Remembering Robins' promotion 50 years on

[BBC]

To any Bristol City fan aged 60+, 20 April 1976 is a date indelibly etched into their minds.

On this day 50 years ago, a Clive Whitehead goal was enough to beat Portsmouth and secure a return to the top flight after an absence of 65 years.

The world, never mind just football, was a lot different back then! One thing that did not seem to exist was footballers' agents. Today it would seem such individuals appear all too keen to egg on a player when a move is in the offing with their own gain by way of a fee clearly being a motive.

If you go back to the spring of 1976 with City riding high in Division 2 (now the Championship) and transfer windows not having been thought of, Arsenal came in with an offer of £250,000 for arguably two of City's best players, Tom Ritchie and Geoff Merrick.

Promotion was by no means in the bag, but then chairman and club benefactor Harry Dolman rebutted the offer, as both players had made it clear that if they were going to play at the highest level, it was going to be for Bristol City.

"Loyalty" is a word that does not feature much in today's footballing dictionary. Merrick must have rued his wish to stay when, six years later, he was one of the Ashton Gate Eight who tore up their contracts during Roy Hodgson's first spell in charge to save the club going under as City tumbled down the leagues with three successive relegations.

Coming back to the present, there are few City fans who would disagree with my view that current owner and benefactor, Steve Lansdown, effectively wrote off this season when he sanctioned the sale of two of the best players that were part of the current squad in the January transfer window.

Both Anis Mehmeti and Zak Vyner were out of contract this summer and therefore free agents. There is no doubting an underlying degree of loyalty in Vyner, who had been at the club since he was eight, although Mehmeti is perhaps more of a soldier of fortune.

I am sure they could have been tempted to stay with improved offers, with City well placed to at least equal last season's play-off achievement. The telling factor is when signing for Ipswich and Wrexham, respectively, they cited both clubs' ambition as a key factor in making their moves.

On Saturday we witnessed the end of the Roy Hodgson "bounce" as City were soundly beaten 4-2 by Norwich at Ashton Gate. Had the Canaries not had such a dreadful start to the season under former City boss Liam Manning, they surely would have been in the play-off mix; such has been their turnaround under Philippe Clement. As it was, their four-goal blast in the second half meant they leapfrogged the Robins in the Championship's congested midtable.

Many of the Ashton Gate faithful had headed for the exits long before the final whistle. While the level of discontent, which had cleared a little with Hodgson's early successes, did not manifest itself with more disapproving chants directed at Lansdown, the fans will be looking for a speedy resolution to hiring the sporting director and head coach, with the calibre of those appointees showing whether the club has real ambition, which will filter through, one way or another, in the level of season ticket sales.

You can hear more from David Pottier on the Forever Bristol City podcast.