All together now.

I had a stroll round the lower part of Lincoln the other day, downhill to us locals, hoping to see some sign that City were at Wembley next weekend. There was a bit but not that much although all around the city council have erected red and white bunting which, in these straightened times was a very cheerful sight and proof that a good proportion of Lincoln are firmly behind our heroes.

Funnily enough we were in the upper part of the city yesterday where most of the shops are locally owned and that was a sea of red and white with some very inventive displays of support for the team. I suppose in many ways that is unsurprising, being locals but in some ways unexpected as I didn’t see the boutique owners and posh chocolate purveyors to be amongst the Imps most fervent supporters but of course you don’t have to be to show you’re behind the team. My neighbours who are getting on a bit now, whilst always being interested in City and partial to attending the odd big game, are now season ticket holders and very much looking to the trip south on Sunday. A look round on match days will reveal it’s not just youngsters getting the Imps bug.

Danny Cowley refers to Lincoln as a football city which is not the way I’d have described it, certainly when compared to say Nottingham or Sheffield. However being around the stadium on a match day as I’ve said in this blog before would actually seem to bear out the Cowley appraisal.

When I was just a slip of a boy and being taken to games by my Dad perhaps it was a football city. With a population of about seventy thousand and regularly attracting gates of around twenty thousand that is a goodly proportion of the population but you have to bear in mind there was precious little else to do and of course the football on offer then was championship standard, hard to believe as it is.

Nowadays the city is a totally different place and certainly much bigger and dare I say it football mad or maybe it’s more accurate to say Lincoln City mad. With, I gather now twenty six thousand due to travel to London you do wonder what sort of gates the Imps could get if they were able to offer a much higher standard of football. Danny Cowley said at the agm he saw Swansea City as a good analogy of the potential for Lincoln. I’d add to the mix Burnley, much smaller than Lincoln. Is that what the Cowleys themselves dream of?

We’re all musing on Wembley, let’s save some thought for after that. Why not? After all impossible is just an opinion.