Month: June 2025

Top goalscorer Fred Binney ousted by one of the best

DEVONIAN FRED BINNEY was a prolific goalscorer for Brighton but the emergence of one of the club’s all-time great players brought a premature end to his stay in Sussex.

Binney was not afraid to put a head or boot in where it hurt and black and white action photographs in matchday programmes from the 1974-75 and 1975-76 seasons and in the Evening Argus invariably featured goalmouth action involving the moustachioed or bearded Binney.

I particularly remember a shot of him continuing to play wearing a bloodied head bandage after he’d cut himself but played on in a home game against Hereford United, a club he later played for and coached.

The ‘old school’ centre forward was signed by Brian Clough and Peter Taylor from Exeter City at the end of the 1973-74 season in exchange for Lammie Robertson and John Templeman plus £25,000.

Taylor had sought the opinion of David Pleat, later a manager of Luton, Tottenham and Leicester, who had played alongside Binney for the Grecians.

Mike Bamber and Peter Taylor capture Fred Binney’s signature with John Templeman and Lammie Robertson going to Exeter in exchange

Pleat recalls in the Summer 2025 edition of Backpass magazine: “I told him that he was a clinical finisher, very sharp, had an eye for goal but tended to be caught offside too often.”

Incidentally, Templeman, a Sussex lad who had been an Albion player for eight years, didn’t want to leave but, as he told Spencer Vignes in his book Bloody Southerners (Biteback Publishing 2018), Taylor told him he’d never play league football again if he didn’t agree to the move.

Binney’s arrival came as the former league title-winning duo set about clearing out most of the squad they inherited from Pat Saward as they sought to rebuild. Around the same time, a triple signing from Norwich City saw Ian Mellor, Andy Rollings and Steve Govier arrive.

Clough clearly didn’t fancy the forwards Saward had signed and, as well as using Robertson as a makeweight also let go two previous record signings in Ken Beamish and Barry Bridges.

Binney hadn’t managed to kick a ball in anger for Clough before the outspoken boss left to manage Leeds, but sidekick Taylor felt he owed it to chairman Mike Bamber to stay, and took on the job alone (bringing in ex-Long Eaton manager Brian Daykin as his no.2).

Binney making a splash at the Goldstone

Taylor also recruited Ricky Marlowe, a youngster who’d been a reserve at their old club, Derby County, to play up front with Binney, along with several other new arrivals with past Rams connections, such as Jim Walker and Tommy Mason.

It was not really surprising they thought Binney could do a job for Brighton because in 1972-73 he had scored 28 league goals for Exeter, making him the season’s joint-top goal scorer in the entire Football League (along with West Ham’s Bryan Robson). And in 1973-74, he was voted the PFA Division Four Player of the Year and Exeter City Player of the Year after he’d scored another 30 league and cup goals.

It was said the Grecians had already turned down an offer from Swindon Town before he made the move to Sussex.

With so many new arrivals at the Goldstone, perhaps, not surprisingly, consistency was hard to find in the 1974-75 campaign and Binney didn’t come close to repeating that scoring form with only 13 goals to his name as Albion finished a disappointing 19th in the table.

That all changed in 1975-76 – Albion’s 75th anniversary season – and Binney was on fire, netting 23 goals as Albion narrowly missed out on promotion. Taylor still couldn’t resist chopping and changing Binney’s strike partners. He started out with new arrival Neil Martin, an experienced Scottish international, then had Nottingham Forest loanee Barry Butlin.

When craggy Northern Irish international Sammy Morgan arrived from Aston Villa, it looked like Taylor had finally found his ideal pair, although it took Morgan six matches before he struck a rich vein of form.

Meanwhile a young reserve who’d been blooded in a friendly against First Division Ipswich Town on Friday 13th February 1976 began to find himself included in the first team picture.

He’d been a non-playing substitute three times before a big top-of-the-table clash away to leaders Hereford on 27 March, which BBC’s Match of the Day had chosen to cover.

In the pre-match team meeting, manager Taylor announced that Binney wouldn’t be playing and that Peter Ward would take his place.

