Jimmy Glass, 20 years on: 'Sometimes I have to check and think, 'Actually, that was me'

“I just see this bloke in red and black running up the pitch and volleying in the winner,” Glass says. “Then the pandemonium.”

This is the effect of footage replayed millions of times. The goalkeeper, whose injury-time goal against Plymouth on May 8, 1999 incredibly kept Carlisle United in the Football League, says he sometimes has to revisit the most extraordinary of moments privately.

“Occasionally I watch it on YouTube, and listen to Derek Lacey’s commentary,” says Glass, mentioning the BBC Radio Cumbria legend who described the goal so excitedly. “You’re in a quiet place, and you kind of remember the feelings of it. Then you have to check and think, actually, that was me.”

More memories will be shared when Glass appears at an anniversary function in Carlisle next Tuesday. He will also be filmed for a Sky TV documentary while in the city, yet it will not just be an opportunity for nostalgia. Glass sees it, as he does this interview, as an opportunity to talk about his challenging journey since the legend of “St Jimmy” was born.

Now 45, he is three seasons into a player liaison officer role with AFC Bournemouth, a job which has rekindled a love for football which had not faded during previous years as a cab driver. While Glass seldom turned down requests to discuss the goal, he had otherwise distanced himself from a game he left unhappily, having failed to achieve a long and glittering career.

“When you go from a footballer to driving a taxi – and there’s nothing wrong with driving a taxi – and you’re picking someone up at 4am, and they throw up all over your cab, you don’t feel your life’s gone the way you wanted it,” he says.

“I suppose there were times when I didn’t even want to talk about the goal, if I was having a particularly bad day. But, generally, I always felt the goal belonged to football, not just me. It would have seemed unfair not to talk about it.”

Glass fidgets with his phone as he talks in Bournemouth’s team hotel, ahead of their game at Huddersfield. His job involves helping Eddie Howe’s players with various aspects of daily life, so that they can focus on winning Premier League matches.

Because Bournemouth have medical and scientific staff, it is not his remit to help players with the mental side of the game. Yet, because of the psychological difficulties he experienced in his own career, he can still provide vivid perspective there too.

“Without getting too personal, my little brother was born when I was six years old, with a very severe disability,” he says. “I’m quite sensitive to it and I probably carried a lot of the anxiety that comes with that. When I then went into a very performance-oriented, all-boys job, I kind of created a character called Jimmy Glass – a loud, bolshy character to give me a fake confidence.

“My natural ability was never a problem, but when you get to 24-25, you have to be the full ticket. If your mental capability doesn’t match up, cracks start to show. That’s when addictions can creep in.”

Glass, who wrestled with a gambling problem for many years, says that a more enlightened football age might have better attended to his mental health. But nor does he see this as an “excuse” for his career shortcomings. His 2004 autobiography, One Hit Wonder, was an excellent, insightful account, written with The Cumberland News journalist Roger Lytollis, yet Glass now feels it was “quite an angry, negative book” where he criticised football too much. “There were times it was OK to blame clubs for a lack of resource, or coaching, or unprofessionalism, but it was still my job to find those things and improve myself.”

Glass, who first worked in IT after leaving the professional game at 27, says his subsequent taxi job came with anti-social hours, but gave him more time with his two children – and more time to reflect. “I started to understand a bit about psychology, started to work out a few home truths about different things,” he says. “Then I threw myself into golf, which helped crack my gambling habit.”

Golf? “Yeah. It’s a wonderful game. You’re out in the countryside, walking around, nice conditions, friends, a competitive element. I played three days a week and it gave me the opportunity to focus on something positive, other than my family and my business. I’m still rubbish, by the way…”

These are brighter thoughts than Glass endured at his lowest. “I was what you’d call a binge gambler,” he says, dwelling on the urge he says he finally kicked five years ago. “[I’d do it] every now and then, if things got too much – if money was a struggle or I was unhappy in some other element of my life, or I was thinking about the fact my career had fallen apart and I was now driving a taxi...

“There are various reasons people turn to an addiction, but I am a firm believer that we control our own destiny, and if you understand what it is you’re trying to hide from, you can unravel it. The little demons never truly go away, but you learn to cope with them.”

