JIMMY "DODGING" AT HIGHFIELD ROAD

Football on May 19th 1977 Football Season coming to a conclusion:

The final days of the 1976/77 season saw one of the closest - and most controversial, TOP FLIGHT, relegation battles. These were the days when two points were a awarded for win. 

Tottenham and Stoke had finished their First Division league programme and were both relegated - Spurs were at ROOT with 33 points and Stoke one next up, on 34 points. 

The last relegation place would go to one of these clubs, each on 34 points - Sunderland, Coventry and Bristol City. Hard to imagine City being there!

The three clubs had one match left to play, all on Thursday 19th May 1977 with the Saturday reserved for the FA Cup Final. 

Sunderland had the slightly better goal difference but had a tough match away to Everton while amazingly Coventry and Bristol City were paired against each other at Coventry's old Highfield Road home. 

The permutations of scorelines to whom would be relegated filled the newspapers but nobody could have believed what was to happen. All the matches were due to kick off at the same time but Coventry 

Managing Director Jimmy Hill held back the kick off of the Coventry v Bristol City match for over 10 minutes due to 'crowd congestion'. He's a clever boy!! 

So when the full time whistle went at Goodison, where Everton had beaten Sunderland 2-0, Jimmy's boys were still playing at Highfield Road where the scoreline was 2-2. Jimmy Hill got that result at Goodison announced over the PA system which meant that the crowd and players knew that if the score line remained at 2-2 both Coventry and Bristol City would be saved and Sunderland relegated. 

But if a fifth goal went in at Highfield Road, the losing club would go down and Sunderland would stay up. With that knowledge the players had a gentle kick-about in those remaining few minutes with no thought of scoring. So the match ended 2-2, Coventry and Bristol City stayed up, a very upset Sunderland were relegated. 

A Football League inquiry followed and Jimmy Hill received a reprimand but the result stood and Sunderland were even more upset. As if the Football League stiff shirts would do anything else!

17	West Ham Utd	42	11	14	17	46	65	−19	36
18	Bristol City	42	11	13	18	38	48	−10	35
19	Coventry Utd	42	10	15	17	48	59	−11	35
20	Sunderland (R)	42	11	12	19	46	54	−8	34	Relegated
21	Stoke City (R)	42	10	14	18	28	51	−23	34
22	Tottenham Hotspur (R)	42	12	9	21	48	72	−24	33

Spurs and Stoke's long spells in the First Division came to an end with relegation. Stoke sacked their manager Tony Waddington. Spurs' manager was Keith Burkinshaw who was born in Higham, Barnsley and began his footballing career with Midland League side Denaby Utd while working at Dodworth Colliery. Features here courtesy of the WWW.Blogger.com

Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
–1953	Denaby United
1953–1957	Liverpool	1	(0)
1957–1965	Workington	293	(9)
1965–1968	Scunthorpe United	108	(3)
Teams managed
1964–1965	Workington
1966–1967	Scunthorpe Utd (caretaker)
1976–1984	Tottenham Hotspur
1984–1986	Bahrain
1987–1988	Sporting Clube de Portugal
1988–1989	Gillingham
1991	Pahang
1993–1994	West Bromwich Albion
1997	Aberdeen (caretaker)
2005–2007	Watford (assistant)