“Fred Binney was nice, a great fella; there was no friction between us and I didn’t really have time to think about how he was feeling,” Ward said in Matthew Horner’s 2009 book about him (He Shot, He Scored, Sea View Media).

Just 50 seconds into the game, Ward scored, the game finished 1-1 – but Ward didn’t look back and went on to become one of the club’s greatest ever players.

Binney wasn’t quite finished but it was the beginning of the end. Ward scored again in his second match as Binney’s replacement (another 1-1 draw, at Rotherham) but after a 2-1 defeat at Chesterfield, Binney was restored to the starting line-up in place of Morgan and opened the scoring in a 3-0 home win over Port Vale (Ward and Mellor also scored).

Sadly, it was Albion’s last win of the season. They lost 3-1 away to promotion rivals Millwall and drew the last three games resulting in them finishing fourth, three points off the promotion spots.

Binney gets a shot away at The Den – and later had to make his own way home!

Binney scored a consolation goal in that game at The Den but ended up having to make his own way home when fuming Taylor ordered the team coach driver to leave without him!

Ward recounted the story in Horner’s book: “Pete Taylor had just had a real go at us in the changing rooms and we were all sitting in silence on the coach, wanting to get home as soon as we could.

“Fred was the only one still not on the bus because he was standing around talking to someone. Pete wouldn’t wait and said to the bus driver, ‘F••• him. Leave him. Let’s go’. It wasn’t the sort of place at which you’d want to be left but, luckily for Fred, he got a lift from some fans and managed to get back to Brighton before the coach.”

In his review of the season for the Argus, John Vinicombe wrote: “Few forwards in the division could match Fred Binney for converting half chances into goals,” although he observed that only eight of his goals were scored away from the Goldstone. “Away from home, Binney did not fit into the tactical plan. He looked lost,” wrote Vinicombe.

While the team missed out on promotion because of those draws, young Ward enhanced his credentials by scoring the equaliser in each of them, taking his tally to six goals in eight games.

Taylor decided to team up with Clough once again, at Nottingham Forest, and disappointed chairman Mike Bamber turned to former Spurs captain Alan Mullery who had thought he was going to take charge of Fulham after retiring from playing but was spurned in favour of Bobby Campbell.

As he assessed the strengths and weaknesses of his squad in pre-season training, Mullery quickly took a liking to Ward and gave Binney short shrift when he tried to persuade him that picking the youngster instead of him would get him the sack.

Even so Binney started the first ten games of the 1976-77 season, and scored four goals, but he was subbed off in favour of Gerry Fell on 50 minutes of the September home game v York City when the score was 2-2 and suddenly the floodgates opened with Albion scoring five without reply in front of the Match of the Day cameras. Binney didn’t play another game for the first team.

In the days of only one substitute, invariably it was his old strike partner Morgan who got the seat on the bench. In his autobiography, Mullery wrongly recollects that he sold Binney to Exeter within two months. While there were plenty of rumours of Binney moving on, with Torquay, Reading, Crystal Palace and Gillingham all keen to sign him, he spent the rest of the season turning out for Albion reserves.

“One of the best goalscorers in the lower divisions and popular with the Albion supporters, Binney was perhaps the biggest victim of Ward’s stunning introduction to league football,” Horner observed, noting that in 15 games in which they played together, that Vale game was the only match when they both scored.

Binney left Brighton having scored an impressive 35 goals in 70 matches and, as was often the case at that time, a chance to play in America would prove to be a blessing for him.

Binney up against Welsh international Mike England, left for Albion v Cardiff, right for St Louis Stars

He joined Missouri-based St. Louis Stars in the North American Soccer League, who had John Jackson in goal and former Spurs player Ray Evans in defence along with ex-Albion defender Dennis Burnett and ex-Palace and Liverpool full-back Peter Wall.

In a side managed by ex-Palace and Orient player John Sewell, Binney kept up his impressive scoring record by bagging nine goals in 18 appearances. Fellow striker Barry Salvage, who’d played for the likes of Fulham, QPR, Brentford and Millwall, only scored once in 25 games.

Born in Plymouth on 12 August 1946, it was to his hometown club that he moved on his return to the UK from America.

