North Ferriby beware Imps’ Marmite men
FOR Danny and Nicky Cowley the focus has already moved to Lincoln’s National League fixture tomorrow night.
By the time most of the 3,000 travelling fans who watched the Imps’ record their historic win at Burnley woke up yesterday the brothers had watched and analysed North Ferriby’s 2-1 defeat at home to Dover on Saturday.
And after that their previous two matches against Braintree and Macclesfield as well, “bantering” a plan together, as the older brother Danny put it.
“The next 24 hours will be spent watching football. Three 90-minute matches of their most recent games. Nothing is going to get in the way of watching North Ferriby,” said Danny, 38, who pulls rank as the club’s manager.
“Being promoted into the Football League can change our lives, so we owe it to the boys to put the same amount of focus into Tuesday’s match as we did against Burnley.”
If the two gladly paint a picture of two football obsessives, poring over North Ferriby 0 Macclesfield 2 from January 28 for signs of weakness, it was not for the benefit of the cameras or microphones at Turf Moor.
Imps goalkeeper Paul Farman said: “That’s the way they live. The way they look at football can’t be healthy. They are workaholics. All they do is eat Marmite on toast and watch football.
“When you walk past their office you can always smell toast – that’s all they eat. They are sat there all the time watching videos of football. When they come to training in the morning you look in their eyes and they look shattered.
“But as soon as it switches to 10.30 and we are on for training they are like men possessed.”
Such attention to detail and such an unbending work ethic plotted the downfall of a nearly full-strength Burnley on Saturday. And it was no fluke either – a point generously conceded by Clarets manager Sean Dyche.
Sean Raggett’s late header won the fifth-round tie to emulate the exploits of Queen’s Park Rangers in 1914 – the last non-League side to reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup – but this was a brilliant team effort with its foundations in sweat and organisation.
Lincoln are a big, powerful unit who play direct at times but matched Burnley for fitness and just shaded them for desire. The Cowley brothers both gave up careers in education last May to go full-time at Sincil Bank and with Lincoln three points clear at the top of the National League, they were clearly right to back themselves.
Their cup run has already earned £1million for the club – Saturday’s win netted £180,000 in prize money and a lucrative quarter-final will easily double that.
For a non-League side, that should be enough to catapult them into the League and
beyond. If the two brothers in charge think only of the trip to North Ferriby, everyone else was allowing themselves a dream of Wembley, with just 90 minutes of football between Lincoln and a semi-final there.
“At the start of the season we had a list of targets where we wanted to get to in the league and the cups and I joked that we would win the FA Cup,” said Matthew Rhead, the 17-stone former JCB engineer with hands the size of buckets. “Anything is possible. I also said I’ll retire if we win the FA Cup, which I’m starting to regret. Three more wins and I’ll be back with the JCB!
“The longer this run keeps going the more people actually believe we can beat anybody.”
Farman insisted he would not swap a National League title for an FA Cup final if both were offered but suggested, with a smile, that he might take both. “Burnley have been how many games unbeaten at home but it is the magic of the cup, isn’t it? It is very hard for players to play teams from lower down,” he said.
“It’s like Sutton. They are a big side too who might trouble Arsenal. If they have worked like us they stand a chance.”