FA Chairman Greg Dyke joined the great and good of English football at Coventry Cathedral on Friday afternoon to celebrate one of the game’s true visionaries – the late Jimmy Hill.
England manager Roy Hodgson was also among the congregation which spilled out on to the streets of Coventry, while John Motson and PFA chairman Gordon Taylor gave eulogies to the former Sky Blues manager and chairman.
Speaking outside Coventry Cathedral, Dyke said: "When you think he started as a chimney sweep.
"He led his union, he led the players, got rid of the maximum wage and then went on to be a very successful manager here in Coventry and then after that became a TV executive and TV presenter. First on ITV and then on BBC and of course Match of the Day.
"He was so successful because he was straight, honest and said what he thought.
"He was a bit of a maverick."
Hill, who passed away in December at the age of 87, occupied almost every football role imaginable, playing as an inside right for Brentford and Fulham, driving reform as the PFA chairman with the abolition of the maximum wage for players, before taking over as manager of his beloved Coventry City aged just 33.
Jimmy Hill at Highfield Road in 2005
He immediately changed Coventry’s colours to sky blue, now synonymous with the club and the city itself, introduced half-time entertainment and the first magazine-style matchday programme, penned the club the song, redeveloped the stadium and lead them to two promotions in three seasons. Indeed he celebrated one by inventing a cocktail, called the Sky Blue, naturally.
In 1968 he left the club to pursue a career in sports broadcasting, and his path was no less varied, working as LWT’s head of sport, innovating in the field of punditry, before turning to presenting Match of the Day on 600 occasions.
If anything, the sight of Hill changing into a tracksuit to substitute for an injured linesman when Arsenal played Liverpool at Highbury in 1972, was entirely fitting of a man with a completist’s approach to football.
Hill’s restless appetite for innovation meant holding one position was never likely to satisfy him, and he returned to Coventry as chairman in 1975 in a tenure which he commissioned the country’s first all-seater stadium.
He was given an OBE for services to football in 1994, and left the BBC for Sky Sports in 1997, where his Sunday Supplement show, replete with newspaper correspondents and croissants, continues to set the agenda to this day.
While millions of people try to leave a lasting mark on our national game, Hill’s achievements are too numerous, too diverse, even to catalogue.
It is inconceivable that any aspect of football in this country would be the same without him.
