How One Emergency Loan Player Saved An Entire Football Team
There is a level of drama found in football that you find almost nowhere else, which is the reason why players and fans put on their team kits and do everything they can to support their squads.
However, in a sport known for last-second heroics and the nearly impossible managing to surprise even fans who claim to have seen it all, what happened in the literal last minutes of the 1998/99 football season beggars belief.
What is even more incredible is that the hero of the story technically should not have even been there.
A career journeyman goalkeeper, Jimmy Glass was a reserve who rarely saw playing time but ended up at Carlisle United on loan from a Swindon Town team that refused to play him.
Technically this was after the Winter Transfer Window and so he should not have been allowed to go, but the English Football League gave The Blues special dispensation to sign him three days before the end of the season after they sold Tony Caig and lost Richard Knight to injury, leaving them without a goalkeeper.
The fact they sold their only keeper is perhaps a good indication of just how dire the team’s financial situation was, as losing their Football League status by being relegated could have potentially killed the team entirely, as has been the fate for several historic clubs that ended up in what was then the Conference.
On the final day of the season, 8th May 1999, Carlisle needed to beat Plymouth Argyle at home at Brunton Park in order to stay up. If they could only draw or lose, Scarborough would stay up in their place.
In the last seconds of the match, with practically the last kick, Jimmy Glass came out of his penalty area for the last corner, the ball fell at his feet and he scored the goal that saved Carlisle.
Whilst The Blues would eventually get relegated in 2004, this one kick managed to save them, and it remains to be seen what would have happened to the team had Jimmy Glass not been in the right place at the right time.