Binney had been raised in the Barbican area of Plymouth and I am grateful to Ian De-Lar of Vital Argyle for filling in details of his early playing career.

He was a prolific goalscorer in junior football whilst playing for CM Department juniors and was signed by South Western League side Launceston.

While starting work as an apprentice at Devonport Dockyard, he also played for John Conway in the Devon Wednesday League, where he was spotted by Torquay United scout Don Mills.

Torquay took him on as an amateur before he signed a professional contract in October 1966. Although he made his first team debut in September 1967, he was mainly a reserve team player and went on loan to Exeter City in February 1969 before joining them on a permanent basis in March 1970 for £4,000.

He’d scored 11 goals in 24 starts for the Gulls but in view of his future success Torbay Weekly reporter Dave Thomas declared: “If there was a ‘One That Got Away’ story from that era, it was surely Fred Binney.

“The bustling, irrepressible Plymothian was snapped up by United as a teenager, but despite hitting the net at will in the reserves, he could never convince (manager Frank) O’Farrell that he was the real deal.”

It was during the brief managerial reign of former goalkeeper Mike Kelly that Binney joined Argyle in October 1977 and although he scored nine in 18 matches, he wasn’t able to hold down a regular starting spot.

But when the wily former Crystal Palace and Manchester City manager Malcolm Allison returned to Home Park as manager, Binney’s fortunes turned round and, in the 1978-79 season, he scored a total of 28 goals, was the team’s leading goalscorer and ‘Player of the Year’.

In Allison’s first away match, on 21 March 1978, he was rewarded for giving Binney his first senior game for 10 weeks when the predatory striker scored twice in a 5-1 win at Fratton Park. Also on the scoresheet was 18-year-old substitute Mike Trusson, who replaced the injured Steve Perrin. Pompey’s consolation was scored by Binney’s former Albion teammate Steve Piper, on as a sub for the home side.

Binney’s goal-every-other-game ratio at Argyle saw him net a total of 42 goals in 81 games – 40 while Allison was his manager. That Argyle squad had Tony Burns as back-up goalkeeper to Martin Hodge.

Great Pilgrim

Those goals helped to earn Binney 20th place in a list of the top 25 ‘Greatest Pilgrims’ voted for in July 2019.
But Allison’s successor, the former Argyle player Bobby Saxton, had different ideas and sold Binney to Hereford United for £37,000 in October 1979.

He scored six times in 27 appearances for the Bulls before moving into coaching, at first becoming assistant manager to Hereford boss Frank Lord. When Lord left in 1982 to manage the Malaysia national team, Binney went too.

He returned to England in 1985 to become assistant manager to Colin Appleton at his old club Exeter. When Appleton was sacked in December 1987, Binney went with him, taking up a role as recreation officer at Plymouth University. He subsequently became president and coach of its football club, and retired in 2013.

Albion fan Tony Hall posted this picture on Facebook of a chance pub encounter with Binney in 2025

That year, Binney’s son Adam was in touch with the excellent The Goldstone Wrap blog, saying of his dad: “He is not really interested in being lauded and doesn’t look for any kind of adoration. He doesn’t really like the attention, but he does love Brighton & Hove Albion and remembers his time there fondly.”

• In the Backpass article (left), Pleat recalls how, during his time as Leicester manager, Binney was his West Country talent scout. He also tells how Binney and his wife Lesley ran a cream tea shop in Modbury, Devon, for many years and how the former striker enjoyed travelling the length and breadth of the country’s canals on his own longboat, Escargot.

Crunching tackler ‘Tank’ Clark: a legend at two seaside clubs

VIKING lookalike Paul Clark made a lasting impression on plenty of players with robust tackling which earned him ‘legend’ status among fans of Brighton and Southend United.

Described in one programme article as “the big bustling blond with the biting tackle”, Clark was given the nickname ‘Tank’ for his no-nonsense approach. A Southend fan lauded “his crunching tackles and never say die attitude”.

Clark himself reflected: “Wherever you go the supporters tend to like someone who is wholehearted and when it came to 50-50 challenges, or even sometimes 60-40, I didn’t shy away from too many, and the supporters just took to it.”

