If this is the future count me in.

I pitied the sponsors having to choose man of the match after this afternoon’s game versus Sunderland at Sincil Bank. Let’s just pause there before we go on. This afternoons game against Sunderland? Yes, you heard correctly. Sunderland. Maybe they should have considered who didn’t play well, nope, no one. No help there.

I heard it suggested that this could possibly have been Lincoln City’s greatest ever performance, certainly of the modern era and you could see why that might be put forward. Yes, there have been games won that meant more. Yes, there have been perhaps more heroic efforts but for sheer unpredicted joy this one was right up there.

Yet, personally I was allowing myself to think that City could pull off an unexpected (to say the least) victory. All the signs were there. A team, having lost their manager enduring a torrid time. Opponents on a successful run but not exactly lauded by their supporters who were expecting an easy afternoon and a dominant win. A manager’s debut home league game. When you think about it that had banana skin written all over it for the Black Cats.

City didn’t come on in their comedy clowns car, door falling off, horn hooting playing it for laughs, The Imps set about with a determination and a plan designed to derail Sunderland and that’s exactly what they did.

The Imps game plan, I’m sure, demanded that the team get to half time without conceding. They did. The fact that they scored, a sumptuous strikers goal from Tyler Walker, putting the skids under Sunderland was all to the good. A long, long second half was on the cards I predicted to my neighbour in a packed Selenity Stand. How wrong could I be? City added another courtesy of Walker, another forwards effort and, with the benefit of hindsight the Imps were over the horizon. I was expecting a wall of noise from the Wearsiders and for all I know they provided it but I didn’t hear it as my fellow supporters were bellowing out their own cacophony.

Any notion that the fire was out of the Sincil Bank faithful were banished as the crowd, if anything were louder and more enthusiastic than ever dismissing thought that the steam had gone out of the Lincoln Loco and suspicion that the Cowley revolution had been quashed and consigned to history was firmly disabused, in fact it was the former management team who were the forgotten heroes.

Even at this early stage we were given a glimpse of what may follow under the Appleton tutelage and on this evidence not only are the previous regime a mere memory it might just be that the best is yet to come. Fasten your seatbelts!