FYT
Carpe Dieme
Of course I refuse to believe that Jags would deliberately handball it, he was inspirational captain material and leader.
But it did look quite bizarre at the time, it’s rare that you ever see such a blatant handball. I can remember other bizarre handballs (that also looked deliberate with little explanation) when we played away to Peterborough in league 1 and Justin Fashsnu away at Wimbledon in the early 90’s.
Also it seems there was a big motivation for Jags.
He’d just signed a contract but had a relegation clause where he could move to another PL on the cheap meaning his agent was able to negotiate a big pay rise for him. Also if `I remember right Everton activated the clause almost immediately when the season ended, so assume negotiations might have been happening before the season ended.
It will forever go in the “did we really land on the moon in the 1960’s or was it all just filmed in a studio on earth” conspiracy theories.
It wasn't a blatant hand ball in any way whatsoever.
If you can find the footage, you will see that as the Wigan defender jumped to compete for the ball, his shoulder hit Jags' arm and pushed it upwards, which led to his hand hitting the ball.
I sometimes think many of our supporters are deaf and blind, one thing's for sure, they're certainly not dumb !