In Albion yellow against Palace

Giving further insight to his approach, he said: “You can go right up to the line – as long as you don’t step over it, then you’re OK.

“I used to pick up a booking during the first five or 10 minutes, then I knew I had to behave myself for the rest of the game. Despite the reputation I had, I was never sent off in over 500 games.”

A trademark strike at home to West Ham

Former teammate Mark Lawrenson said of him: “You would hate to have to play against him because quite often he would cut you in two. With him and ‘Nobby’ (Brian Horton) in the side, we definitely didn’t take any prisoners. One to rely on.”

A former England schoolboy international, it was said of the player in a matchday programme:

“Paul is the first to admit that skill is not his prime asset but there is no doubt as to the strength of his tackle. He is a real competitor and is also deceptively fast, being one of the best sprinters on the Goldstone staff.”

Born in south Benfleet, Essex, on 14 September 1958, Clark went to Wickford Junior School where he played for the school football team and the district primary schools’ side. When he moved on to Beauchamp Comprehensive, selection for his school team led to him playing for the Basildon Schools’ FA XI.

Clark as an England schoolboy

This in turn led to him being selected to play for England Schools at under 15 level, featuring against Scotland, Ireland, Wales, West Germany and France before going on a tour of Australia with the same age group. Contemporaries included future full time professionals Mark Higgins, Ray Deakin, Kevin Mabbutt and Kenny Sansom.

Clark left school at 16 before taking his O levels when Fourth Division Southend offered him an apprenticeship. He made his first team debut shortly before his 18th birthday in a 2-1 win over Watford.

Two months later, he won the first of six England Youth caps. He made his debut in the November 1976 mini ‘World Cup’ tournament in Monaco against Spain and West Germany alongside future full England internationals Chris Woods, Ricky Hill and Sammy Lee.

The following March, he played in England’s UEFA Youth tournament preliminary match against Wales when they won 1-0 at The Hawthorns. Sansom was also in that side. And he featured in all three group matches at the tournament that May (England beat Belgium 1-0, drew 0-0 with Iceland and 1-1 with Greece). Teammates included Russell Osman and Vince Hilaire.

Clark was only a third of the way into his second season at Southend when Alan Mullery sought to beef up his newly-promoted Brighton side in the autumn of 1977, and, in a part exchange deal involving Gerry Fell moving to Roots Hall, Clark arrived at the Goldstone. He made his debut for the Seagulls in a goalless draw at White Hart Lane on 19 November 1977 in front of a crowd of 48,613. And he came close to crowning it with a goal but for an outstanding save by Spurs ‘keeper Barry Daines.

In full flight, as captured by photographer George Erringshaw

When Spurs visited the Goldstone later that season, Clark put in a man of the match performance and scored a memorable opener, following a solo run. A subsequent matchday programme article was suitably poetic about it.

“It showed all the qualities looked for in a player: determination, speed, skill and most of all the ability to finish….if any goal was singled out, Paul’s was certainly one to treasure.”

Albion went on to beat Spurs 3-1, although the game was remembered more because it was interrupted twice when the crowd spilled onto the pitch.

After only 12 minutes, referee Alan Turvey took the players off for 13 minutes while the pitch was cleared of Albion fans who’d sought safety on the pitch from fighting Spurs’ hooligan fans.

In the 74th minute, with Spurs 3-1 down and defender Don McAllister sent-off, their fans rushed the pitch to try to get the game abandoned. But police stopped the invasion getting out of hand and the game continued after another four-minute delay.

Clark’s goal on 16 minutes had been cancelled out six minutes later when Chris Jones seized on a bad goal kick by Eric Steele but defender Graham Winstanley made it 2-1 just before half-time.

Albion’s third goal was surrounded in controversy. Sub Eric Potts claimed the final touch but Spurs argued bitterly that Malcolm Poskett was offside.

Clark remembered the game vividly when interviewed many years later by Spencer Vignes for the matchday programme. The tenacious midfielder put in an early crunching tackle on Glenn Hoddle and after the game the watching ex-Spurs’ manager Bill Nicholson told him: “Well done. You won that game in the first five minutes when you nailed Hoddle.”

