Lincoln almost 20 years later.

I have many memories from the GMVC season, most of them are good but there are a couple of sour ones. We couldn't have started the season off any worse, losing our first two games 4-2 at Barnet and 3-0 at Weymouth. Our first goal in the Conference was scored by the combative midfielder Bob Cumming. The first game I went to was the first home game which was a 3-0 victory against Dagenham in which David Mossman scored twice. The next game, a 1-0 home win against Runcorn had a moment of controversy when the scary looking Nigel Batch grabbed a Runcorn player by the scruff of his neck. Some of my memories are only vague and I may be wrong but I'm sure he tried to lift this player off the floor with his shirt collar!?! Our next match was a 4-1 victory at Stafford Rangers where the giant Mick Waitt scored a hattrick. Waitt scored 9 goals for us this season that was sadly cut very short with a broken leg against Cheltenham Town at the end of October. After another heavy defeat this time 4-1 to Runcorn, we lost our first and only home match of the season on the 30th September 1-0 against Kettering Town, the only team to do the double over us.

28t October brought the much anticpated home clash with top of the table Barnet. They had been sweeping all manner of teams aside including winning 7-0 at Loakes Park, where Wycombe Wanderers used to play before moving to Adams Park. Barnet arrived at Lincoln with a certain Keith Alexander in their forward line, managed by the noisy Barry Fry and the colourful Stan Flashman as chairman.

Lincoln won the game 2-1 with goals by Trevor Matthewson (freekick) and by John McGinley (penalty) but it was a game that had many talking points. It even made the back page of the Daily Telegraph the next day! Two Barnet players were sent off for nasty looking fouls and then there was fighting on the pitch by the players, after which the ref took no action! Even Barry Fry entered the field of play and had to be calmed down and was led from the field by a steward. There was a league inquiry after this match but no further action was taken against either team.

At the end of November, Lincoln suffered another heavy defeat, this time at the hands of Sutton United (4-1) and it was clear that it was going to be a long hard winter. However, this was to be the last league defeat until we lost at Macclesfield on April 12th, a run of 16 league games unbeaten which was our best run since 1980 when we went 18 unbeaten. Barnet were also on a big run too and by February they were 7 points ahead of us.

One thing I remember well was dad always used to make us leave early before the end of the match. "Come on son, we'll miss the traffic and the rush." I missed quite a few late goals because of this. One of them was against Northwich Victoria - the start of our long unbeaten run. We were 2-1 up with a couple of minutes to play and that was how I thought it finished until I watched the final scores on a TV in the Co-op - I always used to do this on the way home! We had actually won 3-2. Northwich had equalised and then we scored the winner straight after!

I didn't go to the Boxing Day game at Boston United but I've been told we were one nil down til the last few minutes but won it 2-1! It seems I missed out on some great away games that season but I know very little about them so I can't really pass much comment on these!

Two teams suffered drubbings at the hands of Lincoln City in successive games in late March/early April! First of all Altrincham were thrashed 5-0 (again I missed the last goal as I was on my way home with my dad again) and then local rivals Boston United were thrashed 5-1. Just as well that I didn't go home from this one easrly as Mark Sertori bagged 2 near the end.

Towards the end of April I'll always remember Barry Fry having a moan about Lincoln City on Grandstand. It was with two games to go and he was bragging about how Barnet were going up and we weren't. Lincoln had the last laugh though! In the penultimate game of the season, Barnet lost 2-1 at home to Kettering and we beat Stafford Rangers by the same scoreline to go top of the Vauxhall Conference for the first time that season. All we had to do was win the last game at home to Wycombe!

It was Bank Holiday Monday, May 2nd 1988, that Lincoln City reclaimed their place in the Football League with a 2-0 home win over Wycombe. The official crowd that day was 9,432 (the second time we'd broken the Conference crowd record that season - the other being 7,542 against Boston). However, it seemed like thousands more were packed into Sincil Bank that day - some have guessed around 13,500 was a closer attendance figure. Phil Brown and then substitute Mark Sertori (again) were the heroes who scored the goals that wonderul day to give City their league place back!

As Colin Murphy said in his programme notes 'Murph's Message' for the Stafford Rangers game, "Fate is a strange phenomenon and it would certainly be ironic if relevant to the only time Lincoln City were bottom of the Fourth Division was the last match of the season and possibly it may well be that the only time Lincoln City are top of the Vauxhall Conference may well be the last game of the season! Food for thought!" Indeed it was food for thought, moving to, and holding on, to the top spot after the Stafford Rangers game before the last game of the season!

Murph's Mission: Back to the league. Mission accomplished!

3 comments:

Statto said...

I remember the day we went down. It was a long time ago but I remember we had to win 17-nil to stay up. We were two nil down by half time...

Anonymous said...

We were robbed at your gaff!
The 6-0 mauling a couple of years later was sweet justice. Hoping for the same again tomorrow ;)

Springerbfc

Jonny D said...

I was at both of those games. You should have equalised with your 9 men in our 2-1 win! Our players put in some pretty dirty challenges it's fair to say!

When we lost 6-0 nil we had Russell Hoult in goal who went on to play in the Premisership with West Brom many years later!