On This Day – 3rd February
Bristol City Football Club were saved on this day in 1982, thanks to eight players tearing up their contracts and leaving the club in order for it to survive.
The players were referred to as ‘The Ashton Gate Eight’. Club captain Geoff Merrick, along with Peter Aitken, Chris Garland, Jimmy Mann, Julian Marshall, Dave Rodgers, Gerry Sweeney and Trevor Tainton all put their names down in football folklore for effectively saving the club from bankruptcy.
City’s board of directors had drawn up a list of players that needed to be released. They had little choice in the matter and weren’t given a choice in the matter. All eight had grown up locally and supported the club, but after several players had been signed on long contracts, they had to go.
The players names were added to the design of a recent away shirt, in a mark of gratitude for saving the club. There is also a mural of the eight men in the concourse of the new South Stand at City’s home ground.
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