Said Clark: “I was 19 at the time so to get a pat on the back from him was much appreciated.”

It was one of three goals Clark scored in his 26 appearances that season (nine in 93 overall for Albion) but he wasn’t always guaranteed a starting berth and in five years at the club had a number of long spells stuck in the reserves.

Midfield enforcer or emergency defender were his primary roles but Clark was capable of unleashing unstoppable shots from distance and among those nine goals he scored were some memorable strikes.

For instance, as Albion closed in on promotion in the spring of 1979, at home to Charlton Athletic, Clark opened the scoring with a scorching 25-yard left foot volley in the 11th minute. Albion went on to win 2-0.

The following month, Clark demonstrated his versatility at St James’ Park on 3 May 1979 when Albion beat Newcastle 3-1 to win promotion to football’s elite level for the first time. Clark played in the back four alongside Andy Rollings because Mark Lawrenson was out injured with a broken arm.

Celebrating promotion with Peter O’Sullivan and Malcolm Poskett

“Not many people can say they played in a side that got Brighton up to the top flight,” said Clark. “It’s something I’m still immensely proud of.”

Once they were there, Clark missed the opening two matches (defeats at home to Arsenal and away to Aston Villa) and had an ignominious start to life at the higher level when he conceded a penalty within three minutes of going on as a sub for Rollings away to Manchester City on 25 August 1979.

Some observers thought Clark had played the ball rather than foul Ray Ranson but referee Pat Partridge thought otherwise and Michael Robinson stepped up to score his first goal for City from the resultant penalty. It put the home side 3-1 up: Teddy Maybank had equalised Paul Power’s opener but Mike Channon added a second before half-time.

Partridge subsequently evened up the penalty awards but Brian Horton blazed his spot kick wide of the post with Joe Corrigan not needing to make a save. Peter Ward did net a second for the Seagulls but they left Maine Road pointless.

Ahead of Albion’s fourth attempt to get league points on the board, Clark played his part in beating his future employer Cambridge United 2-0 in a second round League Cup match.

Three days later, he was on the scoresheet together with Ward and Horton as Albion celebrated their first win at the higher level, beating Bolton Wanderers 3-1 at the Goldstone.

It was Clark’s neat one-two with Ward that produced the opening goal and on 22 minutes, Maybank teed the ball up for Clark, who “belting in from the edge of the box, gave it everything and his shot kept low and sped very fast past (‘Jim’) McDonagh’s right hand,” said Evening Argus reporter John Vinicombe.

Gerry Ryan replaced Clark late in the game and after 12 starts, when he was subbed off three times, and four appearances off the bench, his season was over, and it wasn’t even Christmas.

A colour photo of a typical Clark tackle (on QPR’s Dave Clement) adorned the front cover of that season’s matchday programmes throughout but he didn’t start another game after a 4-0 League Cup defeat at Arsenal on 13 November.

Programme cover shot

He was sub for the following two games; the memorable 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest and a 1-1 draw at Middlesbrough, but Mullery had signed the experienced Peter Suddaby to play alongside Steve Foster, releasing Lawrenson to demonstrate his considerable repertoire of skills in midfield alongside skipper Horton and Peter O’Sullivan.

Young Giles Stille also began to press for a place and later in the season, Neil McNab was added to the midfield options, leaving Clark well down the pecking order in the reserves. Portsmouth wanted him but he rejected a move along the coast, although he had a brief loan spell at Reading, where he played a couple of games.

But Clark wasn’t finished yet in Albion’s colours and, remarkably, just over a year after his last first team appearance, with the Seagulls struggling in 20th spot in the division, he made a comeback in a 1-0 home win over Aston Villa on 20 December 1980.

Albion had succumbed 4-3 to Everton at Goodison Park in the previous match and Mullery told the Argus: “We badly needed some steel in the side and I think Clark can do that sort of job.”

Under the headline ‘The forgotten man returns’ Argus reporter Vinicombe said Mullery hadn’t changed his opinion that Clark was not a First Division class player, but nevertheless reckoned: “Paul’s attitude is right and I know he’ll go out and do a good job for me.”

For his part, Vinicombe opined: “The strength of Clark’s game is a daunting physical presence. His tackling is second to none in the club and Mullery believes he will respond to the challenge.”

