Steve Harper’s part in the Seagulls-Magpies goalkeeping ‘trade’

BRIGHTON and Newcastle United clearly have a similar eye for goalkeepers with a string of custodians having played for both clubs.

A few years before I started watching, Dave Hollins, older brother of ex-Chelsea midfielder John, moved to Tyneside in 1960 after three years with the Albion, and played twice as many games for Newcastle in the early part of that decade than he had for Brighton.

Back in the first Alan Mullery era, Eric Steele, who went through the Newcastle ranks without making the first team, arrived at Brighton to replace the injured Peter Grummitt in 1977 and was in the side that won promotion to the elite via a 3-1 win at St James’ Park in 1979.

Dave Beasant, who Newcastle bought from Wimbledon for £850,000 in 1988 – although he only played 20 games for the Magpies – was between the sticks for the Albion for 16 games in 2003.

More recently, Dutchman Tim Krul – who’d been at Newcastle a decade – spent a couple of seasons as back-up to Mat Ryan and would probably be disappointed he didn’t get more game time.

My post on this occasion, though, is about Steve Harper, United’s longest-ever serving player having been there 20 years. He later went back as one of the coaches working with Steve Bruce, as well as being goalkeeping coach to the Northern Ireland international side.

Harper is a qualified UEFA A coach and UEFA A goalkeeping coach, and holds a Masters degree in Sport Directorship.

Back in 2011, Harper was happy to lend his experience to the second tier Seagulls during Gus Poyet’s tenure as manager, a decision applauded by Alan Pardew, Toon boss at the time.

“He just wanted to play,” Pardew told the Chronicle. “Not all the top players in the country would have gone on loan – you’re vulnerable.

“You’re going down a division, but he was prepared to do that, and fair play to him.”

For his part, Harper told BBC Sport: “Everybody knows I haven’t played enough football until the last two-and-a-half years.

“I hadn’t played a competitive game for about six months so it was nice to blow the cobwebs out.”

In his first Seagulls match, unfortunately Albion lost against West Ham to a single goal from Harper’s former teammate Kevin Nolan, and he said: “It was disappointing to lose against West Ham with the possession we had.

“Now I’m here, it’s time to get stuck in. We want Brighton to consolidate and finish as high as we can. People tell me it’s a lovely city. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it.”

Harper recalled the time fondly in an interview for the Albion website in 2019.

He featured in five games for the Seagulls, keeping two clean sheets. While he conceded five goals, three came away to Southampton when the Seagulls were unjustly punished by referee Peter Walton.

Harper told journalist Nick Szczepanik: “I would have stayed longer given the opportunity. They made me feel very welcome.”

He even managed to give two of his new teammates a surprise when he started speaking to them in Spanish. Playing behind Spanish speakers Inigo Calderon and Gonzalo Jara Reyes, he explained to Andy Naylor, then of The Argus: “After five years of Bobby Robson and his multi-lingual team talks my Spanish is okay.

“Calde got quite a shock with how much Spanish I know, but I had Colocinni and Enrique in the team with me at Newcastle.”

After his brief spell with the Albion, Harper returned to Newcastle and played nine more games for them the following season before moving on to Hull City (at the time managed by current Toon boss Bruce), where he played alongside Liam Rosenior.

Born in Seaham on 14 March 1975, Harper grew up in the County Durham mining village of Easington and went to its local comprehensive school. Originally a striker at local Sunday league level, he only started playing in goal from the age of 17 and he turned out for Newcastle’s youth team while he was still at college doing A levels.

In fact he was offered a place at John Moores University in Liverpool to study for a Sports Science degree but he deferred it when Newcastle offered him a one-year contract. He signed in 1993 as a back-up for first choice Pavel Srnicek, later Shaka Hislop and subsequently Shay Given.

Much of his time at Newcastle was as a more than capable deputy to whoever was first choice although in United’s 2009-10 season in the Championship, under Chris Hughton, he was the main man and played 45 matches.

Harper had nothing but praise for Hughton, telling chroniclelive.co.uk: “He came in at an incredibly difficult, turbulent time after relegation.

“Chris was the man at the centre of a perfect storm who steered us through some very choppy waters.

“He did a wonderful job and I don’t think he got enough credit. It was no surprise to me to see him go on to do an excellent job at Birmingham City and then at Brighton.”

In total, Harper played 199 games for Newcastle, featuring under nine different managers – Kevin Keegan and Bobby Robson being his favourites.

Periodically over the years, he went out on loan to gain first-team action, appearing between the sticks for Bradford City, Gateshead, Stockport County, Hartlepool and Huddersfield. The Brighton move was his sixth spell out on loan.

Harper’s long service for Newcastle was rewarded with a testimonial against AC Milan in 2013 before he left the club to join Hull, where he spent two seasons.

Six months after his departure from Hull, he was taken on by then Premier League Sunderland as cover for Jordan Pickford and Vito Mannone, but he didn’t make a first-team appearance and was released at the end of the season.

Halford’s timely role in helping Albion avoid the drop

TIME was of the essence when utility player Greg Halford agreed to make a temporary move to Brighton.

He penned a deal to join the Seagulls temporarily at Nottingham Forest’s training ground at 12.30pm and then got in his car to drive to Brighton for 6pm in time to be involved in the squad for that evening’s game at the Amex against Wigan Athletic.

It was 4 November 2014 and he was Sami Hyypia’s sixth loan signing – even though only five were eligible to play in any matchday squad (emergency loan goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi only played one game).

Regular centre backs Gordon Greer and Lewis Dunk were perilously close to suspension and deputy Aaron Hughes was sidelined with an ankle injury, so Hyypia moved to bring in an experienced back-up.

Albion hadn’t registered a win in the previous 11 league matches but the 29-year-old Halford proved to be a lucky charm as the side finally reacquainted themselves with the taste of victory. Fellow loanee Gary Gardner got the only goal of the game and Halford made an appearance off the bench towards the end of the game.

“I wasn’t really expecting to get any game time. I thought I’d just be in and around the lads, to get a feel for how everything works,” he told the club programme. “But I’m glad I got a few minutes at the end.”

Halford explained how he’d agreed to join the Seagulls because he’d been frozen out at Forest after Stuart Pearce took over as manager.

The player said he was familiar with the south coast having previously played for Portsmouth.

Asked what he could bring to the side, he added: “I can add a bit of height, I can score goals and obviously I can defend, which is my main attribute. I’m here to help the team and manager in any way I can.”

