A personal tribute
Football lost another one of its favourite sons this week. Ian Hutchinson, he of the phenomenal long throw, and much more, died on Thursday morning, after a long illness and will be missed by not only his legion of Chelsea supporters but also the wider football family, who appreciated his many worthy attributes.
It would be easy, in paying tribute to Ian Hutchinson, to trot out statistics such as 58 goals in 144 appearances for Chelsea, but my memories of Ian are more personal and relate more to the way in which he played his football than mere numbers.
Ian started his football career, near his Derby birthplace, with non-league Burton Albion, before joining Cambridge United and then the 'showbiz team' of the 1960s Chelsea, aged just 19 in 1968. It was Dave Sexton who paid Burton just £5,000 for the bustling centre forward who repaid Sexton's faith, many times over, in his eight year Stamford Bridge career.
'Hutch' had such phenomenal strength that defenders found it difficult to live with his belligerent style of centre-forward play. He could plough through the most physical of confrontations with effortless ease. His bravery was without parallel and he had the pace to make best use of both valour and physique but he will, perhaps, be remembered, by most, for the introduction of the long-throw to British football.
Chelsea, once they discovered the power of Ian's long-throw, actually used to play for throw-ins, anywhere in the final third, in preference to a corner kick. I remember once, it was on one of the Saturday lunchtime football programmes, either Football Focus or On the ball, that they took 'Hutch' to a deserted Stamford Bridge to film him hurling footballs in towards goal and he regularly registered near 40 yards with the throw. But watching the high arc trajectory of the ball left me in little doubt that the ball actually travelled, through the air, considerably further. We have long-throwers today, notably Andy Legge and Dave Challinor, but Ian's flailing arm style was uniquely distinctive. Very often his arms would still be rotating well after the ball had reached it's target and sometimes as the 'missile' was converted into a goal.
The most notable long-throw Ian executed occurred in the first of his two finest moments, the 1970 FA Cup Final, and replay. That season's final became the first to go to a replay since the final was moved to Wembley, in fact the first replayed final since 1912 and it did so because of Ian Hutchinson. In the first game Leeds were leading 2-1, six minutes from time, through Mick Jones. But two minutes later Ian scored one of the most incredible Cup Final goals ever. Skipper Ron Harris slung a hopeful cross in towards the Leeds box for 'Hutch' to head home, with a full-length dive but it was such an extraordinary goal because of what Ian had to do, to net.
To this day I swear that Ian Hutchinson was outside the line of the near post, such was the contorted line he had to adjust his body to, to conjure up meaningful contact with the ball and register such a magical equaliser.
So, the two weary teams headed for Old Trafford a fortnight later and this time Ian Hutchinson carved out the decisive goal. Leeds took the lead, again through Mick Jones but Peter Osgood equalised, with 12 minutes of normal time left. One minute into the second period of extra-time Chelsea took the lead for the first time, in the final, and it was Ian's prodigious long-throw that took the ball into the six yard box for Dave Webb to bundle home the winner.
But there was far more to Ian Hutchinson, centre-forward, than an almost freakish ability to throw a football further than anyone else. His touch was much better than it appeared and his, often ungainly, movement regularly earned him the time and space for a shot or a telling lay-off to a colleague. And in the air he was awesome. If Ian Hutchinson got a running jump at a hanging ball there were few defenders who could match him and even fewer who would prevail over his raw power.
But, as this is a personal tribute, let me finish by saying that what made Ian Hutchinson stand out above many of his more naturally gifted contemporaries was the way he played football. He played the game with such an astonishing honesty, in application and execution, that it often made him stand out more than the many international footballers he played with, and against. Such honesty is a diminishing quality in the modern game and football is all the poorer for the passing of a footballer who epitomised that honesty.
