Portsmouth Defeats Lincoln in Championship Homecoming
Sixty-five years of waiting. One sold-out stadium, freshly rebranded and dressed for a party. And Portsmouth walked in and turned the music down.
On Lincoln City’s first home game back in the second tier since 1961, Pompey were ruthless, clinical and utterly unmoved by the sense of occasion, running out 3-1 winners at the ProAmpac Stadium.
A teenager steals the stage
The script seemed written for Lincoln. Instead, it was a 17-year-old Chelsea loanee who grabbed the pen.
Ryan Kavuma-McQueen, one of three changes to the Portsmouth side beaten by Queens Park Rangers on opening day, needed just one clear sight of goal to silence the noise. Lincoln had flown out of the blocks, creating chance after chance in a frantic opening, but when Pompey finally broke, they did it with precision.
Kavuma-McQueen drifted into space, picked his spot and slid a composed finish into the bottom corner with Pompey’s first real opportunity. His first senior goal. On a day built around Lincoln’s return, the teenager calmly made it his own.
Lincoln had only themselves to blame for trailing. Adam Reach had already forced Nicholas Schmid into tipping a free-kick over the bar, and Ben House was denied in a one-on-one as early as the fifth minute. Those misses would sting.
The punishment got worse.
Segecic strikes, Lincoln hit back
Barely had Lincoln steadied themselves when Pompey struck again. Abu Kamara was felled just outside the area, and Adrian Segecic stepped up. His free-kick was fierce, skidding off a slight deflection and flashing beyond the goalkeeper to double the lead. Two attacks, two goals. Brutal.
Lincoln, who had not lost a league game at home in more than 10 months, refused to retreat. Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw had already shown their intent with an attacking tweak, bringing Reeco Hackett into the side, and their players kept driving forward despite the double blow.
The pressure finally told from the spot. Adam Reach saw a shot blocked by Zak Swanson’s hand, the referee pointed straight to the penalty, and Hackett took charge. His run-up was calm, the finish emphatic. 2-1, just after the half-hour, and the noise returned. Lincoln’s energy, their front-foot approach, deserved that lifeline.
The home crowd sensed a comeback. The game felt alive again.
Adams slams the door
Any hope of a romantic turnaround needed a big Lincoln moment early in the second half. Instead, it came from a Portsmouth substitute.
Ebou Adams entered the fray and, from 25 yards, lashed in a thunderous strike that ripped into the net and ripped the belief out of the home side. One swing, and the contest shifted from tense to almost settled. Lincoln’s hopes of rescuing a result took a heavy blow right there.
Still they kept coming. This is a team that fought its way out of League One on one of the division’s more modest budgets, and the attitude that carried them up was on show again. They pushed, pressed and chased every half-chance.
Deep into stoppage time, they almost found a lifeline. Rob Street’s deflected effort looped over Schmid and seemed destined to drop in, only to kiss the crossbar and bounce away. The woodwork had the final say; the party atmosphere never got its late twist.
A giant leap meets a hard landing
The last time Lincoln City hosted football at this level, the moon landing was still eight years away. Since then, the club has lived most of its life on the margins of the English pyramid: the outer reaches of the EFL, long spells in non-league, and a financial crisis in 2002 that forced supporters to dig deep just to keep their club alive.
Now they are back in the Championship, backed by American investor Ron Fowler, the former San Diego Padres co-owner who took a controlling interest as promotion loomed last season. He watched from the stands among 10,545 fans, witnessing a landmark day for the club that didn’t quite go to plan.
Lincoln have already smashed their transfer record this summer, paying over £1m to bring in Romanian defender Andrei Coubis, and are expected to do it again to land Danish striker Mikkel Ladefoged from Vasteras SK. Ambition is no longer in short supply here.
But ambition meets reality quickly in the Championship. On this evidence, Lincoln have the energy, the aggression and the backing to compete. What they lacked, on a day thick with emotion and history, was Portsmouth’s cold, clinical edge.
The homecoming is over. The hard work of proving they belong at this level has only just begun.
