March 1976: CITY 0 SOUTHAMPTON 1 (McCalliog 41)

THE excitable John Motson had no doubt on Match of the Day.

“A touch of class is what was required,” he chirped, “and that’s what Southampton produced.

“As cheeky a free-kick as you’re likely to see.”

At least, every City fan who was at Valley Parade can agree on that.

This month marks 45 years since Bobby Kennedy’s Bantams were knocked out of the FA Cup quarter-finals in controversial circumstances.

Watching back the footage of Jim McCalliog’s decisive volley on Youtube, you still wonder how the goal was given.

Four minutes before half-time, the Saints were awarded a free-kick outside the box. City assembled their wall in readiness.

Peter Osgood stood over the ball with McCalliog. After a brief conflab, he flicks it up in the air for the Scot to crash a right-foot volley over the white shirts and past a stunned Peter Downsborough.

“So simple” exclaimed Motson for the cameras. So dubious suggested the whole of West Yorkshire. It would later be outlawed by the Football Association.

But the goal stood at the time and City’s hopes of extending a remarkable FA Cup run were dashed.

McCalliog admitted the pair had “ad-libbed” – the late Osgood, speaking in an interview in 2006, said: “We’d never practised it, but I tried it, Jim’s hit it and it’s gone in the top corner.

“It is at that point you start to think, yeah, someone’s looking down on us all right.”

Second Division Southampton would go on to win the only major trophy in their history two months later.

City would finish the season 17th in the fourth tier but with memories of a fantastic run that had been topped with a fifth-round win at top-flight Norwich.

Flying winger Don Hutchins had scored the opener in that 2-1 upset at Carrow Road, his fifth goal of the fairy-tale journey.

And he believes they were hard done by with McCalliog’s impudent strike that settled such a tight contest in the last eight.

Hutchins said: “McCalliog volleyed it over us and into the net. We didn’t realise then that the goal shouldn’t have stood.

“I can’t remember when we became aware of that, probably when they highlighted it on Match of the Day.

“Somebody picked up on it. The ball must roll a full circumference before someone else can touch it.

“We were probably the better team. Lawrie McMenemy said after they won the final that the game against us was the hardest they’d had.

“We didn’t deserve to lose but that’s life. At least we lost to the eventual winners.”

Southampton had been aggrieved with City’s attempts to cash in on the cup tie by hiking up admission prices. Seat tickets were tripled and the cost of standing on the terrace went from 65p to £1.50 with no concessions.

Fans from both sides voted with their feet against what they saw as blatant profiteering and the attendance of 14,195 – while well up on the 2,916 Valley Parade average for league games – was the lowest to witness a quarter-final since the Second World War.

But the underdog hosts gave as good as they got and Saints boss McMenemy had the good grace to acknowledge his side’s fortune over the winning goal as they squeezed through.

“I can still see them standing, their hands on hips, and the Bradford wall just outside the box,” he told the T&A in 2015.

“Ossie scooped the ball up and Jimmy just volleyed it in. It was brilliant.

“I said in the press at the time that they did it every day in training but, to be honest, I’d never seen it before in my life!

“I can suspect why everybody objected about it. I think there was a question about should the ball have been rolling first.”

Thirty-nine years later, City would return to the last eight having dispatched Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and then Sunderland on a Valley Parade quagmire.

Again, a second-tier team from the south stood in their way as they fought out a goalless draw with Reading.

The least said about the replay the better as Phil Parkinson’s weary troops were beaten 3-0. Filipe Morais was sent off and a home fan nicknamed “Pudding” grabbed the headlines and a court appearance for cartwheeling topless on the pitch.

But there were no arguments about the outcome – unlike that day in March 1976 which will always rankle.

CITY: Downsborough, Podd, Cooper, Johnson, Middleton, Fretwell, McGinley, Ingram, Cooke, Hall, Hutchins.