It wasn’t long before he was helping out a different manager as the side’s run of poor form brought a premature end to Hyypia’s brief time in charge.

Halford, though, hung around at the Amex, his loan extended by Hyypia’s successor, Chris Hughton, and he had made 14 starts and five substitute appearances by the season’s end, when the Seagulls narrowly escaped the drop back to the third tier.

Born on 8 December 1984 in Chelmsford, Essex, Halford began his professional career at nearby Colchester United. I well remember a Chelmsford-based work colleague telling me about this talented young footballer who’d been head and shoulders the best player in a local schoolboy football team his son had played for.

That player was Halford, who progressed from Colchester’s youth team and made his first team debut in April 2003. Loan spells at non-league Aylesbury Town and Braintree Town were part of his development, but he eventually made his mark at Colchester and was named in the PFA League One team of the year in 2005-06.

Played mainly at right-back, Halford’s speciality was his ability to deliver searching long throws which led to a good proportion of goals for Colchester.

After playing more than 150 games in five years for the Us, Halford wanted to prove himself at the highest level. He got a move to Premier League Reading in January 2007 but he couldn’t make the breakthrough there and ended up switching to Sunderland, signed by Roy Keane.

Just six months later, Sunderland made him available on loan and he joined Championship side Charlton until the end of the season. Then he spent the whole of the 2008-09 season on loan to Sheffield United, featuring in 49 of their 56 games that season.

His personal highlight was scoring the only goal of the game as United beat Preston to reach the 2008-09 play-off final.

Unfortunately, United lost the final 1-0 to Burnley, and that summer Halford was on the move again, this time to newly-promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers. Although he featured in 20 games, a regular starting berth eluded him and, in October 2010, he joined Championship side Portsmouth. Initially on loan, he eventually joined Pompey on a permanent basis but relegation to the third tier brought with it the need to trim budgets and in July 2012, they offloaded Halford to Nottingham Forest.

GH Forest Under Billy Davies, Halford was generally deployed as a striker but when Pearce took over at the City Ground, he didn’t get close to the first team. On his return from Brighton at the end of the 2014-15 season, he was released by Forest and joined Rotherham United on a free transfer.

Manager Steve Evans appointed him captain but, after a winless run of five games, he was deposed and only played one more game for the Millers before joining Birmingham City on loan.

GH Card That spell was also brief and although he returned to Rotherham and played 15 games for them in the 2016-17 season, he then joined Cardiff City and made 33 appearances in two seasons for Neil Warnock’s side.

Without a club for six months, in February 2019, he joined Scottish Premiership side Aberdeen as defensive cover but only made two appearances.

‘Mad Dog’ Kennedy’s eyes weren’t always on the ball!

A Ken shot

IN A ‘10 worst Albion strikers you’ve seen’ list, Andy Kennedy would be a leading contender.

On the rare occasions he scored, he would celebrate with an exaggerated swagger befitting scoring the winning goal in a cup final – all rather out of place in a humdrum third tier league match!

The disdain in which the supporters of Watford hold him is hilariously summed up by Darren Rowe in an article on Blind, Stupid and Desperate.

“If an opposing team wanted to keep him under control, they did not need to mark him, merely make sure that he was offside, which, for long spells of the game, he would be,” opined Rowe. “Andy always seemed to have forgotten to put any studs in his boots. If ever he felt he could get away with it, his legs would give way at the edge of the box.”

In the same online title, author Chris Stride is a little more appreciative, before putting the knife in!

“He had good control, strength, ball skills and packed a powerful shot. In his early days at Blackburn, I saw him score a magnificent 25-yard curler and have an all-round blinding game against Aston Villa in the FA Cup.

andy kennedy - wat “When he signed for Watford I was hoping for more of the same. All we ever got was one long range effort away to Southend in the First Round of the Coca-Cola, and a couple of seasons of strolling around the pitch preserving his hairstyle and energy for (page three model girlfriend) Maria Whitaker.”

A Blackburn Rovers fan, posting in February 2018 under the name Drog on roversfans.com, also shared an amusing recollection of Kennedy’s time at his club.

“My main memories of Walsall though are from an occasion at homely former ground Fellows Park where Andy Kennedy netted a brace in a 2-1 win.

“My travelling companions and I managed to gain admission to the less than Babylonian splendour of something exotically named the Terry Ramsden Suite, after a colourful but ill-fated owner, where I was hoping to perhaps pass my congratulations on to Andy and his then-paramour, a lass named Maria Whittaker whom I greatly admired but sadly she had not made the trip to the Midlands.

“I can’t remember exactly what she looked like but the captions which accompanied her frequent newspaper appearances always made me think she’d make a sparkling conversationalist.”

It seems the shapely Ms Whitaker must have occupied Kennedy’s mind quite a lot. Non-League Paper contributor Liam Watson, once a player with Witton Albion, recalled in a 2013 article: “We also signed the striker Andy Kennedy – long dark hair, good looking fella – and he was knocking off the page three girl, Maria Whittaker, at the time. That was all he talked about.”

Born in Stirling on 8 October 1964 the son of an engineer father and beautician mother, Kennedy went to Wallace High School in the town and first gained football representative honours at under 13 level. It was his performances for Stirling Boys Club that caught the eye of Glasgow Rangers scout Davie Provan.

In those days he was a winger but after going through the ranks at Ibrox and signing professional at 17, he was converted into a central striker. He eventually broke through into the first team in 1982.

He mustered 20 games for the Scottish giants, scoring three times, but also spent some time on loan at Seiko in Hong Kong. Clearly it was time to move on from Glasgow!

In March 1985, Birmingham City were faltering as promotion candidates in the chasing pack at the top of the old Second Division when manager Ron Saunders took on the 20-year-old Kennedy at St Andrews.

Andy-Kennedy Kennedy displays a more conventional goalscoring celebration for Birmingham

On 8 April, with regular striker David Geddis suspended and Blues trying to end a run that had seen just one win in the previous six games, Kennedy was called up for his debut at home to Sheffield United.

And what a start he made! Not only did he score with a header past former Villa ‘keeper John Burridge, he also set up Wayne Clarke to make it 3-0 and Blues went on to win 4-1.

Kennedy’s good form continued as he scored four in seven appearances and the stuttering Blues went from fourth to second and won automatic promotion back to the elite.

Kennedy was leading goalscorer the following season….but with just nine goals that didn’t say much, as the Blues went straight back down!

