12:06pm Saturday 30th January 2010
By Dave Flett
SUPPORTERS of David Longhurst’s home-town club will pay their respects to the late York City striker at Bootham Crescent this afternoon.
This year represents the 20th-anniversary of Corby-born Longhurst’s tragic death when he collapsed on the pitch from a heart attack at the age of 25 during a Minstermen home match with Lincoln City on September 8.
Fittingly, fans of Blue Square North Corby Town have rallied together to offer their own tribute to one of the Northamptonshire town’s most-famous footballing sons as the Steelmen take on Longhurst’s former club in the third round of the FA Trophy.
Corby club shop manager Dale Campbell has organised a collection and, with the money raised, a wreath in the visitors’ black-and-white colours will be laid in front of Bootham Crescent’s David Longhurst Stand during the half-time interval at today’s match.
Campbell, 36 and a ‘life-long’ Corby fan, explained that former Nottingham Forest trainee Longhurst, pictured above, who also played for Halifax, Peterborough and Northampton, is still held in high esteem at the Rockingham Triangle.
Along with ex-Arsenal and Republic of Ireland midfielder Eddie McGoldrick, he is considered among the most-talented footballers the small industrial town has ever produced.
Campbell, who after starting out as a ball-boy has filled a number of voluntary roles at Corby, said: “When we knew we were going to be playing York in the Trophy, one of our older fans suggested the idea of a collection to remember David as he was a Corby lad.
“We thought it would be a lovely gesture to lay a black-and-white wreath in front of the stand in his memory.
“Twenty years on, most people still know all about David and some of the young kids, who were asking about what happened, also chucked a few pence in. He never played for Corby but he was a Corby lad and Corby people look out for each other and remember things like this.
“The church was absolutely packed out for his funeral and there were people locked outside. We also had a benefit game for his family against Kettering in the early 1990s that attracted a couple of thousand supporters.
“He’s well remembered in the town and there are lads still around who went to school with him. They all say what a great, salt-of-the-earth bloke he was as I’m sure York fans would agree.”
Campbell will travel to North Yorkshire along with an estimated 100 fellow supporters for today’s game and feels a record of 12 wins from 16 fixtures on the road this season means his team have an outside hope of victory against their Blue Square Premier hosts.
“We are massive underdogs but our away from gives us a chance,” he said.
• City supporters will also lay a wreath at the game, which will be attended by David’s parents and Corby residents Vic and Pat, accompanied by their son Mark.
A tall tale
The Press sports desk’s email inbox is a notorious visiting point for a variety of chancers.
Supposed obscure members of royal families from far-flung corners of the world often compete for our attention, along with others offering medical ways of improving your performance – albeit not in a sporting sense.
While pressing the send/receive button this week, however, one message did strike a chord with us and, refreshingly, it insisted that ‘adding a couple of inches’ was not always performance-enhancing.
The press release, compiled by the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, concentrated on new academic research that revealed ambiguous tackles leading to a foul in football are more likely to be attributed to the taller of two players.
Matches from the German Bundesliga, the Champions League and World Cup were used for the analysis, which was also based on evolutionary and linguistic research that associates size with aggression and dominance. But, with City’s 6ft 3in striker Richard Brodie starting a two-match suspension today after being shown ten yellow cards this season, ‘tall-ism’ would also seem to be alive and kicking in our very own Blue Square Premier.
Anybody interested in the full report should see next month’s Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology and perhaps send a copy to our whistle-happy friends in black.
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