May 8 - Jimmy’s Glass Definitely Half Full

There’s some moments in football that can only be describe through breathless, over-excited commentary:

“Jimmy Glass! Jimmy Glass! Jimmy Glass, the goalkeeper, has scored a goal for Carlisle United! There’s a pitch invasion! There is a pitch invasion! The referee has been swamped - they’re bouncing on the crossbar!”
Derek Lacey, BBC Radio Cumbria, May 8th 1999

Yes, today marks the anniversary of one the English game’s most famous last-minute goals, as on-loan goalkeeper Jimmy Glass scored in the last minute of the last game of the season to keep Carlisle up and send down Scarborough.

By the end of the 1998-99 season the permutations were simple. In order to maintain their 71-year spell in the Football League Carlisle needed a win at home to Plymouth. Fingernails were bitten, nerves were frayed and fans feared the worst as the clock hit 90 minutes with the Blues locked in a 1-1 draw.

A corner came five minutes into stoppage time and everyone, including Jimmy Glass, signed in an emergency load deal after the transfer deadline, flooded into the box. The ball found it’s way onto the right peg of Glass five yards out and the rest is history, as he smashed the ball into the Plymouth net, capping a story that Roy of the Rovers would be proud of.

Players and crowd alike went understandably mental, mobbing Glass who received a bloody nose in the resulting carnage. Under the management of Nigel Pearson, who has just performed another great escape with Southampton, Carlisle had stayed up and Scarborough had to face life in the Conference. Lacking in any kind of sentimentality, Carlisle chairman and former Old Trafford ball-juggling buffon Michael Knighton refused to make Glass’ move permanent.

Glass would only go on to play another three games in professional football, as he lived the journeyman life, never able to break into the first team of the likes of Brentford, Cambridge United or Oxford, hanging up his gloves in 2001.

Jimmy managed a few other brushes with fame before that fateful day in Cumbria. As a youngster he was part of the Crystal Palace side beaten by Giggs, Beckham and co in the 1992 FA Youth Cup final. Later that summer he found himself a holiday job, but unlike most of his contemporaries he wasn’t washing pots and pans, but found himself as Andre Agassi’s bodyguard as the American won the Wimbledon title.

He was also close to another of our favourite stories of the ’90’s when he was sat a few seats away from the Palace fan that Eric Cantona took objection to and in 1998 he became the first goalie to ever score an own goal at Wembley in the Auto Windscreens Shield final.

After retiring, Glass became an IT salesman in Bournemouth and now runs a taxi firm in Dorset. If we were him we’d have moved back to Carlisle, as there won’t be a pub in the town without any United fans queuing up to buying him a drink. He has, however, taking the local Sunday league by storm, where, somewhat ironically, he plays upfront, once scoring six goals for two weeks running.

Carlisle fans can raise a Glass (sorry) to their hero below as Jeff Stelling and the gang guides us through the emotional rollercoaster that only last-day survival can bring. Nice hair by the way Jeff. Join us tomorrow for the story of another player with a name that we can make bad puns of. Until then, you stay classy.

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