Throughout the course of his three-year contract with Birmingham he made 76 league appearances but scored just 18 goals and, in March 1987, was loaned to Sheffield United, where he scored once in nine games.

In the summer of 1988, he was on the move again, this time to Blackburn Rovers for a £50,000 fee. To be fair, the Ewood Park faithful probably saw the best of him as he netted 25 goals in 59 appearances during his two years at the club.

Watford were his next club and he joined for a fee of £60,000 in August 1990. But he failed to make an impact and was loaned out to Third Division Bolton Wanderers. Unfortunately, a back injury curtailed his time with the Trotters and he only managed one game before returning to Vicarage Road.

In his unhappy time with the Hornets, he made just 25 league appearances and scored only four goals.

A Ken It was a ‘phone call from Barry Lloyd‘s no.2 Martin Hinshelwood that heralded his arrival at the Goldstone. He joined Brighton for a nominal fee in September 1992, making his debut as a substitute for Steve Cotterill in a 1-0 home defeat to Reading on 26 September 1992.

“I am delighted to be here with a great bunch of lads and now I am determined to play my part in scoring goals and getting the club promotion,” he told the matchday programme.

A skip through recollections of Kennedy on North Stand Chat hardly stand as a ringing endorsement to his contribution in the stripes, the most complimentary coming from Austrian Gull, who maintained: “He wasn’t always that bad – we’d been spoilt by the beast that was Mike Small and Kennedy could never come close to reaching that level. Wasn’t the most hardworking but him and (Kurt) Nogan were okay. We certainly had a lot worse than Kennedy to come.”

Meanwhile backson reckoned: “Frustrating player. When we played United in the cup at Old Trafford, I seem to remember he was genuinely fouled in the box but went down so damn theatrically, like he’d been shot, it wasn’t given.”

Others recall him through that nickname ‘Mad Dog’ (first coined in a News of the World article about his affair with Ms Whittaker). Gwylan said: “Mad Dog wasn’t that bad – he was just lazy and looked unfit. If he had the attitude of Gary Hart, say, he’d have been an excellent player for us as he had a fair degree of ability.”

Pinkie Brown also observed: “Certainly had ability when he felt inclined. Sadly, as he had a bad attitude and was lazy, supporters saw little of that ability. One of those players who could have gone further had he been more focused.”

Several fans remember how he didn’t react well to observations from the terraces pointing out his shortcomings. Bladders was amused to recall: “One time, when he lazily chased a ball that went out of play, my old man told him to ‘put some bloody effort in Kennedy’. Kennedy then threatened to jump into the South Stand and smash his face in if he gave him any more lip.”

I must say on checking with the record books, I am staggered to discover he scored 10 times in 42 games for Brighton – although I do remember those over the top celebrations.

It’s said he left the club in 1994 after Liam Brady told him he wasn’t good enough to play for the reserves in the Sussex Senior Cup Final.

He ended his English league career with a cameo at Gillingham and at the age of 30 tried his luck in Hong Kong again, this time with Tsing Tao, before returning to the British Isles to play in Northern Ireland with Portadown and Shelbourne in Dublin.

As he was not the sort of player likely to be invited back to the club to reminisce over old times, he appears to have slipped below the radar in recent times.

However, Kennedy has linked up as a coach with the Rangers Soccer Schools programme at home and in North America. In 2005, Kennedy was part of a team of Rangers coaches who ran soccer schools in Canada. According to a Birmingham Mail report in 2015, Kennedy stayed in Canada at Ajax FC.

Paul Moulden chipped in with goals for Bournemouth and Brighton before batter days

Mouldy WORLD RECORD youth level goalscorer Paul Moulden now runs a successful chippy in Bolton but he was once in the firing – rather than frying – line for AFC Bournemouth and Brighton & Hove Albion.

The career of the prodigious goalscoring wonderkid tailed off early although it may have taken a new direction in Sussex if the cash-strapped Seagulls had been able to afford to buy him.

Born in Farnworth, near Bolton, on 6 September 1967, Moulden went to the town’s Thornleigh Salesian College where, having excelled for the school football team, he went on to play for England Schools. He also played for Bolton Lads Club under-15s: his staggering personal goal tally of 289 goals in 40 games in a single season earned him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

He was snapped up by Manchester City as an associate schoolboy during John Bond’s reign as manager and signed on as an apprentice before turning professional on his 17th birthday. He was part of City’s FA Youth Cup winning side in 1986, although manager Billy McNeill had already blooded him in the first team on New Year’s Day that year in a 1-0 home win over Aston Villa.

Moulden City He made two further substitute appearances for the first team that season and finished top scorer for City’s reserves. By late 1986, he had earned a regular place but a broken leg sustained in training restricted him to just three appearances in 1987-88.

In the 1988-89 season, Moulden was City’s top scorer with 13 goals as they won promotion from the old First Division back to the elite. But the young striker elected not to take up the offer of a new contract in the summer of 1989 and ended up joining Bournemouth, where Harry Redknapp was beginning his managerial career. Moulden was valued at £160,000 as the makeweight in a deal which saw Bournemouth’s Ian Bishop move to Maine Road.

City boss Mel Machin, himself something of a legend at Bournemouth (a Cherries player, manager and director of football) spelled the end of Moulden’s career at City.

Moulden told FourFourTwo magazine: “Machin just didn’t fancy me. I was offered a contract but it was a contract you’d have been a fool to sign, so I didn’t sign it and I became for sale. All the backroom staff and everyone else concerned was upset that I was going but to have tied yourself down for three years on the contract they were offering, you would have been a fool. That was the lever to get me out.” The Lancashire lad’s move to Dorset proved to be a success on the pitch – but was brief.

He scored six goals in his first three home league matches, including a hat-trick in a 5-4 win over Hull and both goals in a 2-1 win over Newcastle. “I remember the two goals against Newcastle,” Moulden told the Bournemouth Echo in 2016. “One was a three-inch tap-in and the other was a run from the halfway line.”

While he said in the Echo interview how much he enjoyed his time with the Cherries, he told efl.com: “Moving to Bournemouth was a huge move for me. At the time, I was single and it was exciting, but the novelty soon wore off and I found it hard to settle.

“It was a lovely club but I was delighted to return home and back to Oldham.”

Moulden told FourFourTwo: “Bournemouth had some good players, like Luther Blissett, Paul Miller and goalkeeper Gerry Peyton. The thing that struck me was how many old players they had – I was 22 at the time – but Harry was just starting out and I suppose for his first job he wanted security around himself.

