At Accrington tonight, the number of away supporters at the Wham Stadium will be increased as a group of schoolchildren and their teachers will become honourary Imps for the evening.
A group of 52 staff and students are making their way south from Grove Academy in Dundee to the game as part of what has become an annual trip to the North West of England as part of their Sports programme at the school.
The group, led by teacher Allan Gallazzi, will take in the Checkatrade Trophy second round tie and are looking forward to becoming part of the City fanbase. The group have been making the trip for a number of years and have taken in Champions League and Premier League games but this year they chose to follow the Imps.
“It came about a couple of years ago we take a group of kids from lots of different backgrounds to the Manchester area as part of our sports coaching programme. We go to that area as there seems to be lots of games on, and we wanted to take them to a game on Tuesday so we let the group choose.” Mr Gallazzi said.
“The boys chose to go to Accrington, and they all wanted to go into the Lincoln end and be honourary Lincoln supporters. They chose Lincoln because they’ve seen the success the club has been having in the past couple of years, so they wanted to follow Lincoln on the evening.”
He continued: “Usually wherever we’ve been we go in the home end but they’ve seen Lincoln on TV so thought we’d go in with the away fans on the night. It’s a mixture of kids between the ages of 12-17, there’s a mixture from each age group, they’re excited and want to learn some of the songs and get involved.”
The group are hoping that The Imps make it through to round three, but does Mr Gallazzi think it could be the start of a new Scotland based City supporters club?
“I think we’ll probably end up with a few Lincoln new fans and we may well come down in the future to a game at Sincil Bank too.”