May

The defeat at Oxford had all but mathematically sealed City’s fate as they were now ten points from safety with only five games to play. Any faint hopes they may still have had were not made any easier thanks to those five games having to be played over a period of ten days as the remainder of the postponed games from the start of the year had to be fitted in. The first of these came on the following Wednesday night with the visit of Shrewsbury Town. Although strongly placed for the promotion which they were to eventually achieve as champions it appears few of their supporters made the cross-country journey from Shropshire. In fact, the attendance of just 1,685 was the lowest at Sincil Bank since a Division Three (North) game against Durham City all the way back in 1927. Mick Smith was left out as the three centre back formation was ditched again as Gordon Hobson returned on the right wing. John Ward also returned with John Fleming left out and Brendan Guest on the subs’ bench as Bell signing David Hughes was included at right back for his first game since September. The Imps showed plenty of effort and the scores were level at half time, but poor goalkeeping from Peter Grotier saw the visitors two goals ahead before the hour mark. A quick reply through a header from Mick Harford was as much as City could manage as relegation was confirmed with four games to go.

Of the next remaining three home games only one was on a Saturday so it was the only one I was able to go to. Mid-table Hull City were the visitors and no doubt brought a few supporters with them as there was a 50% increase in the attendance. With David Sunley having sustained a head injury against Shrewsbury he had to miss the game against his old club with John Ward partnering Mick Harford up front and Brendan Guest returning in midfield.  The Imps put an end to a run of four home defeats with an entertaining flurry of goals as they put away the chances they created for once. Two goals up at the break through Graham Watson and Gordon Hobson, Mick Harford made it three early in the second half. Although Hull pulled a goal back, a goal for each side in the last ten minutes, including a second for Hobson, wrapped up the scoring.

Although well after the transfer deadline and too late to be included in any of the remaining matches Colin Murphy now moved into the transfer market paying out the fairly large fee for the time of £15,000. This was for 21-year-old striker Tony Cunningham who had scored a total of 36 goals in the current season for Southern League lower division side Stourbridge Town. Over six feet tall, the player was said to have a quick turn of pace and be good in the air and his having attracted attention from other clubs was doubtless the reason Murphy snapped him up now instead of in the close season.

Murphy cited the signing of Cunningham as evidence of his commitment to Lincoln City having just turned down the offer of a lucrative contract to coach in the United Arab Emirates.

The rearranged home game with Blackpool was fitted in the following Monday night, and the attendance dipped below 2,000 again as John Fleming returned in place of the injured Watson. Unfortunately, the Imps lost their scoring touch again, with only a goal from Mick Harford, scoring for the fourth game in a row as a last-minute reply to a brace from Blackpool.

Another home game had to be played two nights later, and with it being the fourth in the space of eight days, and especially given the disappointing defeat against Blackpool it was not really surprising that only 1,571 turned up at Sincil Bank for the visit of Bury which again meant looking back to 1927 and Durham City to find a lower attendance.

Still three points adrift of Tranmere but with a game in hand on them City needed to win their two remaining games to stand any chance of avoiding a last-place finish, but Bury also badly needed points to stay out of the bottom four. They got the win that brought them safety and condemned the Imps to that last-place finish. With Mick Smith in for the flu-hit Cooper the only other change was a swap of positions for Hughes and Fleming with the latter moving to right back. But it was in defence where City’s failings lay, with Cross and Smith having poor games and Fleming being taken off at half time. Colin Murphy admitted afterwards “I make the back four totally responsible for our defeat.” Bury were three goals up within the first half hour. With Gerard Creane replacing Fleming and David Hughes reverting to right back City pulled a goal back through Hobson, and after Bury had made it 4-1 had a late chance of another with a penalty but Mick Harford put the kick over the bar.

With City doomed to last place in the division they remained three points behind Tranmere after losing by – yet again – 2-0 at Mansfield two nights later on the eve of the Cup Final as they completed their fixtures with a third game in five days. The only team change saw Fleming left out with the fit-again Graham Watson returning in midfield as fatigue caught up with the Imps, both of Mansfield’s goals coming in the second half of a lacklustre match.

One further game remaining to play was a testimonial match for Dave Smith the following Wednesday night with the visit of newly-promoted Watford and Graham Taylor. The City XI was made up of as many of the 1975/76 championship side as possible, the only absentees being Phil Neale, who was playing cricket, Ian Branfoot, currently away on tour with Southampton’s youth side, and Sam Ellis who was also away on tour. To make up for Ellis’s absence City ‘borrowed’ Watford’s Lincoln-born centre half Steve Sims who was several years later to have a brief spell with his home town club. Not altogether surprisingly, given that one or two members of the City side had retired from full-time football Watford won the game 2-0, although their clean sheet owed a lot to goalkeeper Steve Sherwood. Another player to later spend time with the Imps, he denied Percy Freeman a goal more than once as the ‘Big Fella’ really stole the show. The only disappointment was the size of the attendance as just 2,544 people turned up to pay tribute to a player who, as Maurice Burton said, had “given ten years of his soccer life to Lincoln” and who to this day stands third on the list of players who have made the most appearances for the club.

So, after fourteen years in the basement division, with several seasons of struggle followed by more than one failed attempt at promotion before eventually succeeding in style, the Imps found themselves back again in ignominious fashion after just three seasons in Division Three.