“It was a small club and I’d imagine he had to get success quickly. Harry was a nice guy, a decent manager.”

After just seven months at Bournemouth, and with 13 goals in 37 starts to his name, he was snapped up by Oldham Athletic on transfer deadline day in March 1990.

A £225,000 fee meant a decent profit for Bournemouth but, with Oldham flying high at the time, and Moulden struggling with injuries, he only managed 19 games for the Latics in two and a half seasons. He spent two months at Molde in Norway restoring his match fitness and when Oldham manager Joe Royle suggested he look for a new club, the move to Brighton looked like the ideal opportunity to resurrect his career.

Newly-relegated back to the third tier, Albion desperately needed some inspiration up front and manager Barry Lloyd thought he’d hit the jackpot in securing on loan the services of strike pairing Moulden and Steve Cotterill, from Wimbledon.

Each got themselves a goal in an opening 3-2 defeat to Orient so the signs were promising and the new men duly delivered the goods on the pitch.

The two goals Moulden scored as Albion beat Preston North End 2-0 in September 1992 were especially sweet, as he explained to Brian Owen of the Argus in 2016.

In total, Moulden scored five goals in 11 league appearances and Cotterill four, but the Albion couldn’t afford to sign either of them permanently.

The void was ultimately filled by the arrival of free transfer Kurt Nogan, who subsequently became a prolific goalscorer for the Seagulls. Moulden, meanwhile, ended up being sold to Birmingham later the same season for £150,000 and Cotterill, also deemed too expensive for Albion, was sold to Bournemouth for £80,000 the following summer.

In an interview with Howard Griggs of the Argus, in January 2011, Moulden explained how he would dearly have liked to have made the move to Brighton permanent.

“I played at Bournemouth two seasons before,” he said. “I liked the south coast and I had the chance to go to either Brighton or Plymouth. I jumped at the chance to go to Brighton and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I struck up a good understanding with Steve Cotterill.”

Moulden spoke particularly highly of assistant manager Martin Hinshelwood – “he was different class, absolutely brilliant” – and said: “It felt just right from the start. I did well with Steve Cotterill. We both scored goals for the team.”

As an ex-City player, Moulden was particularly miffed that Oldham boss Joe Royle would not let the outcast striker play for Albion against Manchester United in the League Cup that autumn, and he added: “If Brighton had had the money I certainly would have signed.”

He told Griggs: “Manchester City was certainly good, and I enjoyed my time at Birmingham under Terry Cooper, but there were plenty of good times and I can honestly say my two months at Brighton was up there.”

One of Moulden’s best games came in a 2-1 home win over Huddersfield as Albion won 2-1. Steve Foster, back at the club for a second spell, put Albion ahead on 17 minutes with a header from a John Robinson corner. Although Huddersfield equalised through a Iwan Roberts penalty, livewire Moulden popped up with the winner six minutes from time.

The Terriers would ultimately be Moulden’s next destination after leaving Birmingham in 1995 but he made only two appearances before switching to nearby Rochdale where he played 16 times in the 1995-96 season.

In total, Moulden suffered four broken legs and his league career came to a premature end at 28, although he played non-league with Accrington Stanley and Bacup Borough.

He later coached at his old boys’ club and also spent three years with the Manchester City academy but sensibly he had an eye for a career outside of football too and followed in his mum and dad’s footsteps by opening up Paul’s Chippy in Bolton.

Pictures: Albion matchday programme and online sources.

‘Have boots, will travel’ striker Steve Claridge mixed it with Lions, Wolves, Foxes – and Seagulls

VETERAN striker Steve Claridge, who saw service with 22 professional and semi-professional clubs, helped Brighton to one of the most amazing smash-and-grab raid wins I’ve ever seen as an Albion fan.

The former Millwall forward answered a plea from his old Lions boss Mark McGhee in November 2004 which paid off big time when the Seagulls snatched a 1-0 win away to West Ham United.

It was the first of only five games Claridge played for second-tier Brighton after McGhee turned to a player who had delivered for him during his spell in charge of Millwall.

Albion went into the game at the Boleyn Ground on 13 November 2004 on the back of three defeats and McGhee was desperate to stem a tide which had seen eight goals conceded and no points on the board.

A trip to West Ham (who ended up being promoted via the play-offs that season) was a daunting prospect if the bad run was to be halted.

However, as McGhee pointed out: “We approached the game differently. Whereas before we thought we could win, today we did not, and played to make sure we didn’t get beaten.

“We kept the ball up front more which is important. Steve Claridge was key to that.

“He is one of the fittest players I’ve worked with and I had no doubt that after 18 months away from this level he would be able to perform.”

Centre back Guy Butters headed the only goal of the game on 68 minutes from Richard Carpenter’s pinpoint pass and the Seagulls held out for an unlikely three points. Hammers boss Alan Pardew had to admit: “Technically they were perfect and obviously came here to play deep and try and nick it on a set piece, which is what they did.”

Claridge’s professional career looked to have run its course after he left Millwall in 2003 and became player-manager of Southern League side Weymouth.

But the disappointment of missing out on promotion had seen him and chairman Ian Ridley leave the club and Claridge, at the age of 38, was keen to give league football another go.

McGhee knew the qualities Claridge could bring to his ailing side having been a popular figure as Millwall came close to promotion from the second tier.

The West Ham success didn’t spark a great revival in Albion’s fortunes, however, and there was only one more win (1-0 at home to Rotherham) during Claridge’s month with the club.

In one of those strange footballing quirks of fate, his fifth and final game for the Seagulls came away to Millwall (see Argus picture at top of article) on 11 December 2004, when Albion lost 2-0.

Claridge said all the right things in a programme feature about him that day, included likening the circumstances of both clubs. “The club has no money and it is tough just to survive, but everyone is in it together,” he said. “At Millwall we had a great team spirit and togetherness, and that is very much the case here.”

Unfortunately, it seemed money was the obstacle that precluded Claridge’s stay at Albion being extended and, after his deal was over, rather than it being one last hurrah, he went on to continue his league playing days at Brentford, Wycombe Wanderers, Gillingham, Bradford City and Walsall.

Then, at the age of 40, and with him needing just one more game to fulfil the landmark of 1,000 professional games, his old club Bournemouth gave him a match against Port Vale on 9 December 2006. No fairy tale, though, as they lost 4-0.

