Memories of Gay Meadow

By Nathan Jackson
September 3 2006

It's time for a visit down memory lane as Lincoln City will pay their last ever league visit to Gay Meadow next Saturday. With the Shrews due to move grounds at the end of the season, I will now take you into may "diary" of personal experiences of visiting Shrewsbury.

Way back in the 2002/3 season, I was undecided as to whether to go to Gay Meadow for what was the Imps third away game of the season. By undecided, I mean that I had been to that season’s first away game at Kidderminster simply because it was our first game of the season and to Boston United, simply because it was Boston. There was no drive for me to go to Shrewsbury as despite going to the previous 3 away games (the afformentioned 2 and the final game against Hull in the previous year). However, I thought what the hell and then on a very warm day at the end of August, I made my way down to Shropshire and after a seemingly never ending journey, we finally arrived at Gay Meadow.

Upon entering the ground at around 2:10pm, I noticed that I was the only one in the way end and then noticed the extortionate prices at the little alcove they sold food at, afterall, who wants to pay 80p for a pack of polos???? Anyway, around 20 minutes after entering the ground, I was finally joined by several other fans but the crowd in the away end didn’t exceed more than around 100 or so.

Within 3 minutes of the kick off and Shrewsbury had taken the lead when Luke Rodgers broke free and slotted past Marriott with a powerful drive from an acute angle. It was exactly the same most exciting game in the world but out of no-where, Adie Mike scored his first goal for the Imps with a tap in from close range following a corner. Not long after that and Simon Yeo had been brought down (in Yeo’s typical "making the most of it" style) in the penalty area and Ben Sedgemore put the penalty away and the game ended 2-1 to the Imps.

At that point, I don’t think I had seen the Imps come from behind to win on the road before that so the feeling was great, it turned out to be the only time that year in the league that City came from behind to win a game but luckily, we still made it to the playoffs and we all know what happened then. For Shrewsbury however, they ended up getting relegated to the conference after a terrible season.

Almost 2 years later and Shrewsbury had won promotion back to the league and City were the first visitors to Gay Meadow in the 2004/5 season. By this point, I still hadn’t missed an away game since Keith Alexander had taken over as manager for a second time and a few weeks before this game, I had thought to myself that I had to visit the same grounds again, I thought that had become less appealing considering 2 of the best stadiums in the lower leagues had both been promoted in the previous year.

Anyway, traffic meant that the coaches had to spend half an hour driving around Newark, a less than thrilling prospect but we still got to Shrewsbury on time. This time, I wasn’t alone in the away end for long as around 700 Imps made the trip, a sign of how many people had joined on the bandwagon since we started doing relatively well.

The game itself wasn’t exactly thrilling although midway through the first half, Luke Rodgers fired a free kick past the goal and into the away end. The ball was going something like 60mph and was heading straight for me and if I wasn’t paying attention, it would have hit me straight in the stomach but I just managed to move out of the way. The only goal of the game came midway through the second half when the newly named, Gary Taylor-Fletcher latched on to a header to rod past Scott Howie and make it 1-0 to the Imps and that’s the way it stayed, giving the Imps their only first day victory so far this season. It was to be another struggle for Shrewsbury as they barely escaped relegation whereas the Imps lost in the playoff final.

Whereas that was the first away game of the 2004/5 season, the next visit to Shrewsbury was the final (non-playoff) away game of the 2005/6 season and this one was a bit personal. As some of you know, I had predicted Shrewsbury to get relegated and their fans didn’t take it well to say the least. Interestingly, both teams were in the chase for the final playoff place. City needed to get a win to eliminate as many people from the playoff race as possible, a loss would mean that a lot of teams would have gone into the last day with hopes of taking that final playoff place.

For the first time, I had gone into the seated section at the side of the pitch and to be fair, the view wasn’t much different, you still couldn’t see much of the other end of the pitch but at least we were high up. My relationship with Shrewsbury fans didn’t improve as early in the first half, they chanted "Who are ya", I replied by shouting "WE’RE THE TEAM ABOVE YOU IN THE LEAGUE", something that their fans didn’t take to well, especially a certain bloke.

There was this guy stood on the top row of the main stand near the away fans wearing what appeared to be a dated Shrewsbury shirt, for a guy seemingly in his 50s, he didn’t seem to want to pay a lot of attention to the game and every once in a while, just randomly came over to the away end and started stroking his goatee. Erm, very odd indeed.

Anyway, City were battered for the whole game but in the second half, Gareth McAuley headed the Imps in front against the run of play and it turned out to be the only goal of the game. More importantly though, the 2 main rivals for City’s playoff place, Bristol Rovers and Peterborough United, both lost leaving City needing just a point to secure a playoff place and even if they lost in the final game, it would have taken a thrashing to see City finish 8^th.

So that’s my memories of Shrewsbury so far, 3 visits, 3 wins, 4 goals for, 1 against and with 1 visit left (barring the possibility of cup draws), there are a few fond and not so fond memories of Gay Meadow and hopefully Saturday will see a few more good memories for Imps’ fans.

For our ground review of Gay Meadow, please go here - http://groundguide1.tripod.com/id27.html