I’m releasing this at 11 am on November 4th, 2025. It’s the time my Dad’s funeral starts.
I haven’t mentioned a huge amount about my Dad’s actual passing. I’ve tried to just keep on keeping on, forging forward, accepting what has happened. I haven’t been in floods of tears, my every waking moment hasn’t been thinking about our loss. I’ve just got on with it, because he would have just got on with it.
I do try to keep my personal life away from the site, but in Dad’s case, the two are inextricably linked. Way back in the day, when I was a snotty-nosed kid and Dad was a thirty-something father of two, we didn’t get on. He loved me, I loved him, but I liked reading and computer games, and he liked cars and skinning rabbits. There’s not a lot of crossover on that Venn diagram.
I fear were it not for that fateful day in 1986, we’d have awkwardly tried to gel for many years after. I know now he was trying to find common ground, taking me to football. I know now, all through his life he did that: starting Wragby Under 13s for me. He joined our local scout group as a leader for me, he was an assistant at Wragby youth club, for me. I say for me, it was for me and my brother, but he didn’t need that link with my brother.
My brother was just like my Dad. He was the youngest sibling, like Dad, and they looked identical. Me? I was like Mum, so Dad had to try harder. In my reading this morning, I’ll talk about how Dad always showed what he felt, but rarely told. That’s what he did with me, but for years, I didn’t see. I was listening, I wasn’t watching.
We gelled over football. I remember almost every away day story, from us being pelted with cans at Kettering because he wouldn’t remove his colours on a dodgy side street, to him almost being arrested for shouting abuse at what he thought were Port Vale fans, but were actually the police.
I remember every arm around me, especially in the younger days when all hell broke loose against Barnet in 1987. I remember him dragging me along as we ran from York City fans in 1993, or stopping at Martin Thornicroft’s store in Wragby to get some cheeky sweets, ignoring the fact I was covered in dog excrement in late ’86. I remember it all. Part of me remembers the disappointment in his eyes when he asked me if I wanted to go to Scunthorpe in ’94, but the 15-year-old me had plans. I bet he had the same in late 1995 against Torquay, when he took a huge group of footballers in to see the last game of the season, but I didn’t want to go.
It didn’t take long for my Dad to be cool again. That’s one thing (sorry, was one thing) about my Dad: he was cool. Everyone liked him. Everyone wanted to spend time with him. In later life, I suspect quite a few people wished that he was their Dad. I never had to. We kept on bonding at games, whether it was him having to pull me away from an angry Barry Conlon in 2007, or me directing him over a jet of water while dressed as Mrs Poacher a few weeks later.
Football was where we fell out as well. I recall storming out of his house after we lost a National League game on TV (I thought it was Braintree, but I might be wrong). I remember calling him ‘deluded’ after a Mark Kennedy defeat, and having to apologise on the way home. I remember our last argument, after Stevenage in January, where we bickered at half-time but were fine in the car on the way home.
When I moved to Cambridge for a year, I didn’t feel homesick. The only time it got me was a Saturday afternoon when Dad would message and say he was going to the football. I’d get a physical pain in my chest, I missed it so much. I worked Saturdays, but every so often I’d be able to get off early: Kidderminster and Cheltenham stand out as matches I was able to see with him.
We had our routine. He liked a Wetherspoons breakfast, until they tried to give him a bit of tomato they’d left lolling around a tray, and we never went back. Then it was the Corn Dolly, or the Poacher on a night game. We had our pubs: the Treaty, Gwynne’s and sometimes the Millers. We had our routine, our thing. No matter what happened in life, that became my constant.
We’d ring two or three times a week, and in football season, we’d always say something like “Now then, ow ah ya?” followed by “I ain’t got no news.” I write better than I talk. However, from July until May, the first talk would be about the game, injuries, transfers, what little titbit I knew. That would spark other talk. We didn’t just have football, but we always had football.
We’d open up at football. On a car journey to Lincoln, when we looked out of the window, focusing on traffic, we could talk openly about anything. Our relationship was never like that, we wouldn’t ring and talk about deep stuff, but in the car, we could. In the Ivy, five deep after a big win, we managed to as well.
When my Dad first got ill, it was Joe Taylor signing that I remember perked him up. The second time he got ill, I saw the light begin to fade. Sonny Bradley and Ryley Towler seemed like good signings, but the enthusiasm wasn’t quite there. That’s how I knew this time was serious. He still wanted to listen and watch, but when we spoke about how certain teams would go well this season, the unspoken words were “not that you’ll know about it.” It sounds harsh, but he thought it, I could see.
How I knew he was really ill was when he asked me to set his TV up on Deadline Day so he could watch our live podcast. He’d never admit he watched (not to me), he’d always claim he didn’t listen (“what the fcuk would I want to listen to you go on for?”) and yet 27 days before he passed, he watched every minute. He probably watched a lot more, but this time, I knew.
We shared some nice final moments. I took him a Chinese for the Notts County EFL Trophy game, and for our final game I bought him a KFC and we watched City beat Burton. We were disagreeing right up until the very end.
He passed 12 hours or so after we beat Peterborough 3-1, a result I strongly suspect he knew nothing of. Even though I’d been preparing since the West Brom friendly, it felt like a shock. Part of me would see him in his bed, the same dry humour that may have been accidental, and I thought he’d suddenly perk up. He beat cancer once, and right up until it took him a second time, I wouldn’t have had a fight with him. My Dad was tough, and it was only two days before he passed that I realised there was no coming back.
Some people never find what Dad and I found. We bonded over Lincoln City, it brought us together, but only as a catalyst for how a father-son relationship should be. He wasn’t just my father or my dad, he was my best friend. He was the first person I wanted to tell news to, someone who understood my passion for the Imps, who lived it.
He was proud when I dressed up as Poacher. My 2019 book was the first he read from cover to cover, and it started him reading every day. He was at most of my live shows, right up to the kit reveal in May, the last day out we went on together. He showed me, every single day, how much he loved me.
I loved him, and today, we say goodbye. I’ll miss you Dad, every single game between now and the day I am laid in the ground in my plot next to you.