Portsmouth Defeats Lincoln in Championship Homecoming
Sixty-five years of waiting, a sold-out crowd, a rebranded ground and a sense of history in the air – and Portsmouth tore straight through it.
Lincoln City’s return to second-tier football at Sincil Bank, now the ProAmpac Stadium, ended in a sobering 3-1 defeat, as John Mousinho’s side showed far more cutting edge on a day that was supposed to belong to the Imps.
Teenager steals the stage
The script said Lincoln would fly out of the blocks. They did. But the first punch landed at the other end.
Chelsea loanee Ryan Kavuma-McQueen, just 17 and starting his first league game for Pompey, needed only one clear sight of goal. Against the run of early pressure, he found the bottom corner with composure that belied his age, turning Portsmouth’s first real attack into his first senior goal.
Lincoln had already rattled Portsmouth’s nerves by then. Adam Reach forced Nicholas Schmid to tip a free-kick over, and Ben House should have scored when he burst clear in the fifth minute, only for Schmid to stand tall in the one-on-one. Those misses hung in the air. They would sting even more a few minutes later.
Segecic’s set-piece sting
The pressure from the hosts didn’t relent, but Portsmouth suddenly carried menace with every foray forward. When Abu Kamara was chopped down just outside the box, the away end sensed opportunity.
Adrian Segecic stepped up and drilled a fierce free-kick that took a slight deflection on its way in, doubling Pompey’s lead and briefly silencing a crowd that had spent the afternoon in celebration mode. Two chances, two goals. Lincoln’s long-awaited homecoming had turned into a harsh lesson in Championship ruthlessness.
Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw, Lincoln’s head coaching double act, had already tried to shake things up after the opening-day defeat at Middlesbrough, bringing Reeco Hackett into the side. The move would pay off, but not before the damage had been done.
Hackett hits back
Lincoln refused to retreat. They kept running, pressing, and throwing bodies forward, playing with the same energy that made their home a fortress in League One, where they had not lost a league game here since a defeat to Exeter City more than 10 months ago.
Their reward came just after the half-hour mark.
Adam Reach’s shot struck Zak Swanson’s arm in the box as the Portsmouth defender tried to block, and the referee pointed to the spot. Hackett, facing his former club, stepped up and buried the penalty with authority, dragging Lincoln back into the contest and reigniting the noise around the ground.
The mood shifted. The party was back on, or at least flickering again. Lincoln poured forward, sensing an equaliser before the break, but Portsmouth held firm.
Adams slams the door shut
The second half brought more Lincoln endeavour but still lacked the decisive touch in front of goal. Portsmouth, by contrast, always seemed one clean move away from killing the game.
The moment arrived through Ebou Adams.
Introduced from the bench, he seized his chance with a strike that will live long in Portsmouth memories. Picking the ball up around 25 yards out, Adams unleashed a thumping drive that flew beyond the goalkeeper and into the net, restoring the two-goal cushion and puncturing Lincoln’s belief in an instant.
It was the kind of goal that doesn’t just win a match. It settles it.
Lincoln kept pushing. They had to. Deep into stoppage time, Rob Street’s deflected effort looped up and clipped the crossbar, brushing the woodwork and briefly freezing the stadium. Had it dropped in, the finale would have been frantic. Instead, it summed up Lincoln’s afternoon: close, but not close enough.
A milestone day, a harsh reality
Among the 10,545 packed into the ProAmpac Stadium was Ron Fowler, the American investor and former San Diego Padres co-owner who took a controlling interest in Lincoln during last season’s promotion surge. He witnessed a club transformed off the pitch, but reminded that the Championship is a very different landscape.
Lincoln’s rise has been remarkable. Promoted from League One despite operating on one of the division’s more modest budgets, they have pushed themselves into new financial territory. The summer signing of Romanian defender Andrei Coubis broke the £1m barrier for the first time in the club’s history, and another club-record fee is expected to land Danish striker Mikkel Ladefoged from Vasteras SK.
For generations of Imps supporters, this is uncharted territory. Many have known only the lower reaches of the EFL and spells in non-league, including as recently as a decade ago. Fewer still will forget 2002, when fans had to rally to save the club from administration.
All of that history poured into this homecoming. The banners, the noise, the sense of occasion. The last time Lincoln played at this level at home, in 1961, the moon landings were still eight years away.
On this evidence, the leap back to the second tier will be every bit as demanding as that sounds. Portsmouth left with three points and a statement of their own. Lincoln left with a reminder: the romance of the occasion counts for little if you don’t take your chances.