Clark kept the shirt for another nine matches (plus one as a sub), deputising for Horton towards the end of his run, but his last first team game was in a 3-1 defeat at Norwich at the end of February.

Clark remained on the books throughout Mike Bailey’s first season in charge (1981-82) but, with Jimmy Case, Tony Grealish and McNab ahead of him, didn’t make a first team appearance and left on a free transfer at the end of it.

Back to Southend

He returned to Southend where he stayed for nine years and was player-manager on two occasions. Fans website shrimperzone.com moderator ‘Yorkshire Blue’ summed up his contribution to their cause thus: “In the top five all-time list for appearances, an inspiration in four promotions, one of the toughest tacklers of all-time and a man whose commitment for his home-town club could never be doubted.”

Clark was still only 27 when he had his first spell as manager, in caretaker charge after Dave Webb had quit following a bust-up with the club chairman, and he managed to steer United to promotion back to the third tier.

When Webb’s successor Dick Bate lasted only eight games of the new season, Clark was back at the helm, in turn becoming the youngest manager in the league.

His first hurdle ended in a League Cup giant killing over top flight Derby County (who included his old teammate John Gregory) when the Us had another former Albion teammate, Eric Steele, in goal.

A Roy McDonough penalty past England goalkeeper Peter Shilton at Roots Hall settled the two-legged tie (the second leg was goalless at the Baseball Ground) which the writer described as “arguably their biggest ever cup shock”.

In the league, player-manager Clark guided Southend to a safe 17th place but it went pear-shaped the following season. Clark only played 16 games, Southend were relegated, and Webb returning midway through the season as general manager.

Back-to-back promotions in 1989-90 and 1990-91 proved to be a more than satisfactory swansong to his Southend career, and in the first of those he found himself forming an effective defensive partnership with on-loan Guy Butters in the second half of the season.

In 1990-91, he missed only six games all season as the Shrimpers earned promotion to the second tier for the first time in their history, and he had a testimonial game against Arsenal.

But, after a total of 358 games for Southend, he left Roots Hall to join Gillingham on a free transfer.

Over three seasons, he played 90 league games, and was caretaker manager in 1992, before retiring at the end of the 1993-94 season. Gillingham’s top goalscorer with 18 that season was a young Nicky Forster and other Albion connections in that squad included Mike Trusson, Paul Watson, Neil Smillie, Andy Arnott and Richard Carpenter.

After Gillingham, Clark played non-league for Chelmsford City but left to become assistant manager to Tommy Taylor at Cambridge United. In 1996 he followed Taylor in a similar role to Leyton Orient.

Southend fans hadn’t heard the last of him, though – quite literally. He became a co-commentator on Southend games for BBC Radio Essex.

In the 2009-10 season, Clark was temporarily assistant manager to Joe Dunne at Colchester United.

Bank clerk Fell on his speedy feet at the Albion

In full flight for the Albion

NOT TOO many professional footballers start out as bank clerks, but Gerry Fell broke that mould when he signed for Brighton.

Six-foot winger Fell had worked at the Newark branch of NatWest for five years, combining bank clerk duties with playing semi-professional football for Lincolnshire-based Stamford in the United Counties League.

In the latter part of 1973, Stamford played Long Eaton United in a FA Trophy second round qualifying match and Long Eaton’s manager, Brian Daykin, having liked what he saw, signed Fell for the Derbyshire side the following summer.

Within weeks, Daykin left Long Eaton to become no.2 to Peter Taylor at the Albion – and one of his first moves was to persuade Taylor to sign Fell. Taylor watched the player a couple of times and endorsed his assistant’s opinion.

Fell was 23 when he packed up his NatWest job to move to Sussex and turn professional.

“I loved Brighton from the moment I arrived, absolutely loved it, especially considering where I came from,” he said. “It was a totally different ball game to Newark and I loved the idea of living by the sea. It was so cosmopolitan and a massive eye-opener for me.”

In a matchday programme article, Fell told Spencer Vignes: “I was always very fit and a good trainer, so I didn’t find the training difficult at all. But obviously the step up in terms of actually playing took a bit of getting used to.

