It may surprise many to hear this, but we played Wycombe twice in our GMVC season. Given the magnitude of the second meeting, our 2-0 home win, it’s easy to forget we’d been there already, in November 1987.
You can read all about our second trip here if you wish, or you can enjoy some nostalgia around the other game at Loakes Park, and our first competitive game against the Chairboys.
The game was, on paper at least, an easy three points for the Imps. After a tough start to life in the GMVC, we’d hit our stride and came into the Wycombe game off the back of thrashing Cheltenham 5-1. Wycombe, on the other hand, were struggling, having lost heavily at home against Barnet (7-0), Stafford (4-0), and Enfield (5-1) at home. There was some light at the end of the tunnel for them – they’d been narrowly beaten 3-2 by Enfield in the return fixture the week before we clashed.
Still, Wycombe were fighting for their survival, with manager Alan Gane leaving under a cloud, partly because talismanic striker Noel Ashford joined Barnet’s Football League push for a non-league record of £17,000. Ashford was already well known to City fans – he’d been sent off for Barnet a couple of weeks before in the infamous battle of the Bank.
Former Brighton player Peter Suddaby had taken over at Wycombe, and there were a few familiar faces in their ranks. Graham Bressington was one such player; he returned from injury for the game and would join the Imps not long after. They also had a young Matt Carmichael on loan from the army, and he even appeared on the front cover of the match programme.
As for the Imps, Mick Waitt missed out after his leg break against Cheltenham the week before, which meant Mark Sertori kept his place. This wasn’t the Wycombe game he wrote his name into Imps folklore in, but it was a chance for a striker described as a ‘young lad who will develop‘ pre-game by manager Colin Murphy. Veteran defender Steve Buckley was also fully fit after missing the start of the campaign through injury, but Bob Cumming was a doubt.
In the end, Cumming did make the team, and Buckley did not. City lined up Nigel Batch, Clive Evans, Shane Nicholson, Phil Brown, Trevor Matthewson, Andy Moore, David Mossman, Bob Cumming, Mark Sertori, Paul Smith, and John McGinley. David Clarke and Les Hunter were on the bench, and the game was watched by more than 2,100 supporters, the highest at Loakes Park that season.
As well as Bressington and Carmichael, Graham Westley appeared for the hosts, as did Mark West, a prolific player for them throughout the late eighties and early nineties.
If the Imps thought the whipping boys were rolling over, they were mistaken, but it looked ominous at the start. Paul Smith’s pace is described as ‘tearing through the defence’ on multiple occasions in the first ten minutes, but Westley fired wide in an early warning at the other end. Still, at the ten-minute mark, the Imps took the lead.
It was typical Lincoln of the time – a bit route one, with Sertori and McGinley flicking headers on, only for the cultured Cumming to pop up with the finish. It didn’t spark the avalanche many expected, and 17 minutes later, the hosts were level. The ‘impressive’ Bressington (Julie Sherborn’s words in the Echo) delivered a free kick which Carmichael headed back across the area, and West did what he did best in blue, stabbing the ball home.
That changed the game, and City came under attack. Batch saved Kevin Durham’s powerful effort, then tipped Westley’s stinging drive onto the bar. The former Grimsby stopper was in fine form, keeping us in the game, both before and after half time.
Finally, against the run of play, City found a second. McGinley hit a big cross into the box, which Paul Smith headed down (yes, that’s the right order). In swept Phil Brown, grabbing the Imps’ second and putting us back into the lead. With other results, it would mean getting one point behind leaders Barnet, but the game was yet to be won.
After the goal, both teams had penalty shouts turned down – first Cumming believed he’d been fouled, then Durham had a strong claim after Batch made a rare fumble on a cross. They were high points of a game that suffered from ‘ample use of the unattractive offside ploy by both teams’, meaning it was ‘never the most entertaining of games and no easy ride for the full timers’. It is important to remember that at the time, Lincoln were the only full-time team in the division.
The game eventually petered out into a 2-1 win for the Imps, lifting us to third. It meant four teams were separated by just a single point, Kettering (played 17), us and Stafford (played 16) on 32 points, and leaders Barnet (played 15) on 33. Wycombe remained just outside the bottom three, two points behind Dagenham, and three behind Boston. Boston and Wycombe met just days later, with Bressington sent off on that occasion – his suspension kicked in a couple of weeks later when he’d already signed for City.
Boston provided the big news story of the weekend – manager Ray O’Brien quit after a 2-2 draw with Runcorn, and George Kerr returned to management not a year after getting sacked (for a second time) by the Imps. Suddaby, the Wycombe boss, was also sacked not long after – he left before the end of the season, although the Chairboys did stay up.
Loakes Park was soon no more – plans had already been approved for their new ground, and it was Adams Park that hosted them when they came into the Football League, as it welcome us in August 2017 when we returned from our exile.