The start of an occasional dip into the second best sporting decade ever, with a look back at a controversial goal scored by Gary Crosby in March 1990.
The first division match between Nottingham Forest and Manchester City on March 2, 1990, was in truth a drab affair. As the clock ticked over into the 52nd minute, Forest's Garry Parker swung in a high cross from the right that City goalkeeper Andy Dibble claimed after a slight fumble. Nothing to see here it seemed, very much like the rest of the match.
For City the afternoon was going according to plan. Struggling at the wrong end of the table, the new manager bounce under Howard Kendall - 11 points from his first 18 available - was fading. Without a win in three matches, a point would nevertheless be very welcome against a Forest team holding slim hopes of edging back into the title race.
Dibble shaped to throw the ball, but held it in his right hand before all too brief look over his shoulder. It was then that a nightmare unfolded in slow motion for the Welsh keeper. Looking down at the ball, a split second later a sudden look of horror spread across Dibble's face, indicating that something had gone horribly wrong.
"Holding the ball on the palm of his right hand he appeared very much like a waiter with a plate of steak and kidney pudding trying to remember who had ordered it," Peter Corrigan wrote in the Guardian, noting how Dibble's doziness would prove costly. Danny Baker, on his fine Own Goals and Gaffs video wondered what was going through Dibble's mind: "Is the back door shut? Oh who's that?"
The who in question was Forest midfielder Gary Crosby. Sneaking up behind Dibble, Crosby nodded the ball from the keeper's open palm, before casually rolling the ball into the net. "Oh, has he given the goal? He has," an incredulous Martin Tyler declared on commentary. Understandably, City did not take the decision too well.
Surrounding referee Rodger Gifford, City's players were furious that the goal was given, with player coach Peter Reid eventually having to drag his team mates away from the official. Kendall marched towards a linesman, and would later confront the officials post-match. "I did not swear," Kendall said. "I did not lose control. I was calm."
The only goal of the match would become a divisive subject over the next few days, the sort of incident that would now send social media into meltdown. Naturally those of a City persuasion were positive that the goal should have been disallowed. Others felt that Crosby had done nothing wrong and that Dibble was at fault.
"It was perfectly legitimate," referee Gifford stated confidently. "In no way could Crosby's act have been considered dangerous. The laws state that for a goalkeeper to be in control of the ball it must be in both hands. I don't think it is against the spirit of the game. I think you have to admire the player's speed of thought."
A number of papers quoted Law 12 as evidence that Crosby's goal was legal, pointing out that an indirect free kick could only be given if a player attempted to kick the ball while being held by the goalkeeper. Kendall used the George Best/Gordon Banks incident in 1971 as proof that Crosby's goal should have been disallowed. But the Best and Crosby incidents were different in execution.
"The laws are designed to protect goalkeepers from unnecessary physical harm, not from embarrassment due to their own errors," David Lacey wrote in the Guardian. "The basis of the argument against the Crosby goal seems to be that because nobody could remember one being scored in similar circumstances it should have been disallowed."
"It was saucy but was it fair?" Jeremy Alexander asked in the same paper, as the debate raged on. Former strikers Gary Lineker and Jimmy Greaves both backed Crosby on ITV's live coverage of Coventry v Aston Villa on the next day, the latter calling it "a wonderful piece of ingenuity by the player."
"I think most refs would probably have disallowed it," Lineker said, with referee George Courtney one of the rare voices speaking in defence of Dibble. "The letter of the law doesn't accommodate for a goal being scored in that way, but in the spirit of the game I wouldn't have allowed it," Courtney said. As English cricket fans know only too well, the spirit of the game is a complex matter.
For Kendall, the 1-0 defeat increased the pressure at the bottom of the table, the circumstances behind Crosby's winner particularly hard to swallow. "The ball did not leave his hand," Kendall said. "The goal should not have been allowed." City chairman Peter Swales went even further.
"The whole club agrees the decision was a wrong one," Swales complained. "If Manchester City are going to be guinea pigs it opens up a new era for a different interpretation of the rules. Can you imagine now what players will be attempting when goalkeepers get possession?"
"We shall be writing to the Football League and the Football Association," Swales continued. "I do not expect the game to be replayed but we have to make our feelings known. I estimate that it would cost us £2 million, and that is a conservative estimate, if we were to lose our first division status as a result of what happened last week."
City's protests were met with a straight bat from the FA. "There appears to be nothing in the laws of the game which rule out the goal," spokesman David Bloomfield stated. It wasn't dangerous play, for example, so we will not be taking the matter further." Gradually the storm calmed, but the two players those involved there were obviously differing emotions.
"It was an unbelievable decision," Dibble said in the immediate aftermath. "I had the ball in my hand, was looking to throw it out and Crosby came from behind me to head it out of my grasp." Many inevitably disagreed, noting that goalkeepers had enough protection in the game. Fortunately for Dibble and City, things could only get better. A nine-match unbeaten run after Crosby's goal kept City up.
Crosby must have wondered what all the fuss was about. "The referee obviously saw nothing wrong. No goalkeeper would hold a ball out like that in a crowded penalty area without it getting knocked away from him. I didn't plan to do anything but as I went past him he was holding the ball out so, on impulse, I nodded at it. It was a spur of the moment thing."
"This was not so much a match, more an incident," Alexander wrote in relation to the Crosby goal. It is an incident that many still remember to this day. A future warning for all goalkeepers to check their rear view mirror before their next manoeuvre. Just a shame that future City keeper Shay Given didn't heed the warning in 1997.
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