Percy

This is a bit of a diversion from my blogging repertoire - my entries consist totally of our adventures in the Scottish Highlands and poems reflecting my arty side! So now we go in a completely different direction, football!

First of all, who was Percy Freeman? Well, simply put, a Lincoln City legend and my personal favourite. Sadly passed away in 2016 at the age of 70. He made 152 league appearances for City and netted 64 times. He was a big bustling centre forward, not the most articulate player but certainly one of the most entertaining and charismatic albeit with an indomitable focus!

Percy was prominent in the record breaking 1975/ 76  season, the previous season they missed out on promotion by 0.0083 of a goal !!!! That wasn't going to happen again, in that unforgettable season they ran for every ball like their lives depended on it, they were simply unstoppable and this was transposed into the statistics - 74 points (2 points a win and never beaten) 111 goals, just 4 defeats and unbeaten at home. First promotion in 24 years.

Ironically, when Graham Taylor took over at Lincoln he released Percy, he had a spell at Reading but became disillusioned with football altogether and returned to his roofing business. However, Graham had the foresight to lure Percy back. "Get yourself fit and your back in the team" he said. And he kept to his word. 

With that as a backdrop, let us go back to a sunny Saturday afternoon, April 17th 1976 to be precise and its about 4.15 pm. I am one of 14, 096 people crammed into Sincil Bank, sat in the St Andrews stand with my Dad. The opponents are Doncaster Rovers, they finished a respectable 7th that year but this day they were completely swept aside as City won 5-0 and clinched the top spot in front of a jubilant home crowd. The atmosphere was electric with that many people crammed into such a small stadium.

So, we finally come to the point - the fourth goal. It was 3-0 at half time and the fourth was Percy's second of the game. I have never seen anything like it before and to be honest haven't seen anything like it since. Peter Graham somehow managed to get a cross in when he was being hampered by two defenders, all I remember is Percy lunging for the ball just outside the 18 yard box, pushing aside two or three players then wonder of wonders - a full length diving header! The ball rocketed into the net, giving the goalie no chance.

Well you can look on YouTube at 'classic diving headers' and they're all there, Droba, RVP, Ronaldo etc but this one is way more sensational than those. Percy was horizontal and I swear he seemed to hang in the air, to add to that, you're talking here about a big guy - old school centre forward who maybe necked a couple of pints of Brown Ale at half time. As a young lad of 12, my chin was on my chest!

I thought it was fitting at the final whistle, Graham Taylor ran on and embraced Percy not the skipper Sam Ellis, who was also solid and played a blinder but he wasn't the star of the show. There was only going to be one - Percy Freeman, and some things you never ever forget.