Town full of yardies.....your just a town full of yardies


Lincoln City are one of the worst professional football teams in the country. They are currently second from bottom in division two (for those of you still uncomfortable with the metric system, centigrade and decimalisation - that's the old division Four). There is just one team below them, Wrexham, and their only one point behind with two games in hand! It was therefore a minor miracle when they held the (not so) mighty Nottingham Forest to a 1-1 draw in the first round of the F.A cup. Alright we are not talking about the Brian Clough version of Forest, winners of European cups etc but they are riding high in Division one (old division Three). They are pushing for promotion to The Championship (which used to be division two-look try to keep up I know its confusing!) so it was still quite an achievement by Lincoln. The second recent miracle was that the lads from work talked me into attending the reply in Nottingham on Wednesday night. We found parking near(ish) the ground and walked over a rusty iron bridge. We then walked under the rusty iron bridge, by some graffiti strewn arches and along side the bacteria filled, murky looking River Trent in total darkness. John described the environment as a ideal place for rapists and rats. Paul seemed to be re-living his 80's hooligan days by muttering about "ambushes" and "firms". When we reached The City Ground, we were all quite surprised to find a lovely, well lit, Stadium with all the facilities. Before we took our seats Richard & I both had a meat & potato pie with a pint. Gomez had a meat & potato pie with Three pints. Perversely we were a little disappointed as the pies were delicious and there seemed to be very little chance of getting traditional "football food poisoning". The seats offered a brilliant view of the very well maintained pitch. It was a beautiful clear and mild night. The away end was packed with 3000 eager Lincoln fans ready to witness a memorable occasion. Then the referee went and spoilt things by blowing the whistle to start the match. It soon became obvious that Lincoln were dreadful. They couldn't string two passes together,had no movement and refused to tackle. The keeper looked very nervous and the right back had perfected the art of running away every time the ball or a Forest player come within 20 yards of him. Needless to say Forest won the match 3-1 and to be honest it could of been 10-1. Apart from the Lincoln end, the ground was nearly empty although the Forest fans amazed us with their noisy vocal support. They had a wide repertoire of songs, some mentioning the legendary Brian Clough and others about how much they hated Derby. The only real bit of excitement was when City scored - how did that happen?!. Several thousand Lincoln fans celebrated by stretching their arms wide, pretending to be Aeroplanes,and singing the Dambusters theme! The other highlight was a Lincoln fans solo rendition of "your just a town full of Yardies". Beautiful!