Do you recall the end of season final day event when their goalkeeper reached legendary status, scored for them to save their professional league status. It's been written up a number of times but here is one example on what occurred that day. Well worth a look, maybe you won't get to read it again. You don't have to be a fan of Carlisle to imagine and envisage the experience of that day.
Brunton Park, Carlisle, May 1999
How long ? asked Carlisle United captain David Brightwell to the referee.
'Ten seconds' he replied. 'This is your last chance.' Carlisle United had won a corner-kick in the fourth minute of stoppage time. They were
drawing their match against Plymouth Argyle 1 - 1 but needed to win to preserve their Nationwide League Division Three status. All eleven players
went up for the corner, including goalkeeper Jimmy Glass.
It had been a desperate week for Carlisle fans. On the Wednesday Scarborough had beaten Plymouth 3 - 0 to take their tally to 47 points, one more than Carlisle. It was the first time all season that Carlisle had been bottom of the table and the circumstances were ominous for the final Saturday. As Carlisle has scored only 41 goals to Scarboroughs 49, it meant they had to win their last game at home to Plymouth to have any hope of saving themselves. The bottom club would be relegated, their place taken by Cheltenham, already promoted from the Nationwide Conference.
Scarborough drew their last match - 1 - 1 - against Peterborough - and their fans celebrated when they heard that Carlisle were drawing in stoppage time.
It was a tense game at Brunton Park, Carlisle, played in front of a 7,500 crowd. Plymouth had lost Paul Gibb with a broken leg, and had taken the lead just after half-time through Lee Phillips. Then David Brightwell had equalised superbly from 25 yards in the 62nd minute. And that seemed the end of the scoring ... until the fourth minute of stoppage time.
Goalkeeper Jimmy Glass, 25, had been signed on loan from Swindon in time to play the last three games of the season. Carlisle had been given special permission by the League to sign him after transferring goalkeeper Tony Caig and suffering further injuries after the transfer deadline. Scarborough later unsuccessfully contested the signing.
When it was obvious that the late corner-kick was Carlisle's last chance , the crowd behind Glass's goal shouted for him to get up the field. When manager Nigel Pearson waved Glass forward, the goalkeeper made a late run. Nearly a hundred yards.
The corner came across, Carlisle's Scott Dobie jumped in front of a defender and powered a header towards goal. Plymouth goalkeeper James Dungey parried the ball. and there was goalkeeper Glass, six yards out, still running. He met the loose ball with a crisp right-foot shot and scored.
Captain David Brightwell saw the red goalkeeping shirt amidst the blue and green of the two teams and didn't realise at first that Glass had come up for the corner. He thought it was a fan on the pitch.
Suddenly Glass was lying on the floor under a crowd of players. 'I think I've just scored the winner' Glass said.
In the main stand a blind Carlisle fan called David Ross heard his friend's commentary of the match give way to an almighty roar. But it was only
later that Ross could comprehend that the goal had been scored by the goalkeeper. Glass jogged back towards his own penalty area but the referee blew the final whistle immediately. Fans rushed on and Glass was chaired off the field.
'Four minutes into injury time, he saved a team in a way that no goalkeeper has ever saved anything before' wrote Tony Ferguson in the Carlisle News and Star.
On the Monday after the game Jimmy Glass handed over his size-ten boots so that a bronze sculpture could be made of them for display in the citys planned Millennium Gallery. Carlisle fans bought T-shirts (I believe in miracles') and other souvenirs of the incident. Meanwhile Plymouth players could spend their summer thinking how best to mark goalkeepers from corner-kicks.
