Gordon Hill (referee)

Gordon Hill

Personal information
Full name	Gordon W Hill
Born	July 8, 1928 (1928-07-08) (age 83) Bolton, Lancashire, England
Other occupation	Teacher
Domestic
Years	League	Role
1960-1966	Football League	Linesman
1966-1975	Football League	Referee

Gordon W. Hill (born July 8, 1928^†) is an English former football referee in the Football League. He originally comes from Bolton, Lancashire.

Early life

In his early years he attended St. Simon and St Jude’s C of E School, Great Lever in Bolton. He later moved to Waterfoot, Rossendale in Lancashire and attended Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School from 1936. Upon leaving school in 1946, he moved to London to train as a teacher for two years. He returned to Lancashire to take up his teaching career, briefly, in Bacup. After an 18-month spell of compulsory National Service, he taught in Bury from 1950 to 1955, then returned to teach in Bacup until 1960, and subsequently moved to a post in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, until his re-location to Leicester in 1966.

Career

Hill played amateur football and trained as a coach, but injury caused him to give up playing. In 1952 he started refereeing on local parks around Bacup and over the next few years made good progress. Whilst teaching in Scunthorpe in 1960, he became a Football League linesman.

He spent six years on the line before progressing to the list of Football League referees. Shortly after, he moved to Leicester, and remained there for the rest of his refereeing career. He quickly established himself and on March 14, 1970 took charge of the FA Cup semi-final between Chelsea (the eventual Cup winners) and Watford at White Hart Lane.^[1] He became a regular face in top division football and was renowned for his "player-centred" approach. Hill aimed to build closer relationships with players, and wanted to distance himself from the traditional image of the referee as an aloof disciplinarian. This approach appears to be have been well regarded by players, managers and fans but did not always find favour with the authorities. Particular tensions arose early in the 1971-72 season, when the League was instigating a disciplinary crackdown, and this made the lenient and individualistic Hill uneasy.

Hill was generally unhappy with the expectation that referees be low-profile, conformist figures. This even extended to him challenging the dress code of the time which stipulated that referees should have four inches of white turnover on their black socks. He did so by having a small extra band of black over the white turnover. More controversially, he admitted swearing on the pitch. Although players were known to swear, many figures, including other officials such as Pat Partridge,^‡ considered this unwise for a referee, but Hill felt it was natural behaviour for him and helped him communicate more effectively on the pitch.

Despite his strong profile of games, Hill never made the FIFA List, and he remarked in his 1975 autobiography, "Give a little Whistle: The Recollections of a Remarkable Referee", that this may have been due to his non-conformist approach. However, he continued to handle key games. In 1973, he controlled the Charity Shield match between Manchester City and Burnley.^[2] Late that season, in April 1974, he was in charge of Burnley again during the FA Cup semi-final in which Newcastle defeated them 2-0.^[3]

1974-75 was Hill's final season and was marked by his most senior match - the League Cup Final between Aston Villa and Norwich City at Wembley on March 1, 1975. Villa won when Ray Graydon scored from the rebound after having his penalty saved.^[4]

Shortly after, he reached the retirement age (then forty-seven) for referees. He decided at this time to give up his post as headteacher at a school in Leicester and leave the UK to take up another teaching post in the United States, coupled with a role in refereeing in that country. In his nine years in the middle in the Football League he never sent off a player in that competition or the two main Cups, a remarkable record even for those more lenient times. When he had his autobiography published - at that time, one of the few referees to do so - it reflected his high profile. In the book, he expressed support for various ideas now adopted, such as a select group of officials handling all the top games, use of filmed match footage to train referees, greater liaison between referees and assessors, extensions beyond retirement age for exceptional referees, and an end to League referees being employed as linesmen in Cup Finals.

References

Print

• Football League Handbooks, 1960–1970
• Rothmans Football Yearbooks, 1971–1975
• ^†Give a little Whistle: The Recollections of a Remarkable Referee, by Gordon Hill & Jason Thomas, (Souvenir Press Ltd 1975), ISBN 0285621874
• ^‡Oh, Ref!, by Pat Partridge & John Gibson, (Souvenir Press Ltd 1979), ISBN 0285624237

Internet

1. ^ Chelsea v. Watford, FA Cup semi-final, 1970: soccerbase.com website.
2. ^ Charity Shield, 1973: TheFA.com website.
3. ^ Burnley v. Newcastle, FA Cup semi-final, 1974: recalled on the Toonarama.co.uk website.
4. ^ 1975 League Cup Final: statistics from the RSSSF.com website.

External links

• Online quotes from his book, during a feature article on Swedish ex-referee Anders Frisk: Guardian Unlimited online

Persondata
Name	Hill, Gordon
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 8, 1928
Place of birth	Bolton, Lancashire, England
Date of death
Place of death