We are the champions! – but lifelong Imps fan Dave wasn’t there to see the historic moment

A lifetime’s loyalty as a Lincoln City fan for Lincolnshire PGM Dave Wheeler has been rewarded by his club clinching promotion – but he wasn’t there to see it.

Devoted season ticket holder Dave, admitting to being on a huge high because of the result and what it means,  said: ”Tickets for the game at Reading sold out before I’d got one, but I’ll be at Port Vale for the last game of the season.”

The Imps’ 2-1 defeat of Reading took them to a run of 24 unbeaten games and lifted them to an unassailable 90-point tally, earning promotion to the Championship for the first time since 1961; less than two years after Dave was born.

But Dave’s City connection stretches back much further – to the 19th century; first with his maternal grandfather Andy Gardner who turned out for the Club at centre half 151 times either side of the first war, and his great grandfather who made 56 appearances between 1896 and 1898. Grandad Gardner, born in Airdrie, was also a Freemason. He was initiated into the Lodge Aidrie St John in April 1905, and was also a member of the Mark.

Dave, whose devotion to Lincoln City is well known, said: “I started watching the Imps in the late 1960s when a friendly steward would let me in for free on the basis that if anyone wanted to sit where I was sitting,  I had to move!

“And so it continues, as my son Richard wrote articles for the programme, first as a 16-year-old, then for several years before going on to be a political journalist and, of course, is also a season ticket holder at the club.”

In the picture below, taken in 1915, Dave’s grandad is third from the left in the back row.

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