City owe ref Halsey as well as Sheikh Mansour
Gillingham fan Daniel Schofield recalls a sliding doors moment as his team were cruelly denied at Wembley in 1999
‘There was no plan B. City had to go up. I don’t think the club would have survived’
Sport is full of great sliding doors moments. As outlined in my colleague James Ducker’s excellent report in Saturday’s newspaper, one of football’s most pertinent “what ifs” concerns the 10-year anniversary of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s purchase of Manchester City.
Without the Abu Dhabi takeover there would be no Mario Balotelli setting fire to his bathroom, no Agueroooooooo and no Pep. Yet there is an even greater sliding doors scenario concerning City, that took place 20 seasons ago on the single bleakest day in the history of sport.
This occurred long before City were a twinkle in a sheikh’s eye. Back then they were slumming it in Division Two, suffering defeats to the likes of York City and Lincoln City.
Under Joe Royle, they fell short of automatic promotion, but overcame Wigan Athletic 2-1 in the play-off semi-finals to set up a final at Wembley against Tony Pulis’s Gillingham on May 30, 1999, a date most historians now refer to as Black Sunday.
The game remained goalless until the 81st minute, when Carl Asaba fired into the roof of the net after Paul Smith’s wonderful reverse pass to give Gillingham the lead. With three minutes of normal time remaining, Asaba’s back-heel set up Bob Taylor to score the greatest goal ever seen at Wembley.
City’s fans, including the Gallagher brothers, began filing for the exits, but just as 90 minutes were up the dastardly Kevin Horlock pulled one back. There had been no injuries in the second half, but referee Mark Halsey somehow allowed play to continue until Paul Dickov scrambled in the scruffiest of goals in the seventh (seventh!) added minute, stabbing a dagger into my heart that has never been removed.
Gillingham lost on penalties, 3-1. I have never been able to watch the game back.
Using that momentum, Royle’s team secured back-to-back promotions to the Premier League and the rest is history. But what if Halsey had not magicked an extra five minutes of nonexistent injury time? What then for City?
I later spoke to Andy Morrison, City’s captain from that bleak day, who admitted the club were facing a real fight for survival. “Nobody spoke about it afterwards but there was no plan B,” Morrison said. “We had to go up. I don’t know where the club could have afforded more cuts. I don’t think they would have survived.”
And what about Gillingham? We did go up the following season under Pulis’s successor, Peter Taylor, and our stay in the second tier lasted just two seasons. In idle moments, I daydream of what might have been.
Would Pulis have done for Gillingham what he did for Stoke City and establish us as a Premier League team? Would the 40,000-capacity stadium we were supposed to have built 20 years ago have materialised? Would a club with one of the biggest catchment areas in English football have caught a petrodollar billionaire’s attention?
So by all means, City fans, give thanks to Sheikh Mansour for providing the backing that has led to Guardiola, Kevin De Bruyne and so much silverware, but please also remember the debt you owe to a certain Hertfordshire official, who deserves to be pelted with rotten vegetables every day for the rest of time.