On The Road
LAST YEAR’S CUP RUN THE CATALYST FOR LINCOLN’S PROMOTION PUSH
AYEAR has passed since Lincoln City’s famous FA Cup run, which was perhaps the spark for this club’s staggering transformation.
Under the Cowley brothers, Lincoln became the first nonLeague side for 103 years to reach the last eight of the FA Cup. But this is not a club living in the past.
‘We didn’t want to be that club everyone talked about for doing really well in the FA Cup but never mentioned again,’ says Danny Cowley, the Lincoln manager, as he pores over Notts County’s stats ahead of this League Two fixture between promotion contenders.
Last season culminated in Lincoln winning the National League and returning to the Football League after a six-year absence. The FA Cup run generated a ‘game- changing’ sum, with more than £1million from prize money alone.
Cowley and his brother Nicky, Lincoln’s assistant manager, met the board in the summer. ‘We wanted a budget that was sustainable over a number of years,’ Danny Cowley says.
‘The key with the money we got from the FA Cup wasn’t to just throw it back into the playing budget and splurge it in one go. We’ve got to make sure we build an infrastructure that allows us sustained success.’ Saturday’s 2-2 draw against Kevin Nolan’s County saw Lincoln drop to sixth in the table — two points off third place.
Cowley watched most of the game from the stands after he was sent off following County’s first goal, scored by Jon Stead.
Cowley thought defender Sam Habergham was fouled in the build-up to the goal. He said afterwards that he should not have confronted the fourth official, but it showed Cowley’s new level of intensity in his first year as a Football League manager.
Lee Frecklington, signed from Rotherham earlier in the week, marked his return to Lincoln with a goal two minutes after Stead’s. Then Matt Green put Lincoln in front midway through the second half, but Jorge Grant levelled for County 14 minutes from time.
Cowley was livid when substitute Ollie Palmer thought he had scored the Imps’ winner in stoppage time after slotting past goalkeeper Ross Fitzsimons, only for the referee Ross Joyce to award a free-kick.
Cowley — the division’s manager of the month in December, when Lincoln took 13 points from five games — is quick to point out that Lincoln’s rise has been a team effort.
‘Nobody is more important than anyone else,’ he says.
‘ From making the tea to doing the kit, for me, you’re as important as the chairman, because without all of us the wheel doesn’t move.’
It’s not all talk. Before kickoff, Cowley sticks his head in the new press suite to tell the media team they have done a ‘great job’ with the matchday programme.
‘We’ll always have restrictions at this level in terms of facilities, but we have a no excuses mentality,’ the 39- year- old manager says. ‘ If there is a barrier in our way we try to find a way to overcome it. Is it perfect? No. But are we striving for perfect? Yes.’
Perfect is probably how the majority of Lincoln fans would describe the last year.
Promotion to League One is now the obvious aim, but asked where he and Lincoln will be in a year’s time, Cowley answers: ‘We just want to keep striving to make things better. That’s all we can do.’