 Friday, 12th Oct 2012 09:00 Gordon Hobson was the last signing Chris Nicholl was involved in, in his coaching role at Grimsby Town, he didnt forget about him. Most Saints supporters would have said Gordon Who ? when reading about the signing of the striker from Grimsby Town, indeed Hobson who spent barely 18 months at Blundell Park had spent his teenage years training as a Plumber before joining Lincoln City at a late age in 1977 having just turned 20. So arriving at the top flight just a few days short of his 29th birthday in 1986 must have been an unexpected shock to the player, it was certainly a shock to the fans, Hobson's record in the lower divisions was not that brilliant, 73 goals in 273 appearances for Lincoln being distinctly average and his 18 for Grimsby in 52 was a bit better than his 1 in 4 career average, but even though Grimsby were in the second division his 15 goals in 85/86 was not exactly making him in demand with First division clubs. Grimsby turned a nice profit though, they paid £35,000 for him in the summer of 1985 and in November 1986 they sold him to Saints for £125,000. To be fair to Chris Nicholl who had a good record of signing players from the lower leagues and turning them into top flight players, Hobson was there more as a back up, he knew he had some promising youngsters coming through and Hobson would fill a gap for a season whilst he rebuilt the team. In the remainder of 86/87 Hobson played 20 times and scored 7 times looking good for the money, although the figures were slightly distorted when he became one of the relatively few Saints players to hit a hat trick, his trio coming in a great away win at Manchester City in April 1987, the first Saint to hit three goals on the road since Ron Davies in 1969. The following season would be Gordon's last, he started as first choice, but a solitary goal in the opening 7 games aligned with an ankle injury hampered his chances which in fairness were not further helped by the plethora of youngsters now chomping at the bit, Le Tissier, Shearer, Rod Wallace to name but three. Gordon plugged a gap for Saints and he was the archetypal inside forward of the time, the shorter nippy partner to a big centre forward, in this case that being Colin Clarke, his style whilst not exactly making him a cult idol, endeared him to Saints fans, although my recollection is that we all knew that as hard as he tried, he perhaps was never going to be a truly top knotch striker, but we appreciated his efforts all the same. With Saints signing Paul Rideout in the summer of 1988 his chances were clearly limited as he approached 31 and in the September he re joined his first league club Lincoln for £60,000 a record fee for the Imps. After a couple of years at Lincoln, he spent a year at Exeter followed by a short spell with Walsall, but he had got a taste for the lifestyle down South and moved back down to the area and although initially playing and coaching in non league for both Farnborough Town and Salisbury City his Yacht chartering business was taking off and by the end of the 90's he had dropped out of football to concentrate on that, which to the best of our knowledge he continues to do, still living in this area. Gordon played 32 (1) for Saints in the league scoring 8 goals, 2 games in the FA Cup scoring once plus a solitary league cup tie in which he failed to score Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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