The Exiled Robin

For nearly 100 years of their existence, Bristol City had trundled along like many other middling Football League clubs. A couple of promotions, a handful of relegations, the odd shot at glory and a clutch of notable former players and moments had been strewn across the century. Then in 1976 that changed with promotion to an increasingly high-profile First Division. That story has been well told by many, with the ultimate repercussions leading to the story of the Ashton Gate Eight, men who sacrificed their future prosperity and family’s stability to ensure the very survival of our club. And most of those stories stop there. The remarkable gesture is a great ending to a story, and what came next is just seen as a gradual re-establishment to our standard jostling within the middle two divisions. But to skip over that period of the mid-to-late 1980s would be disingenuous to a man who was front and centre of Bristol City’s recovery, a man who rebuilt the foundations on a shoestring and ...