“I thought it was great because, as you can imagine, it was a stars-in-my-eyes job for me. I got into the first team within three months of arriving, so it was fantastic. I’ve never regretted any of it.”

Pointing out that he wasn’t the only member of that squad who was late to the game and from non-league (Peter Ward and Brian Horton were too), he said: “You had a few of us who’d experienced the outside world and perhaps appreciated what it meant to be a professional footballer that little bit more because of it.”

Born in Newark on 1 March 1951, Fell’s first football memory was as the mascot for Newark Central, a local team that his grandfather ran. He was educated at Magnus Grammar School in Newark where he earned a reputation for athletic achievements, gaining honours in high jump and 800 metre running.

Fell certainly hit the ground running at the Albion as a pacy goalscoring winger, netting five goals in 20 appearances in the season he arrived plus eight in 28 the following season (1975-76).

His initial first team involvement was as a non-playing sub for a 2-0 home win over Southend United on 7 December 1974 (Tommy Mason and Jim Walker the scorers), but once he’d made his debut at the end of the following month in a 2-0 win over Colchester United, he kept the shirt previously worn by Ian Mellor through to the end of the season (bar one game when Mellor replaced him).

In 1975-76, when Taylor’s much-changed side only narrowly missed out on promotion, Fell twice hit braces in 6-0 wins at the Goldstone, the first pair against Chester in September (Fred Binney 2, Peter O’Sullivan and Mellor also scorers), the other when Colchester United were dispatched by the same scoreline in January 1976 (Binney another two, Andy Rollings and Mellor also scoring).

He revelled in switching from playing in front of 200-300 people to turning out at the Goldstone where crowds could often be more than 20,000 – even for Third Division games.

“To play in front of that amount of people on that ground, well, it was a dream come true,” Fell told Vignes. “The Goldstone was a bit of a fortress at that time and the players in the team were so confident.”

Apart from that first half-season, Fell generally competed with Brighton-born Tony Towner for the no.7 shirt and Taylor’s successor Alan Mullery went with Fell for the final run-in to promotion from the third tier in the spring of 1977. He started 11 games and scored the only goal of the game as top-of-the-table Albion secured a vital 1-0 win over Port Vale in their penultimate home game.

“It wasn’t easy being on the sidelines looking on, but Gerry was a breath of fresh air,” Towner said in a matchday programme interview. “He was the opposite of me; though still a winger, he had loads of pace, though not too much skill!

“He’d knock the ball ahead of him and run past the defender to get it. I’d try to trick my way past.”

Ironically, although Brighton secured promotion by beating Sheffield Wednesday 3-2 in the last home game, the man of the match was the visitors’ Eric Potts – and his next game at the Goldstone was in Albion’s colours… as a replacement for Fell and Towner!

Having liked what he saw in that exciting encounter under the lights in front of a bumper crowd of 30,756, Mullery promptly signed Potts for £14,000 in the close season.

The diminutive winger had previously played for Wednesday at the level of today’s equivalent of the Championship and he was installed in the no.7 shirt for the first 21 games of the season.

Fell played and scored in his first start of the season (a 2-0 home win over Hull City) in September and the following game, his last start in an Albion shirt, was in a 2-2 League Cup second round replay draw at Oldham Athletic.

But Fell wasn’t done with the Seagulls just yet. He proved to be a matchwinner after going on as a 57th minute substitute for the injured Steve Piper in the last league game of September, a 3-2 night game win over Luton Town in front of a Goldstone crowd of 25,132.

The game was finely poised at 1-1 (Ward and Ron Futcher on target) when on 84 minutes Fell, unmarked at the far post, headed in a second Albion goal when Mellor flicked on a corner by Potts. Three minutes later, Fell was once again played in by Mellor and a turn-and-volley into the top corner from the edge of the box put Albion 3-1 up. There was still time for Jimmy Husband to pull one back for the Hatters, but Albion held on to take all the points.

Those goals didn’t earn him a starting place, though. On six further occasions Fell was sub (three playing, three not getting on) before Mullery traded him as a makeweight in the signing of 19-year-old powerhouse midfielder Paul Clark from Southend United.

