An Ode To A Lincoln City FC Fan

Had Rudyard Kipling found Lincoln City Football Club before his poetry book, then quite probably, this would have been the outcome!

"If Only....."

If you can enhance your position when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all chairmen doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can mark and not be tired by marking,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make promotion your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and longball
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twist and turning by Hughes to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of an away game at Swansea,
And lose, and start again in the Conference
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Man on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common Beck touch;
If neither foes nor Ciaran Toner can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving ninety minutes
With five thousand and four hundred seconds, worth of distance run -
Yours is Sincil Bank and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Lincoln City man my son"

Click here for the real "If" by Rudyard Kipling