From non-league to the Championship in nine years: the extraordinary rise of Lincoln City

Jack Moylan's finish in the 96th minute at Reading on Monday afternoon sent 2,884 Lincoln City supporters into delirium and ended a 65-year wait. The Imps are back in the Championship.

As Sky Sports put it, the last time Lincoln played second-tier football, Bill Shankly was Liverpool's manager and the Beatles hadn't released their first record. A pint at the ground cost less than 10p. Sixty-five years of lower-league life, including a six-season stretch outside the Football League entirely, separates that era from this one.

What Michael Skubala's side have done in 2025-26 is the kind of thing that makes English football worth paying attention to.

The result at the Select Car Leasing Stadium told the story of the season in miniature. Lincoln went ahead through Ryan One in the fifth minute, looked comfortable for long stretches, conceded a Lewis Wing free-kick equaliser two minutes into stoppage time, and then Moylan reacted fastest in the box moments later to settle it.

It was a promotion clinched with five games to spare, by a side that hasn't lost a league match since November, has the most wins, the fewest defeats, the best defence and the most goals in League One, and still plays with the lowest average possession in the division.

As a team, they lure opponents in, win the ball back and launch at pace. It's worked 27 times in the league this season alone, a tally only bettered in Lincoln's history by the 32 wins of 1975-76 and the 30 of 1951-52.

The story is even more interesting when you look back to 2016-17, when Lincoln City were playing in the National League, the fifth tier of English football, and finishing seasons with records like one win in ten. Then Danny and Nicky Cowley came. The Cowley brothers, both former teachers who had spent years developing their coaching philosophy at non-league level, took a club stuck in a malaise and gave it an identity.

They won the National League title in their first full season, earning promotion back to League Two, and did it on a budget that was roughly half what their closest rivals were spending.

As confirmed by Goal, that same campaign saw them become the first non-league side to reach the FA Cup quarter-finals since 1914, beating Ipswich, Brighton and Premier League Burnley before losing to Arsenal at the Emirates.

The return to the Football League led naturally to further growth. Under the Cowleys, the club climbed from League Two to League One and did not waste time in establishing itself as a genuine threat in the third tier. When the brothers left for Huddersfield in 2019, Michael Appleton came in and almost took Lincoln all the way.

His 2020-21 side, featuring loan stars Brennan Johnson and Morgan Rogers, reached the League One play-off final at Wembley before losing 2-1 to Blackpool in front of a near-empty stadium during the Covid restrictions.

For supporters who had waited so long, that loss felt like the one-in-a-million chance gone, but it wasn't.

Mark Kennedy followed Appleton before the club's current manager Michael Skubala took charge, a coach who had built his reputation through the teaching profession and then developed it inside the Leeds United coaching setup.

His first two seasons at Sincil Bank produced seventh and eleventh-place finishes. American investment from chairman Ron Fowler, who swapped Major League Baseball for Lincolnshire, has provided the financial backbone for a club that now operates with genuine professionalism at every level while retaining the community identity that makes clubs like this worth supporting.

The unbeaten run this season stretch back to November. The 19-point gap over third-placed Bradford City. The defensive record that has made Lincoln the hardest team in League One to score against.

Captain Tendayi Darikwa, who knows what promotion from this division feels like having lifted the League One title with Wigan in 2021, has led a back four built entirely on experience and intelligence rather than expensive signings. Jack Moylan, whose name will be remembered forever in Lincoln for that 96th-minute finish at Reading, has drawn attention from clubs further up the pyramid throughout the campaign.

Freddie Draper has chipped in with eight goals. The squad is deep enough and balanced enough that no single player is carrying the team, which is exactly what you need to sustain a promotion push across a 46-game season.

What Lincoln face next is the Championship, and the Championship is something else entirely. The second tier of English football is one of the most financially demanding division in world football below the Premier League, with parachute payment clubs spending at levels that make the gap between them and newly promoted sides feel structural rather than temporary. Lincoln will need to be smarter than almost anyone else in the division just to survive. Skubala knows it. The club's owners know it. The players, who've spent three years building this together rather than being assembled by a chequebook, probably know it better than anyone.

None of that is Monday's story, though. Monday's story is 2,884 supporters packed into an away end at Reading, watching Jack Moylan score in the 96th minute, and knowing that something that hasn't happened since 1961 has just happened again.