Portsmouth Spoils Lincoln's Homecoming Party

Sixty-five years they waited for this. A full house, a rebranded ground, the return of second-tier football to Sincil Bank – now the ProAmpac Stadium – and a sense that Lincoln City were finally back where generations of supporters had dreamed they might be.

Portsmouth walked in and tore up the script.

Ryan Kavuma-McQueen, 17 years old and on loan from Chelsea, wrote his own story instead. With Pompey’s first real attack, he slipped into space and passed the ball, calm as you like, into the bottom corner. First senior goal. First real silence of the afternoon.

The mood changed in an instant.

Pompey, beaten 3-1 by Queens Park Rangers on opening day and under pressure to respond, had already shuffled their pack with three changes. Kavuma-McQueen was one of them and he wasted no time justifying the call. Lincoln, who had come out like a side determined to mark their return in style, suddenly found themselves chasing.

They had started with the bit between their teeth. Adam Reach saw a free-kick tipped over by Nicholas Schmid. Moments later, Ben House burst through one-on-one, only for Schmid to stand tall and block. The noise inside the ground swelled with every attack. Lincoln’s tempo crackled.

Then the punishment.

Abu Kamara was felled just outside the box and Adrian Segecic stepped up. His free-kick, hit with venom from the edge of the area, took a faint deflection and flew past the keeper. Two-nil to Pompey. Two goals from their first meaningful openings. The homecoming threatened to turn sour before half-time.

Lincoln’s coaching duo, Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw, had already tried to freshen things up after the opening-day defeat at Middlesbrough, bringing in Reeco Hackett and reshaping the side. They at least got a response. The Imps refused to retreat into themselves.

Their reward came from the spot.

Zak Swanson threw himself in front of a Reach effort and was penalised for handball. Hackett, up against his former club, took responsibility. He struck his penalty with authority, dragging Lincoln back into the contest just after the half-hour and lighting the place up again.

This is a ground that had not seen a league defeat in more than 10 months, stretching back to a loss to Exeter City last October. Lincoln leaned on that home swagger, kept pressing, kept running. The party atmosphere flickered back into life. A comeback felt possible.

Then Ebou Adams arrived.

Brought off the bench to steady Pompey, he did far more than that. Picking up the ball 25 yards out, he let fly with a thunderous drive that ripped into the net and ripped the air out of the stadium. A statement of a goal. A 3-1 lead. And, realistically, the contest decided.

Lincoln still refused to fold. They pushed until the end, urged on by 10,545 inside a sold-out ProAmpac Stadium, with American backer Ron Fowler – the former San Diego Padres co-owner who took control as the club surged to promotion last season – watching on from the stands. In stoppage time, Rob Street almost set up a grandstand finale when his deflected effort looped up and clipped the crossbar.

For a heartbeat, everyone held their breath. The ball dropped the wrong side. The moment was gone.

The final whistle cut through an afternoon heavy with history. When Lincoln last played at this level in 1961, the moon landing was still eight years away. Since then, the club have wandered the outer edges of the English pyramid, dipping into non-league, flirting with financial ruin, and relying on supporters to drag them back from administration in 2002.

Only a decade ago, they were still fighting to escape the National League. Now they stand in the Championship, promoted on one of League One’s more modest budgets, yet daring to spend in ways previous generations could scarcely imagine. The signing of Romanian defender Andrei Coubis for a fee north of £1m broke their transfer record earlier this summer. Another record is expected to fall if Danish striker Mikkel Ladefoged completes his move from Vasteras SK.

This is a club stretching itself, on and off the pitch, to belong at this level.

Portsmouth, though, offered a sharp reminder of the step Lincoln have taken. Clinical where the hosts were wasteful early on, ruthless when chances fell their way, and backed by match-changing contributions from a teenage loanee and a powerful substitute strike, Pompey turned a milestone into a lesson.

The bunting and the banners will stay up around Lincoln for a while yet. The Championship has finally come back to this corner of the country. The question now is simple: how quickly can the Imps turn days like this from occasion into routine?