Playing Career
Hitchcock was born in Canning Town, London, and played non-league football for Barking before joining Nottingham Forest in 1983 for a fee of £15,000. He spent time on loan to Mansfield Town in 1984, and joined the club for a fee of £140,000 at the end of the 1983–84 season without having played for Forest's first team. He stayed with Mansfield for four seasons, helping the club to promotion from the Fourth Division in 1986, and played a major part in their 1987 Football League Trophy victory against Bristol City, saving two penalties in the shootout.
Hitchcock joined Chelsea for £250,000 in March 1988, and made his debut on 26 March in a 1–0 defeat to Southampton. He remained at Chelsea until 2001 and made 96 league appearances, 4 of which were from the bench. His final appearance for Chelsea came against Tottenham in May 1999. Bad luck with injuries left him stuck behind numerous other goalkeepers in the pecking order which was one of the main reasons for him making so few appearances in all that time at the club. He left Chelsea in 2001 to take up the post of goalkeeping coach at Watford, who had just appointed Gianluca Vialli, late of Chelsea, as their new manager.
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