Born in Portsmouth on 10 April 1966, there aren’t many clubs in Hampshire and Dorset that Claridge has not had some kind of association with! Having been brought up in Titchfield, he started out with nearby Fareham Town in 1983. AFC Bournemouth took him on and gave him his debut in 1984 but he only played seven games before moving to Weymouth for three years.

Crystal Palace offered him a route back to the full professional game in 1988 but he didn’t make their league side, instead moving on to fourth tier Aldershot Town.

In two spells with Cambridge United, he scored 46 goals in 132 games. A falling out with manager John Beck saw him sold to Luton Town, and then bought back after Beck’s departure!

Nearly two years later, Birmingham City paid £350,000 to take Claridge to St Andrews and he became one of the club’s most prolific goalscorers, netting 35 in 88 games.

Such form eventually saw him switch to Leicester City and Claridge wrote himself into Foxes’ folklore, scoring winning goals in a play-off final to earn promotion to the elite level, and in the 1997 League Cup Final over Middlesbrough, the last time the competition staged a final replay. That, though, came after an ignominious beginning with Leicester.

McGhee’s successor as manager, Martin O’Neill, signed him for £1.2m in March 1996 and his early form was dreadful. Astonishingly, it seemed his poor start might well have been related to the wrong medication he had been taking for a heart defect for EIGHTEEN years, according to this official Leicester City website report.

In 1998, Leicester sent Claridge on loan to his hometown club, Portsmouth, but, in March 1998, McGhee, then boss at Wolves and seemingly at odds with more established strikers at the club, took Claridge to Molineux for a £350,000 fee. Only five months later he was sold to Portsmouth for £250,000.

Writer Dan Levelle said on an amusing Wolves’ fan website: “He was that amazing food blender you saw at your mate’s house, but you can’t get it to work at all for love nor money.”

Claridge’s time at Molineux was clearly not appreciated by the Molineux faithful, as Levelle revealed in this 2012 piece.

Even more galling for Wolves followers was that no sooner had Claridge made the switch to Portsmouth, he was scoring a hat-trick against them in a 3-1 win at Fratton Park!

The goals and games came thick and fast for Claridge back on home turf – 34 in 104 – but his reign as player-manager at Fratton Park in 2000 was curtailed after just 25 games.

Remembering the player he’d seen only briefly a couple of years earlier, McGhee, by now in charge at Millwall, offered the striker a lifeline with the Lions, initially on loan and then as a permanent signing.

He joined on a temporary basis to cover a period when current boss Neil Harris was banned following a sending off, but, after he hit the ground running, was then tied to a permanent deal, as this Millwall blog post described in 2016.

Writer Mark Litchfield summed him up brilliantly when he said: “His style was unconventional, to say the least: shirt untucked, one sock down and no shin pads, any naïve defender probably thought they could eat him for breakfast. But hard work was a pre-requisite for Claridge – he wouldn’t give any opposition player a moment’s rest and would more often than not always get the better of them, too.”

Few could doubt Claridge’s enthusiasm for the game, as he told the Bradford Telegraph & Argus during his time in Yorkshire.

Even after achieving the 1,000-game landmark courtesy of Bournemouth, Claridge couldn’t resist the lure of another game, turning out for Worthing, Harrow Borough, Weymouth, Gosport Borough and Salisbury.

Many younger readers will know Claridge as a pundit who worked extensively for the BBC on TV and radio and he now coaches youngsters in Salisbury and Warsash through his own scheme, the Steve Claridge Football Foundation.

Eagles’ Cup Final scorer Gary O’Reilly had two Seagulls spells

GARY O’REILLY was one of those rare players who had two different spells with Brighton – and played for rivals Crystal Palace in between.

Indeed, his career highlight came when he played – and scored – in the 1990 FA Cup Final for Crystal Palace against Manchester United.

It was from Phil Barber’s free-kick on the right that O’Reilly put Palace ahead after 18 minutes, his header looping over goalkeeper Jim Leighton.

United recovered to lead 2-1 before Ian Wright, only six weeks after breaking his leg, came on to score twice, in the 72nd minute and again at the start of extra-time. But Mark Hughes got an equaliser for United seven minutes from the end of extra-time, and, just as they had against Brighton in 1983, United went on to win the replay.

Born in Isleworth on 21 March 1961, O’Reilly started to make a name for himself with the Essex Boys team and, as a schoolboy, played for both England and the Republic of Ireland because his father was from Dublin and his mother English.

Arsenal wanted him on associate schoolboy forms, but it was Spurs who snapped him up at the age of 13. His youth team-mates at White Hart Lane included Kerry Dixon and Mick Hazard.

O’Reilly also had the offer of a sports scholarship at Columbia University before signing for Spurs as a professional. Among a total of 45 first-team appearances in five seasons at Tottenham were games in the Charity Shield at Wembley against Liverpool and a quarter-final victory in the UEFA Cup over German giants Bayern Munich.

Ironically it was the arrival of Gary Stevens from Albion shortly after the 1983 FA Cup Final that began to signal the end of his time at White Hart Lane, together with the emergence of Danny Thomas.

Screenshot

Even though he still had two years of his contract remaining, O’Reilly requested a transfer and, in August 1984, he became part of Chris Cattlin’s Albion squad after signing for a fee of £45,000.

Cattlin recalled: “I watched him eight times before signing him, and six times with Tottenham Reserves he had stinkers. But I thought then he had great potential.”

O’Reilly made his debut at right-back in a notorious home game against Notts County which saw centre-backs Jeff Clarke and Eric Young both hospitalised after clashes with County’s Justin Fashanu, meaning the new arrival hastily shifting into his more familiar position in the centre.

In what was an eventful first few weeks, he also joined that illustrious list of players to score a winning goal AGAINST Palace. That came on 15 September 1984 when 15,044 at the Goldstone Ground saw O’Reilly score the only goal of the game.

His centre-back partner that day – and for most of his time at the Goldstone – was Young, who also later joined the Eagles, having left Brighton for Wimbledon.

O’Reilly made 79 appearances in three seasons with Albion, scoring three goals, and was virtually an ever-present for the first two seasons.

GO'R by the pier Off the field, he became a popular figure with a social conscience, leading a campaign to help youngsters fight drug addiction and becoming president of the Junior Seagulls.

Unfortunately, injuries, including a worrying hamstring condition, restricted him to just eight games in the ill-fated 1986-87 season.

