A shockingly gutless display, utterly bereft of pride in our club and deserving of nothing more than contempt directed at the weak-minded perpetrators. Shame on you all.

I do not refer to our players, who, after a drab first half, performed pretty well yesterday at Sincil Bank and were denied victory against an inferior though dogged Lincoln side only by some disappointing finishing. I refer to our “supporters”.

And those inverted commas are not even the half of it. People who stream out of the ground well before the final whistle are not supporters, they are not even “supporters”. They are football tourists - people who pretend to wear the colours of a club that is in renaissance, currently enjoying its finest season in fifteen years, yet who stalk off home just because we’ve had a disappointing afternoon at Lincoln. Those of us who suffered – o, how we suffered – under Dolan and Fish, Ternent and Bamber, Lloyd and Wilby, Hinchliffe and Buchanan, Lawford and John Moore might have a bit to say about people who scorn this current team by turning their backs on their efforts, but the miserable band of glory-hunters we have lately attracted to our club wouldn’t even know that Lincoln is a traditional horror day out, and still less would they even begin to appreciate that football supporting is not about entertainment, it is about responsibility.

Yes, responsibility. You have a right to pay your money and claim allegiance to the amber-and-black cause, and you have a corresponding duty to get behind the team, and not only when it’s winning. If you can’t manage that, then the least of your responsibility is not actively to undermine Hull City. Hundreds of fools and knaves marched sullenly out of the ground yesterday once Lincoln made it 2-0 - not the usual oafs in search of a fight, but instead people who have no stomach for a fight. People who claim sought-after away tickets and then betray the very essence of the function of the football supporter. Doubtless the same sullen minority who hurl abuse at the Circle if we’re not four up by half-time. My new motto? Well, how about, “support your team, smack a boo-boy in the mouth”. There is no available defence of “I’ve paid my money, I’ll shout what I like”. The collective interest must outweigh the individual. Our players, who have lodged the club in the promotion places for almost the entire span of this season, are visibly damaged by idiotic boo-ing. How can they be expected to maximise their efforts for a desperate attempt to grab a vital late goal if all around the stadium people are trotting off home early? Our club’s progress is being hindered by these dullard part-timers. I don’t want to go back to crowds of 3,000 at Boothferry Park, but there are other options, and we can do better than clogging our support up with people who are ignorant of the Moral Code of Football Supporting.

The game. Ah yes. The game. We lost it. Without deserving to.

Burgess Walters
Elliott Junior Hinds Green
Thelwell Delaney Joseph Marshall
Myhill

Eh? Thelwell at left back, can he handle that? No, as it turned out. Hinds in central midfield, were we wrong in concluding from recent displays that he can’t do that? No, as it turned out. And we started out by creaking lamentably under the usual hideously ugly Lincoln onslaught. Kick it long, kick it high, kick it early. The home side’s manager Keith Alexander seems a splendid chap, but Lincoln are a grotesque stain on football’s aspiration to elegance and beauty and it seems that the identity of their boss changes nothing. I hope they get no reward come May, but yesterday they rattled us early on. Junior, then Delaney, and then Joseph were all forced into hurried clearances. Premiership poise counts for little in this barrel-scraping, knuckle-dragging environment and when Junior dithered and Joseph headed feebly and Marshall took possession and then idly lost it, the alarmed travelling fans hoped that the message had been absorbed: defend ugly. Get it up the pitch. Don’t clown around.

I’m not sure Thelwell ever quite grasped this. He was skinned horribly more than once as he looked badly unsure of his task at left-back. And Joseph wobbled too. But Delaney is a rock and the excellent Myhill inspires confidence with unerring handling and a readiness to sprint powerfully off his line to take high balls … of which there were plenty. This goalkeeper could be a superstar. He has the ability of a young Tony Norman, but none of the physical frailty that constituted the Treeman’s sole flaw (alongside an enduring aversion to Bramall Lane).

