It’s just gone midnight, and I’m shattered.
Over the last nine days, I have lost count of the miles I’ve done, for pleasure of course, but the one thing you’d expect me to do right now would be to come home, fall into my bed and sleep. Why is it that instead, I’m in front of my laptop, banging the keyboard with bleary eyes and a silent house all around?
It’s because I can’t sleep. For the last hour of the journey, I’ve had this thought going around in my head: this is real, isn’t it? Lincoln City are genuine automatic promotion candidates.
It seems obvious, we’re six points clear of Bolton, eight points clear of the team who have played the same number of games as us. We have both our rivals to play, at Sincil Bank, and our ambitions are in our own hands. In actual fact, our League One title ambitions are in our hands. Beat Cardiff at theirs, match their results every other week, and we win the league.
It’s ridiculous. We’re 18th in the budget table. We’re a League One side, sure, but top two? Championship? Nobody could have seen this challenge coming, not anyone outside of the club. I guess this article is similar to my ‘these are the days‘ piece the other week, but it’s like a realisation has hit me. In December, we were enjoying the ride, but two months on, and we’re still here. Bradford aren’t, they’ve fallen away, and realistically, the play-offs are the worst finish the club can now achieve. The Holy Grail of a couple of seasons ago, the barometer of what success is, the top six, would be a (still appreciated) consolation prize.
It feels weird typing it, and travelling back this evening, it felt so odd. In 2020/21, we weren’t there at games, so the play-off push, it was something we were a little detached from. Going to Wembley that season, while the Championship was in our grasp, I never felt like we were going there. Pessimism? Maybe, but anything achieved under COVID, rightly or wrongly, will have an asterisk next to it. Because we weren’t there to see the matches, maybe it doesn’t quite feel real, like the difference between watching a holiday show, and being on the beach yourself.
This year, we’re there. We’re living every moment, kicking every ball. We’re feeling the goals, seeing the cold rain running down the players’ backs as they put in yet another unbelievable shift, as yet another fan base can’t believe they’ve lost to Lincoln City. We’re seeing the league table on our phones as we walk away from grounds, having again made history (biggest ever win at Home Park, level with a January 1956 victory). This season, it’s real, and at about 11 pm tonight, something hit me.
We could be f*cking Championship next season.
Sorry for the swearing, but seriously, think about it. The Moon Landing. Woodstock. The Falklands. The Gulf War. Diana dying. JFK. England winning the World Cup. ABBA. Michael Jackson. All things or people that have happened while we’ve been third tier, fourth tier, or fifth tier. All of those things have come and gone with Lincoln City outside the top 44 clubs in the country.
In 16 matches’ time, that could change. Despite the budget difference, the odds being stacked against us and the Parma Violet farmers being derided by football royalty such as (checks notes) Wigan (?), we’re 16 matches from history. We don’t say it, not out loud, and we don’t believe it until the gap is ten points and there are three games to go, but we’re good. We’re great at what we do and everything feels right.
This article might be the kiss of death, but you know what? That’s believing in fate, and fate is baloney. If I believed in fate, then I’d probably feel more comfortable, because of course we’d win promotion to the Championship the year my Dad passes away, the year we finally play his other side, Chelsea, or the year I finally go full-time and visit my childhood team for the first time. One might say it is written in the stars, but that would be to believe in something far more than a squad of players, the best manager in the land and a club that is run so well, the Conservative Party had to book a conference in the same Plymouth hotel to get tips on management styles last night.
I’m beginning to believe. It’s overwhelming, and it is frightening. It makes games tense and fraught, even at 3-1 with injury time on the clock, I was still worried, because it matters. Every kick, every second, every game matters.
My nerves might think it’s the worst time to be a football fan, but it’s not. It’s what we live for, and right now, I’d rather be a Lincoln City fan than any other club in the country, hands down. I just hope in 16 games’ time that belief is realised, and we can party through this summer on the back of history makers, Michael Skubala’s Lincoln City.