Impish Enthusiasm

By Nathan Jackson
July 25 2005

Footballing website, Square Football has produced a rather interesting look at City's recent fortunes. Although it is in general, a fair report, they do describe us as "Impish enthusiasm - Sky’s now the limit for the men with little ambition". Interesting choice of words there.

The article, found at http://www.squarefootball.net/article/article.asp?aid=2180 reads

 

It used to be so unbelievably predictable. As we approached the excitement of a new millennium in 1999, things couldn’t have been more mediocre at Lincoln City. Mediocre results, mediocre players and mediocre - if they ever did possess any – ambition.

Around this time, it was a rarity to get more than 3,000 fans at home games, which tended to earn 1-1 draws or the odd 1-0 win. Away games were worse – in season 1999/00 the team lost heavily at some grounds, including 5-2 at Mansfield and 5-3 at Barnet – and that overpaid prima donnas like Tony Battersby were on the club’s books served as proof for the club’s lackadaisical mindset.

A season ticket holder during this overwhelmingly underwhelming period, I never thought that the club could ever achieve its current standing. While it is still in the Football League’s bottom tier, a new spirit flows through the corridors of Sincil Bank and the ambition of the current board of directors could well be at the highest rate in the Imps’ history.

The club, which was taken over by the Supporters’ Trust in 2001, recently held a press conference to show off its plans to bring Championship football to Lincoln by 2010. Such an outlandish claim was vindicated by a tangible step-by-step guide to increase the club’s standing within the surrounding community, including a stadium with improved transport links; increased use of the ground’s facilities to increase revenue for the club and further involve local groups; and a new Championship-standard training facility, incorporating a youth academy to produce Championship-standard players.

Many outfits at Lincoln’s level are all too standoffish to their surrounding community. Others like to formulate grandiose plans, designed to buy a reticent board of directors a little more of its supporters’ patience, which are ultimately unsubstantiated, remain unfulfilled and sometimes fail with catastrophic effect. While Lincoln’s GOAL 2010 plan is only now being acted upon and has some way to go before onlookers can pass judgement on the level of its success, it seems that, finally, the team from one of football’s backwaters has the ambition and gumption to emerge from the shadows.

The supporters and, dare I say it, cynics that populate any settlement that is home to a lower league club, have little reason to doubt the club’s vision for the future. After all, many of the current board are those that pulled the battered and bruised Lincoln rabbit out of the middle of the road seconds before the liquidation juggernaut ground it into the tarmac. Now, three years on, City resemble a slick, sturdy stallion that is speeding up the highway with increasing velocity. Despite having historic debts and seemingly no way out, let alone scope for growth, there were those who never lost hope and worked diligently and unrelentingly to pull the club clear and build a new house on solid foundations.

Unbelievably, Lincoln have made year-on-year profits since 2002 and have become the flagship for clubs owned and run by their supporters. Now, the men that once had little ambition seem intent on pursuing a standard of football on a higher plane than League 2.
Football had to see sense in that summer of discontent in 2002 when, after the collapse of ITV Digital, clubs realised they had to either run on the fuel of business, not sentiment. Maybe, just maybe, Lincoln’s first steps into a brave, new world of community ownership might be talked about in years to come as a venture that shaped the way England’s smaller clubs are run, and provided them with a future.