Back in their non-league days, Danny Cowley used to call Paul Hurst for advice on the perils of football management. On a wet day at Wembley four years later, the pupil bested the teacher as Cowley’s Lincoln City beat Hurst’s Shrewsbury 1-0 in an often frantic Checkatrade Trophy Final.
Add this to last season’s run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, taking them into the Football League and a potential second promotion this season, and you can see why Danny and his brother Nicky are reportedly in the thoughts of clubs higher up the food chain.
It was that FA Cup run that set Lincoln up for this win. The Imps were eventually knocked out by Arsenal, but Cowley said the build-up to that game at the Emirates Stadium prepared his players, many of whom came up from non-league football, for Wembley.
“When you know you’re going play at Arsenal in front of 60,000 against world-class players, it doesn’t get tougher than that,” Cowley said afterwards. “It gave us the experience to cope this time around. It’s not often you wake up and know you’re going to do something you’ll remember for the rest of your life. The best players and teams grab that opportunity.”
Lincoln did that, Shrewsbury didn’t. Despite Hurst’s side being a division higher, only one team looked comfortable in their surroundings, and the League One side’s manager was merciless in his criticism of players who seemed cowed by the occasion. “I’ve told them they need to go home and look themselves in the mirror and be honest,” Hurst said. “We talk about handling situations – clearly some didn’t.”
Lincoln tried to physically intimidate their opponents from the off, a tactic that was ultimately effective but should have backfired in the opening minutes. Their vast centre-forward Matt Rhead was extraordinarily fortunate to stay on the pitch after a fairly brutal challenge on the Shrews keeper Dean Henderson while going for a cross: as the ball came over Rhead was facing Henderson and turned his shoulder into him, flattening the onrushing custodian. He was merely booked for the foul, and with their full complement of players Lincoln took the lead five minutes later. Luke Waterfall tried to hook in a corner from the right, Henderson saved but Elliott Whitehouse was there to ram the rebound into the roof of the net.
“I said to him this morning that I know those football gods,” Cowley said, “and they tend to stick by people who work hard. I said I thought it would be his day.”
Shrewsbury were on the rough end of another pivotal decision before half‑time: the Lincoln keeper Ryan Allsop made a flying save from an Omar Beckles header, then Waterfall blocked the goal-bound follow-up with his arm. But Hurst quickly shut down any notion that the adverse decisions contributed to the result. “It seems like a pointless exercise,” he said. “It would be looking for excuses.”
Both teams now have bigger, promotion-shaped fish to fry, and might be back at Wembley next month in the League One and Two play-offs (if they do not get automatic promotion). “It could be a dress rehearsal for us,” said Hurst, who could use the disappointment of their non-performance as motivation.
Cowley echoed the old Brian Clough maxim that any trophy victory would give the players “a taste of champagne”. He said: “We need to use this: this was never our mountain. The mountain was always the league. We’re going to use the momentum today to push on.”
The Lincoln manager nimbly shrugged off any suggestion that this win might raise his own profile, given recent links with the soon-to-be-vacant position at Ipswich. Instead, attention turns to their next League Two appointment. “Winning is great, but the feeling goes really quickly. I’ll be watching Port Vale tonight.”
