Lincoln City’s captain Tendayi Darikwa said he wants his side to push on and lift the SkyBet League One trophy after securing promotion to the EFL Championship on Easter Monday.
The Imps’ 2-1 win over Reading at the Select Car Leasing Stadium saw them go out of reach of promotion hopefuls Bolton Wanderers and Stockport County and confirm a finish inside the top two.
Goals from Ryan Oné and Jack Moylan cancelled out a late Lewis Wing equaliser to secure all three points in a game where just a draw would’ve put Lincoln over the line in terms of promotion.
For Darikwa its not his first taste of promotion in his career, going up a division with Chesterfield in 2014 and Burnley in 2016. On how the achievement feels, City’s captain said: “They’re all special.
“For a club like ours I don’t think anyone probably expected us to be in this position so I think that’s driven us on as a group from the start and the more we’ve won, the more confidence it’s given us along the way.
“To finally get it done is just so special.”
The 34-year-old Zimbabwean international joined the Imps in the summer of the 2024/25 season, signing on just a one-year deal at the time before earning an extension after finishing as the sides Player of the Season in a year where the team finished 11th in the league.
On how the club has developed in that time, he said: “I don’t think last season the club had that belief that they could really push on.
“I said at the end of last season that I’ve come here to compete and to win, that I don’t care about budgets I just want a good group of people who believe that they can achieve something special and we’ve shown it’s possible.”
As previously mentioned it was just a mid table finish for Michael Skubala’s side last term, with not many at all tipping them for more then that at the start of the current campaign.
When asked how the side has managed to outperform their expectations, Darikwa said: “We just focus on ourselves, we’re not naive, we’re not daft, there’s big clubs in this division with some big budgets.
“But what we’ve got as a squad, we believe money can’t buy that.
“We’ve got our togetherness, we’ve got our group who will drive each other on every single day and as I said 24 games unbeaten it’s special but we want to win the league and we’ve got five games to go and do that now.”
It was two minutes into added time at the end of the 90 when City were pegged back by Wing’s tremendous free-kick, but the visitors managed to dig deep and find a winner in the dying embers of the match.
When asked about the sides never-say-die attitude, Darikwa said: “It speaks for itself what we did here in a packed out stadium against a big club who are trying to get into the play-offs.
“But that’s what we do, we take a step back but we’ve got that belief and character to try and drive each other on, we go into the last minute, we never ever give up and it’s shown again today.”