In the three years between his first involvement with the first team as a non-playing sub at home to those future employers and his last, going on for Potts in a 1-0 defeat away to Notts County on 5 November 1977, only three other players were involved in both fixtures: Graham Winstanley, O’Sullivan and Mellor. Fell departed with the impressive record of 20 goals in 72 starts plus 19 sub appearances.

In his first season in Essex, he helped Dave Smith’s Shrimpers to promotion from Division Four when they were runners up behind Watford. Third-placed Swansea City and Brentford in fourth also went up.

The next season, while his old Albion teammates were celebrating promotion to the elite for the first time in the club’s history, Fell’s Southend finished mid-table in the third tier, although they did have the excitement of a memorable FA Cup third round encounter with mighty Liverpool: he was part of the Southend team that memorably held the European champions to a 0-0 draw in the FA Cup in January 1979 when 31,033 crowded into Roots Hall.

“It was snowy and frosty and we could’ve beaten them on the night,” United manager Smith later told the local Echo newspaper.

“Derrick (Parker) missed a sitter at the end but I remember turning to one of my coaches and saying I was glad he missed. They thought I was mad but it meant we got to go to Anfield and I’d never managed a team there before.”

How did Southend manage such a result against a full-strength Liverpool side captained by Emlyn Hughes with Ray Clemence in goal, Jimmy Case and Graeme Souness in midfield and Kenny Dalglish up front?

In the lead-up to the game, Smith said: “We couldn’t find anywhere to train so we went to the bottom of the pier. We ended up in a pub there drinking hot port and this was only a few days before the game. Maybe that’s the answer to playing so well.”

Liverpool made up for it in the replay a week later when they won 3-0 (goals from Case, Dalglish and Ray Kennedy) and Fell was subbed off on 75 minutes.

The last season of the decade would end in the disappointment of relegation, and Fell’s departure from the club, but they once again had excitement in a cup competition against higher level opposition, winning 2-1 away at Bolton Wanderers (and drawing 0-0 at home in the second leg) in the second round of the League Cup and then twice forcing draws against West Ham in the third round, before losing 5-1 in a second replay.

When it came to the FA Cup though, United were on the wrong end of a giant killing as Isthmian League Harlow Town beat them 1-0 in the second round.

Not long after joining Southend in 1977, Fell had helped them beat Torquay United 2-1 in the first round of the FA Cup and it was to Plainmoor that he headed in July 1980 on a free transfer.

That cup match was remembered in Torquay’s Into The Eighties pre-season magazine which said: “The pace and power of Gerry Fell left a painful memory with us when he helped Southend knock us out of the FA Cup here at Plainmoor three years ago. He had cost the Shrimpers £20,000 then but now he arrives on the south coast on a free transfer and has already impressed in pre-season training. Gerry certainly knows how to score.”

United supporter and programme statistician John Lovis added: “A complete forward who’s got the lot.”

Alongside big-name new arrival Bruce Rioch as a player-coach, Fell had a terrific first season scoring 17 league and cup goals, seven of them from the penalty spot.

Delighted manager Mike Green said in his matchday programme notes: “We certainly look forward to free kicks now because in Gerry Fell and Bruce Rioch we possess two of the hardest and most accurate dead ball kickers in the game.”

Although he was in the side as the 1981-82 season began under ex-Manchester United boss Frank O’Farrell’s third stint as Gulls manager, he lost his starting berth and later that season had a loan spell at York City, where a young John Byrne was finding his feet in a struggling side.

He briefly joined a mini-exodus of ex-Football League pros in Hong Kong at Happy Valley – future Brighton coach and manager Jeff Wood also played for them – but he returned to Brighton and played non-league football with Sussex County League Whitehawk, finishing the 1983-84 season as leading goalscorer with 35 goals, captaining them to the league championship and also representing the Sussex county side.

He finally hung up his boots in 1986 and was a partner for an independent financial adviser before setting up his own financial services company. He remained in Brighton until 2004 before heading back north and settling in Broom Hills, a Lincolnshire rural farming community to the north west of the city of Lincoln.

Fell died from cancer at the age of 74 in May 2025.