Lincoln had the best of it through the middle part of the first half, and even saw the ball ripple our netting. This occurred directly from a throw-in, although we were indebted to a confident linesman who flagged vigorously to demonstrate his conviction that the arc of the ball’s trajectory had not been altered by a crucial flick en route. So no goal, but I confess I was not wholly certain that there had been no intervening touch and, judging by his full-length dive, Myhill too had his horrible suspicions.

Still, once we began to force the play into their half matters improved significantly. Elliott flashed a shot across the face of the goal, Green danced in and out, while Burgess was the pick of our side. Last week off the pace, this week alert, combative and full of energy. Junior, half-Welsh, half-Brazilian and half-Taylorian, has a build which is identical to that of Delaney, and he looks a decent acquisition, and it was a slick ball forward from Junior that presented us with the best chance of the opening period. Burgess took the ball on, appeared to have hesitated too long, but then unleashed a fizzing left-foot shot that smashed back off the crossbar with Marriott hopelessly beaten.

Half-time, 0-0, so far, so humdrum.

The second period opens in lively end-to-end fashion as Burgess heads over from a Marshall cross, Lincoln cause panic at a corner but we clear lines in relief and then Burgess strikes a wonderful dipping left-foot volley from just outside the box which drops just the wrong side of the bar. But the play settles down in a pattern that is firmly in our favour, and there is every indication that our track record as a side that gets stronger as the game progresses is to be extended. A Green cross from the right just eludes Burgess … an Elliott cross from the left reaches Burgess but he can only apply a lunging toe-end and the ball bounces wide of the goal defended by Marriott.

Marshall is a strangely laid-back character: he lacks aggression and always seems to run at less than full tilt. But he has a good touch on the ball and, working the right side, he was the source of good possession and dangerous crosses. Price comes on for Green – I would have sooner seen Hinds off and Green re-assigned to the centre – and our strength down the right-hand side increases still further. Marshall surges forward, but is thwarted; Junior take over, and is able to deliver a swerving cross which deceives Marriott and drops to Burgess at the back post, who controls it only to send his shot firmly into the arse of a covering defender.

It’s lively, it’s all us. A handball claim … waved away, and I think it was ball-to-hand rather than the reverse. But the game is there to be won. Burgess is missing our chances but overall he was a giant yesterday: our finest player and, for a man without a malicious bone in his body, a very decent leader of the line against opponents that don’t mince their tackles.

Walters has played with much energy but hasn’t had serious impact inside the penalty box and he is withdrawn in favour of the clever Forrester. But it is the combination of Price and Marshall swarming down the right that strips Lincoln bare once again, only for the cross to provoke a header that drifts too high under propulsion from both Junior and Burgess. They get in each other’s way, in short. No such excuse shortly afterwards as Price wins the ball, backheels a glorious pass to Burgess, who crosses perfectly on to the forehead of Elliott. He is a superb header of a football. He is unmarked. His effort clears the crossbar.

That should have been in.

So too should another chance which arrived at Forrester’s feet courtesy of a poor clearance by Marriott, excellent control by Forrester and a pass to Price, who rolled a return ball in to Jamie’s above-mentioned feet … but, urgh, the shot is tame and the save all too easy.

So are we going to win or are Lincoln going to cling on to a gritty and scarcely-deserved point?

Neither, unfortunately. A passage of broken play presents Gain with an unlikely shooting opportunity – bottom Division players don’t leap in the air to get purchase on a sumptuous volley on their left-hand side. This bloke does, and a thumping effort from outside the box flies past the blameless Myhill.

A minute later we look set to equalise as Elliott slaloms thrillingly through the ragged Lincoln defence but he is foiled by an astonishing point-blank save by Marriott.

Holt replaces Hinds, and we’ve by no means given up. In fact, on the day we’ve played football that will get us comfortably promoted if we repeat the dose from here on in. But we’re stretched in pursuit of the equaliser, and a break down the right allows one of theirs time and space to prepare a firm cross and the ball is stuffed into our net from close range. At 2-0, the game’s not over: there are five minutes left and we’ve shown a proven ability to split the home defence asunder. But hundreds of City fans have far important things on their mind, like getting home in time for Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game.