Jimmy Jewell

Jimmy Jewell had a love of football from the days when he first started to walk and was able to kick a football. When he left school he became a clerk in an insurance office until the age of 18, when joined the RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service), which later became the RAF. He eventually became a pilot, and in World War I flew planes off early aircraft carriers. After the War he returned to the insurance business, and played for his company’s football team. After being dropped from the first team in 1923, however, he was so annoyed that he decided to take up refereeing, and by the early 1930s he was on the Football League list.

Jewell became a FIFA referee and in 1935 was in charge of the first of eight international friendlies when he refereed the Netherlands v. Denmark match. He also refereed one Home International between Scotland and Northern Ireland in 1937, a World Cup Qualifier between Belgium and Netherlands in 1938, and the Austria v. Egypt game in the 1936 Olympics. He was also a linesman for two other Olympic matches in 1936, including the quarter-final tie between Norway and Germany when Adolf Hitler was in the crowd. Also, in 1938 he was in the middle for the English FA’s 75th anniversary match against the Rest of Europe.

Despite everything else, Jewell will best be remembered for his part in the 1938 FA Cup final at Wembley when he awarded Preston North End a penalty in the last minute of extra time in a game that had been goalless for 119 minutes. George Mutch stepped up and scored a dramatic winner after the ball went into the net off the crossbar.

In an unprecedented move in January 1939, Jewell was appointed manager of Norwich City. They were relegated to the third division (south) that season, and after just three games of the 1939/40 season all games were stopped due to the outbreak of World War II, and Jewell returned to the RAF as a wing commander. Whilst back in service he ran several RAF football teams that included some well-known players like Stanley Matthews. After the War, Jewell joined the BBC and in the five FA Cup Finals up to 1952, he was the number one commentator for the Corporation. Jewell died suddenly of a stroke in 1952 at the age of 54 and his place at the BBC was taken by the legendary Kenneth Wolstenholme, who is best remembered for his classic “They think it’s all over. It is now” comment after Geoff Hurst scored England’s fourth goal in the 1966 World Cup.