Lincoln City have brought the magic back to the FA Cup, claimed manager Danny Cowley, after becoming the first non-league team to reach the quarter-finals in 103 years with victory at Premier League Burnley.
The National League leaders’ remarkable story in the FA Cup continued at Turf Moor where Sean Raggett’s 89th-minute header produced one of the greatest upsets in the competition’s history. Lincoln, relegated from the Football League six years ago, have beaten Championship sides Brighton & Hove Albion plus Ipswich Town before adding Burnley to their list of high-profile scalps.
They are now just one win from a semi-final appearance at Wembley having become the first non-league team since Queens Park Rangers in 1914 to reach the last eight, earning over £1m from this season’s FA Cup in the process.
Cowley reacted: “Maybe we have brought some of the magic back. This is a brilliant cup competition and anyone who says the FA Cup is dead hasn’t lived in Lincoln for the past six to eight weeks. It has galvanised our football club. This club has had some really tough moments and this run has brought Lincoln back to the forefront of peoples’ minds in the city and to the peoples’ hearts as well. It has been massive for us and we have loved every minute of it.
“It is life-changing for us. There is no doubt it is life-changing. It is a game-changer for the football club in terms of finance and the profile it has given our players. Our players deserve that. When you are a non-league footballer, and a lot of ours have been part-time, you have to really fight. Football at the lower levels is not that romantic. It can be tough at time and for them to have this moment in the limelight is thoroughly deserved. I couldn’t be prouder of them all.”
Cowley and his assistant, brother Nicky, scrapped plans to travel from Turf Moor to watch North Ferriby United play Dover Athletic, ahead of their midweek National League fixture. “Even when we were celebrating on the pitch some of the players were saying we needed to focus on North Ferriby,” said the Lincoln manager. “The supporters can have a beer on us but our heads are already on North Ferriby.”
Lincoln have enjoyed a stunning rise under the Cowley brothers, who quit their jobs as PE teachers to take the full-time position at Sincil Bank last summer, and will savour Sunday’s draw for the FA Cup quarter-finals. “We want a home draw,” added the manager. “Either a home draw or an away game at a big ground, where all of our fans can come. It was disappointing we could have only 3,000 here today. We could have brought 15,000. We want all of them to share in what has been a great moment.”
Sean Raggett, who scored Lincoln’s dramatic late winner, told BT Sport: “I’m lost for words, it’s mad, I can’t believe it. The fans were amazing, all through the game. They’re a top quality side, drew with Chelsea last week, it’s amazing. [Did we have] belief? Massively, we didn’t come to draw, we came to win the game. Crazy, a non-league side in the quarter-finals in modern football, it’s unheard of.”