Jack Moylan might have been our two-goal hero on Thursday night, but he’s focused on what comes beyond this weekend’s heroics.
Normal players often don’t talk about the possibility of promotion, but the 24-year-old is certainly not a normal player. Blessed with a ‘little bit of magic’ (we’ll come to that), he has the ability to turn games on their head.
His time at City has been impacted by injuries, but now he is fit and firing. He’s focused on what comes next, and in typical livewire fashion, he states he wants to be a second-tier player next season, with us, and nobody else.
“I’m not hiding away from that. I want to be in the Championship next season with Lincoln,” he told The 42.
“I’d be constantly thinking about us winning the league or us getting promoted. When we have a match, all I am thinking about is that we are going to win and I will help the team by scoring. I want to be man of the match, that is what I am thinking.”
Coming over from Ireland isn’t always easy, and some players, such as Danny Mandroiu, have struggled to cope with that. There’s a certain attitude in Jack, a livewire determination which makes him both likeable and scarily focused. His attitude was always one of a refusal to fail, or to accept he was ever going to be something other than a main man at Sincil Bank.
“You don’t want to be [seen as] just a young lad, ‘Ah, he’s from the League of Ireland so we’ll give him a run out’. You want to come in and be the main man, take the shirt off someone else and say, ‘Look, I’m here to stay, I’m not going anywhere else’.
“That was probably the way I looked at it. I was coming in and I was never going back.”
There certainly isn’t any going back. Despite his injury woes, he’s always come back as strong, and now has 13 goals in Imps colours. He’s already got one more than last season, despite missing three months, and as with his strike at Chesham last season, he showed on Tuesday that he has a little bit of magic.
That was something echoed by Michael Skubala after his brace helped sink Burton Albion, and ensured we go into Tuesday’s game against Bradford City with a six-point gap, having only played one game more.
“I’m really pleased for him,” Michael said after the win on Thursday evening. “He’s had his injuries and started the season later than everyone else, but we see that in Jack all the time.
“We call him a little magic man. He’s got moments where he can score goals like that, and he sniffs things out like the second goal. Not many players are that alert and willing to go and score.
“I’m really pleased for him, and I think he’s got loads of growth still. He’s got loads of learning still and can keep improving and getting better. Like a lot of the younger lads, we feel we can keep getting better as a team, which is really exciting as well.”
The key for Jack now is staying injury-free, because since his return, he’s dropped into the ten role and made it his own. Quite how Michael accommodates him and Ben House when the latter returns from injury is unclear, but it’s certainly a great problem to have heading into the most important 19-game run for half a century, in terms of second-tier promotion.