Then, on 3 January 1987, manager Alan Mullery reluctantly sold him to Palace for £40,000. Mullery later recounted: “I remember Gary O”Reilly coming in the day before we were going up to Grimsby. I asked him: ‘Do you want your wages next month?’ He thought it was some kind of quiz question, but I said ‘If you do, you are going to have to leave the club’. That’s how bad it was. We couldn’t afford the wages.” Albion won 2-1 at Grimsby but two days later, Mullery was gone himself – his second spell as manager ending in a sacking.

O’Reilly played 70 times in his first four seasons at Selhurst Park but he did not figure in Steve Coppell’s plans in the 1990-91 season and had just one game on loan with Birmingham City.

At the age of 30, the versatile defender returned to the Seagulls and was given a two-year contract by Barry Lloyd.

“There’s no substitute for first-team football,” he said. “There is nothing like playing regularly to give a player the right degree of confidence.”

Although he made 31 appearances in the 1991-92 season, he was unable to prevent Albion’s relegation back to the third tier and, after a series of unsuccessful knee operations, he was forced to retire from the game in April 1993.

After hanging up his boots, he embarked on a successful broadcasting career for Sky Sports, BBC, ART Prime in Dubai and Trans World International’s Premier League international feed.

On Twitter, with the handle @mythreeleftfeet, he describes himself as “global TV presenter, co commentator, ex professional football player all round sports broadcaster, writer, amateur photographer & someone you might just like…”

worldsoccertalk.com caught up with him in May 2017 to discuss a new venture in which O’Reilly is joint host (alongside stand-up comedian Chuck Nice) of a weekly podcast in America Playing With Science, which explores fascinating topics linking sport and science.

Phoenix O'R w Pompey's Biley

Pictures mainly from the matchday programme.

Above, defending against Portsmouth’s Alan Biley, who later played alongside him.

Elite career eluded Darren Hughes after cup-winning start

Hughes DARREN Hughes won the FA Youth Cup with Everton but it was lower down the league where he built a long career which included a season with second tier Brighton & Hove Albion.

Born in Prescot on Merseyside on 6 October 1965, left-back Hughes played for Everton in two successive FA Youth Cup finals.

He was on the losing side against Norwich City in 1983 (when among his Everton teammates was centre forward Mark Farrington, who later proved to be a disastrous signing for Barry Lloyd’s Brighton).

The tie went to a third game after it was 5-5 on aggregate over the first two legs. The Canaries won the decider 1-0 at Goodison Park. The following year, Hughes was a scorer, and collected a winners’ medal, as Everton beat Stoke City 4-2 on aggregate.

Meanwhile, the young Hughes had broken into Everton’s first team as an understudy to stalwart John Bailey, making his Everton debut two days after Christmas in 1983.

Unfortunately, the game ended in a 3-0 defeat away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, for whom former Albion winger Tony Towner was playing.

It wasn’t until May 1985 that Hughes next got a first team opportunity, featuring in a 4-1 defeat to Coventry City at Highfield Road and a 2-0 defeat to Luton Town – manager Howard Kendall resting some of the first-choice players after the League title had already been won and ahead of the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final against Rapid Vienna.

With the experienced Bailey and Pat Van Den Hauwe in front of Hughes in the pecking order, Kendall gave the youngster a free transfer at the end of the season, and he joined Second Division Shrewsbury Town, where he made 46 appearances.

Hughes played against Albion for Shrewsbury at Gay Meadow on 16 September 1986, and, two weeks’ later, Alan Mullery, back in charge of the Seagulls for a second spell, signed the 21-year-old for a £30,000 fee.

D Hughes blue

Not for the first time, hard-up Albion had devised a scheme to raise transfer funds from supporters, and the money for the purchase of Hughes came from the Lifeline fund which also helped Mullery to buy goalkeeper John Keeley for £1,500 from non-league Chelmsford and striker Gary Rowell, from Middlesbrough.

Hughes made his Albion debut in a 3-0 defeat at home to Birmingham in the Full Members Cup on 1 October 1986 and his first league match came in a 1—0 home win over Stoke City three days later.

“I was quite happy at Shrewsbury,” Hughes told matchday programme interviewer, Tony Norman. “But when the manager told me Brighton were interested in signing me I thought it would be another step up the ladder. It’s a bigger club with better prospects and it’s a nice town as well.”

The single lad, whose parents were living in Widnes, moved into digs in Hove run by Val and Dave Tillson. He was later joined there by Kevan Brown, another new signing, from Southampton.

Hughes said away from football he enjoyed golf and had played rounds with Steve Penney, Dean Saunders and Steve Gatting.

Brown, in a similar programme feature, said Hughes had been a big help in him settling into his new surroundings. “He has been showing me around the area and we’ve become good friends,” he said. “I’m glad I wasn’t put in a hotel on my own.”

Unfortunately for Hughes, life on the pitch didn’t go quite according to plan.

Mullery was somewhat controversially sacked on 5 January 1987 and, although Hughes played 16 games under successor Lloyd, those games yielded only two wins and the Albion finished the season rock bottom of the division.

The only consolation for Hughes was scoring in a 2-0 home win over Crystal Palace on 20 April. His final appearance in a Seagulls shirt came in a 1-0 home defeat to Leeds when he was subbed off in favour of youngster David Gipp.

Having played only 29 games, mostly in midfield, for Brighton, Hughes joined Third Division Port Vale in September 1987, initially on loan, before a £5,000 fee made the deal permanent.

It must have given him some satisfaction to score for his new employer in a 2-0 win against Brighton that very same month.

Hughes spent seven years with the Valiants, helping them to win promotion from the Third Division in 1989, making a total of 222 appearances, mainly as a left back.

His time with Vale was punctuated by two bad injuries – a hernia and a ruptured thigh muscle – and they released him in February 1994.

However, he gradually managed to restore his fitness and in 1995, between January and November, he played 22 games for Third Division Northampton Town.

He then moved to Exeter City, at the time managed by former goalkeeper Peter Fox, where he made a total of 67 appearances before leaving the West Country club at the end of the 1996-97 season.

He ended his career in non-league football with Morecambe and Newcastle Town but could look back on a total of 388 league and cup appearances for six clubs over a 14-year career.

After his playing days were over, according to Where Are They Now? he set up a construction business.

D hughes by tony gordon

Pictures: matchday programme.

Mis-firing Mick Ferguson couldn’t repeat goalscoring prowess for Everton or Brighton

MICK FERGUSON was a prolific goalscorer for Coventry City but the goals dried up in spells with Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion.