These reflections seem to mean more to Glass than his more lurid taxi memories. “It took me into different worlds. You could have a lord in the back of your car one minute and a drug dealer the next. One time I was drinking champagne – not too much of course – at Newmarket, at a Sheikh’s stallion parade.”

Glass sold the taxi business after a stint as a matchday hospitality host at Bournemouth evolved into his current full-time role, which he hopes will be long-lasting at a club for whom he played more than 100 games. He also says he fancies writing another book about this later phase of his life. As well as psychology, it would cover bizarre moments like the knock on his door from a journalist who wrongly told him he had won Sports Personality of the Century, and the more upsetting time when Glass and his wife Louise were dragged into the Richard Keys-Sky Sports controversy.

Louise was identified as the woman referred to by Keys when, in leaked footage, the presenter asked Jamie Redknapp if he had “smashed it" – "it" being a former girlfriend. Glass says The Sun – a paper he disliked since they had wrongly reported that he had been “sacked” by Swindon a few months after his three-game Carlisle loan – subsequently photographed Louise walking their daughter to school.

They eventually decided she would tell her story to another paper, to “stay ahead of the curve.” They also began legal proceedings against Sky. He does not, though, lambast Keys, who left his job with the broadcaster after more sexist comments emerged.

“Without excusing his terminology, he was being a lad in a lads’ environment,” Glass says. “It was inappropriate, but my gripe was with whoever released that footage. I blame Sky, because it was their responsibility to prevent that. It was the unfairness of Lou being dragged into something that wasn’t anything to do with her.”

Afterwards, Glass says he was consulted by politicians and lawyers involved with the Leveson Inquiry. The episode also taught him how difficult it can be for ordinary people to confront big media organisations. “In the end, that’s why we settled [out of court],” he says, “because we realised that if the judge offered us £1 less than Sky had offered us, we’d have been liable for their court costs. We could have ended up winning 10 grand and been 250 grand in debt. The great British justice system, yeah!

“Again, though, I learned new things. That legal knowledge might come in useful with other players down the line.”

By this point we have come a long way from 1999. Changing the subject back to his goal sees Glass recall how, a few days into the initial frenzy, it “all got too much” and he drove to Belgium. There has been little escape since. Glass says his former team-mate Howe ribs him about the goal “a few times a week”, while he does not appear surprised to learn that, on an online map created by Carlisle’s London-based supporters, there are memories of the goal posted by people as far away as Mozambique.

Physical mementos are out there too; his boots are in the National Football Museum, the vivid red jersey at Brunton Park. Does Glass retain anything from the day? “I’ve got some shorts, I think. The shorts are still there. That’s about it.”

The goal has opened doors and pitched him into unlikely times. He was once invited to Old Trafford to share a platform with Gordon Banks, while there is a Jimmy Glass Jazz Bar in Valencia. “I’ll go there at some point. I’ve got to learn to play an instrument first. There’s no way I can just watch. I’ll have to get involved.”

His twins, Jack and Ella, are 16. How do they regard their father’s notoriety? “My son still enjoys it. My daughter, I think, enjoys it occasionally when people say, ‘Is your dad THE Jimmy Glass?’ But it’s such a long time ago, and they never really got to see me as a footballer. It’s nice for them to see what I do now, and enjoy that.”

What about when May 8 comes, and it will have been 20 years? “I always get a phonecall from Roger [Lytollis], that’s the first thing on the anniversary,” he says. “Someone else might mention it, or I might mention it to someone. Life’s so busy now, but I’m sure I’ll be aware of it.”

He knows that, on any given day, the goal can still amaze and intrigue. “Sometimes, I’ll look back at the videos and see something I didn’t notice before,” Glass says. “And there are always stories, things I get sent to sign, people who’ll ask me to send a message to their mate who’s getting married. Even now, it’s something everyone can enjoy.”

*An Evening with Jimmy Glass and friends is hosted by Carlisle United Supporters' Groups in Foxy's Restaurant, Brunton Park, on Tuesday, March 26, 7pm. Tickets from @CarlisleUtdSG on Twitter or the club's main ticket office.