Born on this day in 1970 in Newport, Monmouthshire, is Riccardo Gabbiadini.
Like his big brother, Riccardo joined York as a trainee and turned pro a few months after his sixteenth birthday in 1986. After a solitary appearance for the Minstermen, Dennis Smith took him to Roker in the hope that we could get two Gabbers for the price of one. Sunderland fans, in awe of the goalscoring exploits of Marco, were fairly salivating at the prospect of having the pair on board. It was the opposite of the arrival of Billy Hughes’s big brother John in 1973, in that Yogi had won everything with Celtic while Riccardo’s career had yet to get off the ground – but they both managed just the one game for us, John’s career ending after his debut game.
While working his way through the ranks for Sunderland, he replaced Eric Gates in the Durham Senior Cup semi -final defeat by Darlington in August 1989, replaced the same player in a friendly at Hearts a few days later, and was then a 77th minutes sub against Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk – for Marco.
There was a five-game loan at Blackpool early in season ’89-‘90, in which he scored three times, but he was back on Wearside in time to play alongside his brother in a friendly at Peterlee, to celebrate the installation of their floodlights. That was October 10th (a night game, obviously) and he added to Marco’s brace in the 75th and 80th minutes as we won 4-3.
Riccardo’s single competitive appearance came at Leeds on October 14th, when he replaced Marco on 58 minutes, meaning that the brothers never appeared on the pitch at the same time in a competitive game. He immediately went on loan to Grimsby, then to Brighton the following March. Early in season ’90-’91 he spent time on loan at Crewe before signing permanently for Hartlepool in March ’91. A year at the Victoria brought a couple of goals before a move down the coast to Scarborough, where he scored once in a handful of games before moving to Carlisle in the August – promptly turning out against us in a friendly at Burnden Park which we lost 0-3. Marco was long gone by then, so the brothers didn’t get to compete, but the Carlisle side featured former Lads Trevor Swinburne, Jackie Ashurst, and Bob Lee, with Big Bad Bob scoring and Alan Shoulder getting the other two.
There was a period as a non-contract player with Chesterfield, but that brought no league appearances, so he sought football abroad, and In 1994 he crossed the Irish Sea to sign for Sligo, where he scored two goals in eight games, helping them win the League of Ireland First Division, the League of Ireland First Division Shield, and the FAI Cup. Not a bad little stint, really.
In the mid-nineties, after football, he went into the hospitality trade, a route which Marco later followed, and in 2019 took over the Ashbourne Hotel in his home town of York. In 2011 he featured for us in the Masters Tournament in Manchester, alongside Marco, Martin Gray, Lee Howey, Brian Atkinson, Sean Musgrave, and Chris Makin – but we didn’t get past the group stages.
