In football, moments of huge significance are often remembered in isolation. The trials and tribulations of the route to that point, the conditions and circumstances surrounding a particular event, or the legacy it ultimately procures are often somewhat overlooked. After all, most of a certain vintage can keenly recount man’s first steps on the moon, but few would go on to narrate the impact of the lunar mission in the context of the Cold War space race.
This concept in the beautiful game has slowly accentuated over time as a society perpetually striving for instant gratification builds around it. The moment, this moment, is everything.
Most who profess to have a reasonable knowledge of the English game will be familiar with the tale of Jimmy Glass. An on-loan emergency goalkeeper, shipped north from Swindon to the border city of Carlisle in their hour of need, would produce a ‘moment’ inscribed in footballing folklore.
With Carlisle United’s ninety-five-year existence in the Football League hanging by a proverbial thread, the unassuming Glass, having watched his new teammates toil for 93 minutes in a 1-1 stalemate, trotted into the Plymouth Argyle box for an injury-time corner. Nobody could have predicted how the next thirty seconds would unfold. A dangerous, whipped ball was met by a towering header from Scott Dobie, who saw his effort parried by the Argyle ‘keeper. However, up stepped his opposite number, Jimmy Glass, to sweep a low shot in the bottom corner and send Brunton Park into raptures.