Lincoln City 2, Reading 0

Lincoln City made the perfect start to the 2025/26 campaign with  2-0 victory over Reading at the LNER Stadium on Saturday.  

A goal in either half from Rob Street and Reeco Hackett did the damage for City who won on the opening day for the second season in a row.  

Summer recruits Ryley Towler and Sonny Bradley came into the side for their debuts with Street starting in attack following a successful loan spell with Doncaster Rovers in the second half of last season.  

Jack Moylan also came in for his first start since recovering from injury, while Jovon Makama was left out after the club had accepted a bid from a Sky Bet Championship club. 

City were rewarded for their early pressure with the opening goal as Street finished from a wide angle after collecting a long pass from Wickens with half an hour gone.  

The Imps weathered pressure from The Royals in the second half and doubled their lead on 67 minutes – McGrandles’ pass put Hackett through on goal and he kept his composure to place his effort off Pereira.  

The home side took the sting out of the game the final minutes of the game with the visitors only really threatening from set-pieces.

City head coach Michael Skubala praised his side’s performance: “Everyone emptied the tank. We were solid, strong and competitive, which is everything you want on the first day of the season.  

“It’s never going to be perfect on the opening day. You want to get the three points of course and in terms of effort and desire, the group were 'top'.   

“We’d worked on some things in training in terms of their high line and how we could press and we had some joy from that.  

“Both goals came from bits we’d worked on, so that is really pleasing, but of course credit goes to the lads for going out there and competing well.”  

Rob Street (pictured below) added: “It was a brilliant feeling to score, in the first game of the season you want to get off to a good start and we’ve done that.  

“We know going into every game that we want to be tough to play against and I felt like we had a really good structure and discipline about us.  

“Being hard to beat is the main thing at this level and with that, I believe you can kick on and hurt teams at the top of the pitch.

“There were times we had to dig in, Reading are a good team and I think they’ll have a decent season, so it’s an excellent result for us." 

Conor McGrandles (pictured bottom) believes the Imps were rewarded for their work on the training ground: “You always want to start the season with a win and a positive performance, so we’re all really happy that we got that.

“We went into it knowing that Reading are a good team, who can hurt you, but we were confident that if we played the way that we can, we could get the result.  

“I think – especially with the first goal – we were rewarded for our work on the training ground throughout pre-season.  

“We felt that if we performed to our best that we could get a positive outcome and we did that.”  

Pictures: Vaughan Photography

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