A grand day out.

I sat at my keyboard on Thursday awaiting the inspiration that always comes to write something about the Imps forthcoming game against Everton. It didn’t come though. It wasn’t that I wasn’t looking forward to the game, it was just unimportant somehow so I did something I wouldn’t normally do or rather didn’t. I wrote nothing.

Now that it’s all over I’m actually full of enthusiasm for what I saw, the way we were treated, once again by a club and supporters some considerable distance up the food chain who gave us a respect rarely afforded us by our peers. I saw with my own eyes that there really wasn’t much difference between our players and Everton’s, a bit more polish, a swagger, accuracy but not a lot of difference when it came down to it and I saw how our players coped with playing supposedly stratospherically better players. For fifteen minutes they played like it but as City settled and realised they were at Goodison Park as of right and began to play in a way befitting a more modest outfit grappling with supposed giants a miracle happened. The gulf in class disappeared.

In the end I’m not going to say City deserved to win but if they’d fashioned the draw their exertions merited I don’t think the home fans could have complained or would have complained.

In one respect the Imps have bridged that divide, us, the fans are the finished article. Loud, very loud, we’ve always been good away from home and numerous. In fact it’s a testament to City’s drawing power, admittedly aided by a realistic pricing structure that Goodison Park was filled to capacity, home and away as the locals were curious as to who these new kids on the block who have been around forever are and we in turn wanted to experience Goodison.

Imagine if you will that Lincoln Cathedral was the last remaining historic gothic structure and all the others had been turned in to a Coventry and other modern masterpieces. You’d want to see the last remaining one wouldn’t you? Well there you are, Goodison Park in all its out of date splendour, those stanchions, the rusty creaking turnstiles the ancient brickwork, those none existent sightlines, the staircases, like the inner workings of a castle.

Well we have seen it. We’ve seen our team, almost on a par with those superannuated superstars. We’ve had our day and gone home happy, even in defeat. We’re happy because it’s all over for another year. We’ve made a bit of cash but that’s not the most important thing. What we want isn’t the fourth round of the FA Cup. We’ve been there. What we want is to be lining up at the start of next season a step closer to the likes of Everton.

We don’t want to stop there either do we?.