(Reuters) – Former Manchester City players Stan Horne, Paul Hince, Bobby Kennedy and the late Harry Dowd will finally be honoured with 1967-68 league winners medals on Saturday, more than half a century after helping the club win the old first division title.
Horne was the first Black footballer to win the English Football League.
But the four did not receive medals at the time due to there being a smaller allocation of winners medals and due to the four’s low number of appearances that season.
Protocols have since changed on who receives medals, however, and City asked the EFL for the four to be awarded them. That request was approved earlier this year.
The club said Horne, Kennedy and the sons of Hince and Dowd would receive nine-carat yellow gold medals – replicas of those their team mates received in May 1968 after City sealed their second league title – at half time when City host Burnley at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
“We are all absolutely ecstatic. When the letter came that I was going to receive this medal, I was absolutely overjoyed, over the blue moon as you might say,” Horne, who made five league appearances that season, said in a statement.
“It was a fantastic time, playing with some of the best players of that era. The families of the four of us are so proud, you cannot describe it. I cannot dream of anything better.
“We were very lucky to be a part of that team. I am just overjoyed to think that people will now, when they speak to us, say ‘You have won a First Division medal’, and that’s something we will treasure for the rest of our lives.”
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