The season’s total of just 25 points was three fewer than Tranmere who had almost as bad a season, and 15 behind Chesterfield who finished just outside the bottom four. It was also the lowest number of points gained by the club since their relegation season from Division Two eighteen years previously. The 28 defeats suffered was one short of the club record set in the dark days of 1965, while the record of just seven wins was the worst since 1911. The number of 88 goals conceded had last been exceeded (twice) in the aforementioned dark days of the early 1960s, but the miserable total of 41 scored was the worst since 1923.

The mantle of being leading goal-scorer was shared, with four players finishing with six each – Gordon Hobson, Mick Harford, Glenn Cockerill and John Fleming, with four of his coming from penalties.

The average league attendance was 3,168 – almost a third down on the previous season – and was the lowest since at least 1925 before which figures are not readily available.

The disastrous start to the season – even worse than the year before – owed a lot to Willie Bell’s attention clearly being elsewhere, which consciously or otherwise must have affected his abilities as a football manager and coach. Quite likely connected with this was his failure during the previous summer to prune some of the deadwood of players who, as Colin Murphy put it “may well have reached their pinnacles at this club.” These could perhaps be numbered as the likes of Alan Harding, Dennis Leigh, John Fleming, Terry Cooper (although he was voted as Player of the Year for a second time) and arguably Phil Hubbard. Of the players Bell brought in, David Sunley, and later, Jim McCalliog and Graham Watson, could also be placed in that same category, together with David Hughes turning out to be not really up to Third Division standard. As for Tommy Tynan, whatever his later accomplishments, it appeared being at Lincoln just didn’t suit him, to put it mildly, and Colin Murphy soon gave up on him.

Murphy, despite taking over with a lot of the season to go did so from an almost impossible position and inherited a lot of unrest among an over-large squad. He began to reduce the number of players during the hiatus caused by the series of postponements due to the bad weather at the start of the year, and there’s little doubt that any revival in City’s fortunes was affected by the weather. Apart from anything else, no home game was able to be played from just before Christmas until almost the middle of March and all but one of the seven away matches played in this period were lost. By the time Murphy resorted to the ultra-defensive formation which finally brought a good run of results time was running out, whereas if he’d been able to make this change earlier there might have been more of a chance of reeling in the clubs above City in the league table. It didn’t help that as part of a pre-arranged agreement Phil Hubbard, who had been a key member of the back three, was allowed to leave to play in America before the end of April. City then folded up apart from a single heartening win against Hull City, and again the earlier bad weather worked against them by causing a ridiculous number of games to be fitted into the last week of the season.

Elsewhere in football, Bob Paisley’s Liverpool won the First Division championship for the third time in four seasons with a record number of points for the top division. Nottingham Forest gained consolation for slipping from champions to runners-up by winning the European Cup with a 1-0 victory over Swedish side Malmo. They also won the League Cup for a second season in a row, beating Southampton 3-2. FA Cup winners were Arsenal with a last-minute win against Manchester United. Third in the league were West Bromwich Albion with their highest place finish for 25 years.

Relegated from the top division were bottom club Chelsea, for the second time in five seasons, along with Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham City. Replacing them were Second Division champions Crystal Palace, who under Terry Venables were being prematurely dubbed as ‘the team of the eighties’. Runners-up and into the top division for the first time ever were Brighton & Hove Albion along with Stoke City, back up after two seasons. Going down to the Third Division were Sheffield United for the first time in their history, along with Millwall and bottom club Blackburn Rovers.

Graham Taylor’s Watford rose straight through the Third Division, finishing runners-up to champions Shrewsbury Town who were heading for their first-ever season in the second tier. Only one point separated the top three with Swansea City emulating Watford in gaining promotion two years in a row to return to the Second Division for the first time since 1965. Exiting the division at the other end were Tranmere Rovers, like City, back down to the fourth tier again after three seasons. Also relegated were Walsall who would find themselves in the basement division for the first time in nineteen years, and Peterborough United just a year after they had missed promotion to the  Second Division on goal difference.

Fourth Division champions were Reading, returning to the Third after two seasons in the basement division while three clubs tied on points for the other promotion places. Top placed of these on goal difference was Grimsby Town, like Reading returning to the Third after two seasons, and ensuring the Imps would only have one Lincolnshire derby the following season. In third place were Wimbledon, promoted in only their second season in the Football League, while Allan Clarke led Barnsley to promotion in his first season as manager. At the foot of the division Rochdale avoided having to make two applications for re-election in a row by two points, while just below them Darlington and Doncaster were both comfortably returned to the league. Halifax Town and Crewe finished eleven points behind the rest of the division, with Crewe in last place. Both of these two were well ahead in the poll from Altrincham and Kettering as the league’s members perhaps decided that with two new clubs entering the league in the last two seasons enough was enough for now. The following season was to be the first of the newly-formed Alliance Premier League as it was originally known, and henceforward only one club would be put forward for election to the Football League.

For the Imps it was depressing to be back in the Fourth Division again after such a fairly short time, and with all of Graham Taylor’s good work being thrown away, but there had been an air of inevitability about it from the earliest days of the season. Although it was recognised that Colin Murphy had been given an almost impossible job in preventing relegation, to an extent the jury was still out on him. He had said that he preferred to spend money on bringing in new players during the close season but it remained to be seen what the calibre of these players would be. Any new players could be added to the promising youngsters that now had another season’s experience behind them, and as Maurice Burton prophetically put it “The likes of Glenn Cockerill and Mick Harford might prove to be the jewels in Colin Murphy’s crown a year from now.”

Thanks to Gary Parle for supplying information relating to Willie Bell’s departure from the club.