Twenty years on, the goalkeeping life has still not left James Dungey. The man who conceded one of football’s most famous goals is undeterred by the memory and, as a father, is now educating someone else in the art of keeping them out.

“I didn’t think my son was going to be a goalkeeper, but he is,” says Dungey, Plymouth’s No1 when his opposite number, Jimmy Glass, slammed his way into history on May 8, 1999. “He just put some gloves on, as children do, and fancied a go in goal. He loved it.”

Dad and son are well placed to share some old truths about the unique position. “You’ve got to have that slight bit of being crazy,” he says. “It’s funny, some people ask if we’re actually the sensible ones, because we don’t run around after the ball like the others. But no, I think we’re a different breed.”

That ancient wisdom seems particularly acute considering today’s anniversary. For Glass and Carlisle United: an astonishing moment forever celebrated. Lesser told: the story of the man who parried Scott Dobie’s header and was then helpless as another keeper achieved instant fame.

Dungey has had different thoughts about his own experience of “St Jimmy’s Day” over the years but today will bring a wry curiosity. “It will be just another day for me, but I’ll still be interested to watch and read about it,” he says of the 20-year mark. “It will probably be something I talk about with the family too. My son, who’s 10, knows about it and he’s football mad. He’ll find time to watch it even if I don’t! Maybe it will be time for another reflection – for me to think, ‘Wow, that did happen’.”

Dungey is 41 and has worked for many years in a bank, a life significantly removed from his days as a young footballer. There is distance between him and that Carlisle v Plymouth encounter but the occasion resonates in different ways, for it was Dungey’s last appearance in the professional game.

He had, until then, been a rising prospect, a player for England’s under-15s and under-18s. Having started on Plymouth’s books, he found himself back at Home Park at 16 after three years with Crewe. “Peter Shilton was the [Argyle] manager, and it was a great opportunity to train with one of the best goalkeepers there’s ever been,” Dungey says.

Shilton’s tenure ended in 1995 and four years later Dungey had graduated from the YTS system to make a cluster of first-team appearances, selected by manager Kevin Hodges for the closing weeks of the 1998/9 campaign. “In my mind,” he says of their trip to Carlisle for the last fixture of the Division Three season, “I probably knew it was going to be my last game. That’s football – time to move on. I can’t say the thought affected me going into the game.”

Plymouth were secure in mid-table, as United needed to win and hope Scarborough – who had beaten Argyle three days earlier – faltered against Peterborough. Dungey says he got a sense of the tension due to the bigger than normal crowd at Brunton Park, but any anxiety was for the team in blue, whose Football League status was dangling by a thread. “There was a lot of noise, but once we were over that white line, it was out of our minds,” he says.

After an edgy first half, Lee Phillips shot Plymouth in front before David Brightwell volleyed Carlisle level. “I remember it going in the bottom corner and thinking, ‘Well – fair enough, good strike’," Dungey says. "He [Brightwell] probably wouldn’t have hit it in different circumstances. He had nothing to lose and it gave them a chance.”

While Glass says he can no longer picture what he saw at the fateful injury-time moment, his own memories overridden by the often-replayed TV angle, Dungey’s own direct recollections are more intact: he remembers Graham Anthony, a former Plymouth player, standing over the notorious corner kick, and a vague notion of Glass, in red, entering the away penalty area. “I was aware of it, but it wasn’t on my mind as if to think, ‘Oh, God, what if he scores?’ Maybe today it would be different, as goalkeepers are almost as good with their feet as their hands. But back then it was just another body coming into the box.

“From there it was just surreal. I can remember the corner, the header, and it was just a reaction save. I then heard the net going, the screaming, the crowd going up in the air, but for a split-second I didn’t realise it was the goalkeeper who’d scored, until I looked up and saw Jimmy Glass running away, and everyone jumping on him.”

As Brunton Park erupted, it took time for the rarity of the moment to strike Dungey and his team-mates. “The crowd would have come on the pitch if anyone had scored, a striker or whoever,” he says “So it struck us more when we got into the dressing room, and on the coach on the long journey home. It was on the radio, on the telly, on the videprinter, and it was all about Carlisle v Plymouth which, with all due respect, wouldn’t normally have been all over Sky Sports or going around the world.”

How did Dungey reflect analytically on his own involvement – parrying Dobie’s header straight to Glass’s instep? “You look at it and think, ‘Could I have caught it, done this, done that...?’, but it was just a reaction, and it could just as easily have fallen to a defender to clear, or a striker to score, and it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. That’s football.”

The goal was replayed for days, weeks and years afterwards. Were there ever times when Glass’s counterpart wished it would go away, this film of him conceding to another goalie? “Yeah, because so many people talked about it and knew about it, at times I did think, ‘Really, do I have to see it again?’ But 20 years down the line, it goes out of your mind a little bit. It’s only when someone mentions it - and that can be days or years apart - that your mind brings it back today.

“After a couple of years, you got a bit sick of it, but now I’m a bit older, it raises a smile. When I meet new people, and they realise I was a professional footballer, or you’re in one of those situations at work when you’re asked about interesting facts about yourself, I sometimes pre-empt it: ‘Yes, before you talk about it, that was me’. It can be a bit of a joke now.”

After leaving Plymouth, Dungey played in non-league for Dorchester Town and went into banking, still playing locally until four years ago, married with two children. Learning more about the other goalkeeper that day has been unavoidable. “You read a lot of articles about Jimmy Glass, everyone’s wanting to talk to him, he’s written his book too, and he probably never dreamed of that when he was playing in that game. This was something that happened in a split-second, and all that has come from it.”

He also, though, ponders further on the potential downsides of being that day’s comic-book hero. “It’s fantastic that [Glass] has that spotlight, but sometimes it probably takes away from what else he did," Dungey says. "People will go, ‘You’re the goalkeeper who scored’, not the one who made that save or played in those other games.

“He’s always going to be talking about that goal. I can’t speak for him, but I imagine that was great at some times and frustrating at others.”

Dungey remains close to football, through his son, whose team he helps coach, and through kickarounds with work colleagues. Life is relatively normal, yet those times do still come when he is reminded of his accidental involvement in something quite extraordinary.

“Twenty years feel like they’ve gone by quickly,” he says, “and there’s not many people who don’t remember that day. Even people who aren’t massive football fans. They remember hearing about it, reading about it. It was such a big moment.”