Return To Notts County
Sirrel returned on 5 October 1977 and found a Magpies side struggling to avoid relegation back into Division Three. Sirrel was able to save Notts from the drop with the club eventually finishing in a respectable 15th place. The following season saw Notts record a 6th placed finish but the season after that the Magpies struggled again, finishing in 17th place.
The 1980-81 season would go down as perhaps Sirrel's finest achievement as manager of Notts County. Including a new generation of players bought in by Sirrel and the returning Don Masson, the Magpies would finish the season in second place, and a 2-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge confirmed that the Magpies would be playing First Division football for the first time since 1926.
Despite being favourites to make an immediate return to the Second Division, some memorable wins ensured that the Magpies would finish comfortably in midtable in their first season back in the top flight.
Sirrel brought in Howard Wilkinson to be a head coach for Notts County's second season in the Division One. Sirrel continued on as General Manager and the club subsequently managed a comfortable 15th placed finish.
Staying on as General Manager, a new coach came in for the Magpies' third season of top flight football. Larry Lloyd had previously won silverware with Nottingham Forest. However, the Magpies' were relegated into Division Two at the end of the season. Lloyd was dismissed the following season with the Magpies staring a second consecutive relegation in the face and Sirrel was again appointed manager in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the drop.
1985-86 began in the Third Division and with financial difficulty brewing, Sirrel would oversee two midtable finishes over the next seasons. His retirement as Notts County manager came at the end of the 1986-87 season, eighteen years after he arrived at the club. He then became chief scout for Derby County.
In 1993 the newly redeveloped County Road Stand at Notts County's Meadow Lane was renamed the Jimmy Sirrel Stand in his honour:
| “ | Derek Pavis phoned me up one day and asked if they could name a stand after me. I said it would be a bloody honour! Hopefully it would remain there for many, many years.
It's really a wonderful accolade. |
” |
Sirrel died aged 86 on 25 September 2008.
Sirrel was buried on 7 October 2008 as fans and great figures from the world of football alike turned out to pay their respects to the Magpies legend.
Read more about this topic: Jimmy Sirrel
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return and/or county:
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.”
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“I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)