BARRY BUTLIN is one of that pantheon of players who’ve scored winning goals for the Albion against Crystal Palace.
He may sound like the alliterative title of a south Wales holiday camp, but this was a moustachioed striker who’d joined Third Division Brighton on loan from Second Division Nottingham Forest.
When former Albion boss Brian Clough couldn’t find a place for him in his Forest line-up in September 1975, previous managerial partner, Peter Taylor, going it alone at the Albion, was more than happy to add Butlin to his forward line options.
Butlin had started his career at Derby County on the periphery of Clough and Taylor’s squad at the Baseball Ground.
During his five years as a Rams player, he’d twice been out on loan to Notts County, scoring eight in 20 games in 1968-69 and another five in 10 appearances in the 1969-70 season.
While Derby won the First Division title in 1972, Butlin was sold for £50,000 to Luton Town, where he made his mark with an impressive 24 goals in 57 matches.
One of them came in a 1-1 draw at Elland Road during Clough’s ill-fated 44-day spell as Leeds manager, and, in a typically odd Clough way, in the post-match press conference he put his arm around Butlin and told the journalists: “This is who you want to write about after that wonderful goal. He deserves it.”
The following month, Butlin’s goalscoring exploits for the Hatters saw Forest boss Allan Brown take him to the City Ground for a fee of £120,000.
Imagine how he must have felt when his old Derby boss Clough arrived to take over at Forest in January 1975!
Nevertheless, the striker said all the right things publicly ahead of the manager’s first game, a third round FA Cup replay against Spurs, as recorded in Jonathan Wilson’s excellent book Brian Clough: Nobody Ever Says Thank You The Biography (Orion Books 2011).
“The lads all know that everybody is starting from scratch with everything to prove,” said Butlin. “Brian Clough has the ability to make an average player good and a good player great.”
Such a show of loyalty might have been understandable in the circumstances but Wilson also recalls Clough’s eccentric attitude towards players when they were injured. Butlin fractured his cheek in a training ground incident when at Derby.
“As he lay on the ground, Clough screamed at him to get up, insisting there was nothing wrong with him,” wrote Wilson. “Even after he’d been taken to hospital, Clough refused to believe anything was the matter.
“When Butlin’s wife turned up looking for her husband and mentioned an ‘accident’ to Clough, he snapped: ‘I’ll tell you when there’s been an accident’.”
Although Butlin feared the worst when Clough arrived at Forest, he wasn’t instantly discarded, finishing that season with seven goals in 33 games (plus one as a sub), while fellow forward Neil Martin netted 12 in 30 matches (plus two as a sub).
But Clough clearly had other ideas about who he wanted in attack and brought in John O’Hare, who had done well for him at Derby, but less well during the ill-fated spell at Leeds, and introduced a young Tony Woodcock.
Intriguingly, that summer Martin was reunited with Taylor at Brighton and, within a matter of weeks, Butlin was also heading to the Albion, although his move was only temporary.
As it happened, Martin got off to a decent start alongside Fred Binney up front, scoring three times in the opening matches. But Taylor obviously considered Butlin offered a more potent threat; and it wasn’t long before fans saw why.
In only his second game, in the third minute of Albion’s clash with Palace at Selhurst Park on 23 September 1975, Butlin got on the end of a Gerry Fell cross and hit an unstoppable shot that turned out to be the only goal of a pulsating game played in front of a crowd of 25,606 – a quite remarkable number for a third tier fixture.
“It still sticks with me, that one,” Butlin told Spencer Vignes, in his book Bloody Southerners (Biteback Publishing), which details the Clough-Taylor period at the Goldstone.
“It was the start of a cracking time down at Brighton,” said Butlin. “I only wish I could have gone on a little longer.”
Butlin followed up that midweek winner at Palace with another goal on his home debut four days later when Chesterfield were beaten 3-0 (Peter O’Sullivan and Binney the other scorers).
Although not on the scoresheet, he also featured in two more wins (2-1 at Shrewsbury Town and 1-0 at home to Preston). However, in his absence Forest had gone through a mini slump, losing four out of five matches.
Butlin had taken his wife and children to Sussex with him, staying in the Courtlands Hotel in Hove. They all really liked the area, and the player had hopes of making the move a permanent one. Clough had other ideas.
“Brighton made me so welcome, but Forest weren’t doing very well at all,” Butlin told Vignes. “When I came to the end of my loan period, Brian got me straight back up to Forest and I had a real purple patch during which I played really well.”
In fact, he finished the season with eight goals from 38 games played as Forest finished eighth in the old Second Division.
“We had this team meeting before one game and Brian said: ‘If sending you down to Brighton gives you that impetus, then I’d better start sending some more players down there!’
“I’d seen the seafront and the wonderful countryside and thought it was the prelude to us staying there as a family, but it wasn’t to be. I was disappointed to say the least.”
Born in the south Derbyshire village of Rosliston, on 9 November 1949, Butlin attended Granville County Secondary School in Woodville from 1961 to 1966, and proudly records on his LinkedIn profile that he obtained six GCEs. He was also the school football captain.
He signed on for Derby in July 1967 but the likes of Richie Barker and Frank Wignall initially, then O’Hare and Kevin Hector, were ahead of him as the Rams progressed from the old Second Division into the First, before winning the title in 1972.
Chances for Butlin were few and far between. He made just four first team appearances in five years but those loan spells at Notts County at least demonstrated there was a player in the making, able to find the back of the net.
A knee injury prevented him making an immediate impact at Luton, after Harry Haslam had signed him, but he was the top scorer as Town gained promotion to the elite in second place in 1973-74.
The Hatters assured promotion by securing a 1-1 draw at West Brom in the penultimate game of the season, and midfield player Alan West relived the moment in an interview with theleaguepaper.com.
“I remember Barry Butlin, who was magnificent in the old centre forward’s role that season, got the vital goal,” he said. “I played in midfield with Peter Anderson and Jimmy Ryan. Peter was a great player and finished that season as our second highest scorer behind Barry.”
Just before Christmas in 2014, Butlin and West were among several former players who got together for a 40th anniversary celebration dinner. Also there were John Faulkner, Gordon Hindson, Alan Garner, Jimmy Husband, John Ryan, Jimmy Ryan, Don Shanks and Ken Goodeve.
Luton history website hattersheritage.co.uk remembers Butlin as “brilliant in the air and no slouch on the ground” and mentions the shock fans felt when he was sold to Forest, particularly as Town were desperate for goals at the time.
In the 1976-77 season, Butlin once more went out on loan, this time to Reading, and the heave-ho from Forest he had long expected finally came when Peter Withe was brought in.
Butlin was sold to Peterborough United and in two seasons with the Posh he scored 14 goals in 77 matches. His teammates at London Road included former Forest colleagues Jim Barron and Peter Hindley as well as former Albion midfielder Billy McEwan.
United just missed out on promotion from the Third Division, finishing fourth in 1977-78. It was a disastrously different second season, by which time another former Albion player, Lammie Robertson had joined them – when Posh were relegated to Division Four.
Butlin’s final club was Sheffield United, as they faced their first season outside the top two divisions. Signed by his former Luton boss Harry Haslam, Butlin scored 12 times in 53 matches for the Blades, but by the end of 1980-81 season, after Martin Peters had taken over, United were relegated to the fourth tier for the first time in their history.
Butlin retired and spent three decades working as a financial adviser and mortgage manager in Sherwood, Nottingham.
He lived in Derby and between July 2000 and October 2010 was secretary and treasurer of the Derby County Former Players’ Association.
In parallel lines 