Ferguson’s arrival at the Goldstone in the early autumn of 1984 was certainly not amid a great fanfare. The Albion, under new chairman Bryan Bedson, were wrestling with debt and, to bring in some much-needed funds, sold striker Alan Young to Notts County for £50,000 and full-back Mark Jones to Birmingham for £30,000.

Needing a cut-price replacement for Young, and with Ferguson unwanted at Birmingham having been responsible for getting them relegated (see below), he came to the Goldstone as part of the deal that took Jones to St Andrews.

In modern-day football, loan players don’t generally play against their parent clubs but, amazingly, at the end of the previous season, Ferguson was allowed to play against Birmingham while on loan at his old club Coventry, and ended up scoring a goal that kept the Sky Blues in the top division but sent Birmingham down.

It was such an unusual saga that as recently as May 2017, the Guardian revisited the tale, catching up with Ferguson to explain the circumstances.

As the article explains, shortly before the player’s 30th birthday, manager Ron Saunders offloaded him to Brighton, where the manager was Ferguson’s former Coventry teammate, Chris Cattlin. Just to prolong Saunders’ agony, Ferguson made his Seagulls debut in a 2-0 home win… over Birmingham! This time he didn’t score. And, for Brighton, that state of affairs existed for several months.

I remember his second game quite vividly. It was a midweek league cup tie away to Fourth Division Aldershot and I went to the game with my pal Colin Snowball, who at that time was living in nearby Bagshot. There wasn’t anything subtle about Albion’s tactics that night. Goalkeeper Graham Moseley would kick the ball long for Ferguson to get on the end of it.

But, as the striker tried to lay it off, all he succeeded in doing was heading it into touch – repeatedly. The new signing did not impress! Despite their superior status in the league, Albion succumbed 3-0 in what was a pretty humiliating exit. Ferguson was remarkably selected for the following Saturday’s game, an away defeat to Oxford, after which he was omitted for four games. Cattlin gave him another chance with a four-game spell but still the dismal form continued and he didn’t get another look-in for four months.

Freelance journalist Spencer Vignes did a retrospective article about Ferguson for the Albion matchday programme and discovered the striker didn’t have a high opinion of his former playing colleague. “Several of the players just didn’t get along with him, and I was one of them,” he said. “His man-management skills left a lot to be desired. As a manager you need to have the players on-side. Chris certainly didn’t have us on-side.”

Ferguson admitted to being frustrated by Cattlin chopping and changing the side and said there were times he turned out when only 80 per cent fit, which didn’t do justice to himself, the team or the supporters. “My ankles weren’t great and towards the end I did struggle with my back, but I felt when I was fit I could certainly do a good job.”

The striker felt with the ability in the squad at the time they should have achieved more but pointed the finger at Cattlin for it not happening. “Some people aren’t cut out for management and I don’t think Chris was. It doesn’t surprise me that he never worked as a manager again.”

The history books (many thanks to Tim Carder and Roger Harris) recall him as the goalscorer in a 1-1 draw away to Portsmouth on 6 April 1986 but, having been to that game too, I seem to recall it was a rather desperate claim for what looked more like an own goal by Noel Blake.

The start of the following season saw the arrival of former £1m striker Justin Fashanu from Notts County and Dean Saunders, a free transfer from Swansea City, so Ferguson’s prospects of a starting place looked bleak.

However, the 1985-86 season was not very old before Cattlin had a striker crisis on his hands. Gerry Ryan was out long-term with the horrific leg break from which he never recovered, Terry Connor and summer signing Fashanu were also sidelined with injury and a big man was needed to play alongside Alan Biley.

Cattlin had little choice but to bring back the previously mis-firing Ferguson, and to everyone’s surprise and delight his goal touch returned, albeit briefly.

“I was virtually forced into the team through injury,” Ferguson admitted in a matchday programme interview. “But, fortunately, things turned out quite well. It was nice to get a goal against Blackburn in my first match back. That seemed to pave the way.”

The programme article had tried to give some perspective to the dismal form when he had first arrived. It said: “Mick’s confidence was affected by his loss of form, but he never lost an inner belief that he would pull himself out of the bad patch. And what a difference the goals make. He has shown great character this season and did a marvellous job for the team while Justin Fashanu was out with injury.”

Ferguson himself said: “It took us quite a while to settle down. We were in a flat at first and I was having a lot of problems, one way and the other, so it wasn’t an easy time.”

Eventually Ferguson, his wife and two daughters settled into a house in Hove, and the striker admitted: “When you’re having a bad time there is a tendency to bring your problems home. It’s unfair on your family. I didn’t notice at the time, but, looking back, I think I probably was a little snappy with my wife and children.

“I think you can reach the stage where you really start to wonder, but I always knew I could score goals for Brighton. I’ve scored goals everywhere else I’ve played. It was just a question of time and waiting for the right break.”

Indeed, Ferguson scored in three successive matches in September 1985, prompting Cattlin to give him a special mention in his programme notes for the league cup game at home to Bradford City. “The form of Mick Ferguson is bound to improve even more with the confidence he is gaining through his three goals in three games,” wrote the manager. “His header against Wimbledon was a true indication of his ability; it was of the highest class.”

The renewed confidence saw him add another consecutive pair the following month – before on-loan Martin Keown took over the no.9 shirt and demonstrated he could score goals as well as defend!

Sadly, the revival in Ferguson’s fortunes were not to last. When Fashanu was fit again, Ferguson was dropped and only stepped in a couple more times. His goal in a 4-3 home win over Huddersfield on 16 November was the last he scored for the club.

Apart from a lone outing in January, in a 3-0 defeat at Sheffield United, Ferguson was on the outside looking in until, to everyone’s astonishment, after a five-week absence from first team action, he was selected by Cattlin to lead the line in a FA Cup Sixth Round tie against First Division Southampton on 8 March 1986.

Ferg action Shilts Bond Case Ferguson, sandwiched between Kevin Bond and Jimmy Case, is foiled by Southampton goalkeeper Peter Shilton in what turned out to be the striker’s final Brighton game.

A crowd of 25,069 packed into the Goldstone – when the average attendance at the time often dipped below 10,000 – but it ended in a disappointing 2-0 defeat and the manager admitted he had made a mistake with his selection. It turned out to be Ferguson’s last game for the club.

Just over three weeks later, he moved to fourth-tier Colchester United – whose manager Cyril Lea was promptly sacked!

