Jimmy Hill delays kick-o to send Sunderland down
Coventry supremo takes criticism on the chin as First Division season ends in farce
Long before ‘Fergie Time’, there was ‘Jimmy Time’. To some, the late James William Thomas Hill was football’s very own renaissance man, but to Sunderland fans he was a not-so-pantomime villain – the architect of one of the darkest moments in the club’s history.
It was a Thursday night, and the last day of the 1976-77 top-flight season. Alan Dicks’ Bristol City were being sent to Coventry for a game so big that one West Country judge adjourned court early so that jurors would make it to the Midlands in time for kick-off.
With Spurs and Stoke already down, it was between these two teams and Sunderland, who visited Everton, to take the final relegation spot. All three were level on points, but Coventry’s inferior goal difference meant that they needed a miracle.
But when kick-off at Highfield Road was delayed by 10 minutes because of ‘crowd congestion’, Rokerites began to smell a rat bigger than the Coventry managing director’s famous chin.
Bristol City had just come back from two goals down to draw level as news of Sunderland’s 2-0 defeat at Goodison Park came through, at which point, according to the next morning’s Daily Mirror, Hill “raced to the announcer’s box with the result, screaming: ‘Get it on the board!’”
The score duly flashed up on the electronic screen and, reported The Guardian, “what had been an intensely physical contest dissolved farcically”, with the home side’s back four just passing the ball among themselves unchallenged.
Sunderland were going down, and Hill – who received a mere slap on the wrist from the FA – was reviled on Wearside and loved in the red half of Bristol from that day forth.
Black Cats fans did exact a form of revenge in 2008, though. Hill, by then an old man, was at Craven Cottage to pay his respects to his former Fulham team-mate Johnny Haynes, when the away supporters spotted him. He was showered with boos, chants of “Cheat!” and other Anglo-saxon epithets – “F*** off, you big-chinned b ***** d!” was especially choice – to which he responded by waving at them and blowing kisses before being led away down the tunnel.
Long memories, North-east folk.
Also in this month
1965 Bobby Moore (left) lifts a famous trophy at Wembley: the European Cup Winners’ Cup. 1998 Manchester City are relegated to the third tier of English football. 2006 FC Zurich beat Basel with the last kick of the game to win the Swiss title, sparking violent scenes involving, well, pretty much everybody.