The 1981/82 season, so near yet so far. The great Colin Murphy side - you know the names, they roll off the tongue. After an unremarkable first half of the season, the Imps went into overdrive during the new year with a 16 match unbeaten run commencing with a 3-0 victory against Chester on 3rd February, ending with an agonising 1-0 defeat against champions to be Burnley, on April 10th.
Of course the drama was only just beginning as the Imps went into their last 'winner takes all' game at a feverish Craven Cottage on May 18th knowing that the victors would book an automatic promotion spot to the second tier. As it was, valiant 10 man Lincoln fought back from a goal down to snatch a 1-1 draw, with Fulham clinging on for dear life in front of a 20,000 crowd - many from Lincoln. Alas it wasn't quite enough and Fulham sneaked over the line by a solitary point.
Fast forward over 40 years and the echoes of that season are there. An indifferent first half of the season, totally eclipsed by Michael Skubala's turbo charged Imps kicking off an incredible 18 match unbeaten run at Wycombe in January, only being ended in the dying embers of the home fixture versus Wigan Athletic in April.
That leaves a certain final fixture against Champions Portsmouth, with the Imps knowing that victory (bar an outrageous swing in goal difference) will guarantee them another shot at promotion to the second tier of English football.
So how do the results and statistics compare for the two seasons; well let's take a peek:
1981/82 P46 W21 D14 L11 F66 A40 GD+26 PTS 77
2023/24 P45 W20 D14 L11 F65 A38 GD+27 PTS 74
Those figures are eerily similar and of course victory in the final game will match up the WLD and points columns exactly, with probably little in it with regard goals for/against and GD.
The big difference of course is that should the modern day Lincoln side achieve such parity, via the play offs they will be rightly rewarded with an extended crack at the promotion cruelly denied Murph's heroes in the pre play offs era.
Will history repeat itself decades later with final day agony, or can the Imps lay this particular ghost to rest and use a 77 point spring board to finally return to the division they jointly founded in 1892 and not visited for over 60 years. Here's to it being good omens.