United’s reserve team manager, Mike Walker (who would later manage Everton) took over the first team as caretaker and, as the team went on an unbeaten run of eight games, Ferguson scored seven times, the first of which came in a 4-0 win over Leyton Orient on 8 April.

The following season he played 19 games and scored four times before leaving on 7 November 1986 to join non-league Wealdstone.

It was quite a fall from the heady days of the early Seventies.

Born in Newcastle on 3 October 1954, Ferguson was picked up by Coventry City’s youth scheme in 1970 and, although he made his debut in 1975, shortly after the sale of Scotland international Colin Stein, it wasn’t until the start of the 1976-77 season that he became a Highfield Road regular.

In tandem with Ian Wallace (who was later a strike partner of Peter Ward’s at Nottingham Forest), he really started to attract attention, as the Coventry Telegraph recounted when describing him as a “truly great goalscorer”.

The article reckoned he was strongly tipped for international honours at one point but injury and loss of form affected him over the next two seasons. Forest, Villa and Ipswich were all supposedly keen to sign him, with Brian Clough agreeing a £500,000 deal, then pulling out.

However, in the summer of 1981, he finally left City having scored 57 goals in 141 games (plus eight sub appearances) all in the top flight when Everton paid £280,000 for him. Ferguson scored six times in his first eight games – but the goals dried up after that and he was gone within less than a year having made only made 10 appearances (plus two as a sub).

In 2007, David Prentice, in the Liverpool Echo, sought out Ferguson for an explanation of his less than happy time on Merseyside.

Manager Howard Kendall initially loaned him to Birmingham City, before making the deal permanent, but injury disrupted his chances at St Andrews, hence the loan move back to Coventry.

After retiring from playing in 1987, Ferguson stayed in the game working in community development roles for Sunderland – for 10 years, until he fell out with manager Peter Reid – Newcastle United and Leeds United, where he was head of Football in the Community.

Pictures from Albion matchday programes and, via YouTube, from Coventry City’s Sky Blues TV.

The cheek of Parris in the autumn briefly lightened Brighton gloom

LIGHTER moments were few and far between as an Albion follower in 1995. A despised regime seemingly intent on taking the club into oblivion had spread such disillusionment among fans that gates were badly hit.

It meant only 5,659 were at the Goldstone Ground on 28 October 1995 to see an amusing incident that can still be seen on YouTube.

Step forward George Parris, a star at West Ham United a decade previously, who had joined the Seagulls to help out his old Hammers teammate Liam Brady, by then trying to manage a club in turmoil.

Bristol Rovers humiliated Brighton & Hove Albion 8-2 at the Goldstone Ground in 1973, shortly after ‘Old Big ‘ead’ Clough had taken charge, but, 22 years later, it was the Rovers goalkeeper who was left with the red face.

That was all down to quick-thinking Parris. The experienced defender-midfielder found himself on the blind side of the Rovers goalkeeper and, as the ‘keeper rolled the ball forward to clear it, Parris nipped in, got a toe in to win the ball, swivelled and buried it into the empty net.

These days he would almost certainly have been penalised for a foul as he appeared to use his shoulder to nudge the no.1 off balance, but, back in 1995, the goal stood.

He talked about the incident, and his career, in an interview with the Argus in November 2001.

George Michael Ronald Parris was born in Ilford on 11 September 1964. His talent for football saw him chosen to play for England Schoolboys and he joined West Ham United from school.

He signed professional for the Hammers in 1982 and made his league debut at Upton Park in a 3-0 defeat to Liverpool in May 1985.

Also making their debut that day, for what would be their one and only first team appearance for the Hammers, was central defender Keith McPherson, who played 35 games for the Albion between 1999 and 2000.

Parris meanwhile became the regular left-back in the 1985-86 season when West Ham finished third in the top flight. He was comfortable in either full-back position, but could also fill in as a defensive midfielder.

He was part of the West Ham side who were Littlewoods Cup semi-finalists in consecutive seasons and FA Cup semi-finalists in 1990-91.

In 12 years at Upton Park, ‘Smokey’, as he was known, made 290 league and cup appearances, chipping in with 17 goals too.

But it was an era when he had to endure some dreadful racism, which he talked about in a 2014 interview with Sam Wallace in the Independent.

Former Hammers skipper, Alvin Martin, said of Parris: “What we remember most about George was his friendly disposition and true honesty which was reflected best when he was on the field. George is one of the most reliable professionals anyone could wish to play alongside.”

Sadly, when West Ham decided to honour Parris’ 11 years’ service at the Boleyn Ground with a testimonial match at the end of the 1994-95 season, there was a dismally low turn-out as reported on website theyflysohigh.co.uk.

Parris had left the Hammers in March 1993, a £100,000 fee taking him to Birmingham City, and his infectious enthusiasm soon made him a fans’ favourite at St Andrews. Unfortunately, when Barry Fry took over as manager, he made it plain Parris didn’t fit into his plans.

Brady brought him to the Seagulls on a three-month loan and he also had loan spells with Brentford and Bristol City before spending a summer in Sweden with IFK Norrköping.

Brady invited him back to the Goldstone in September 1995 to play on a month-by-month contract basis, and he stayed until 1997, taking on the captaincy when Paul McCarthy was injured.

“Being captain of Brighton was a great honour for me, and I’d like to think that my characteristics rubbed off on the other players,” he told the matchday programme in 2019. “At that stage in my career I was able to deal with the responsibilities that the captaincy brings.

“You have to know that what works for some players will not work for others and you have to be the manager’s voice on the pitch. There was no added pressure that I felt and I’d like to think I shouldered it all quite well.”

*Matchday programme portrait of the former West Ham player*

Parris scored five times in 88 games for the Seagulls before briefly joining Southend United in August 1997.

Sadly, there was a hidden side to Parris’s life: he was a compulsive gambler and he later told the whole harrowing story in a four-hour long DVD.

He also spoke to the dailymail.co.uk about how he considered suicide after his addiction and mounting debts spiralled out of control in the late 90s.

It came after another large bet on the horses lost, he walked out of a bookies and seriously considered ending it all. He revealed: “I drove up to Newhaven. I can remember looking out over the bridge there and thinking ‘What do I do?’

“I couldn’t see how I was going to get myself out of the big hole I was in. I’d begged and borrowed from everyone I knew and, yes, I did give serious thought to killing myself.

“I owed money to my closest friends and family and had nowhere else to go. But, thankfully, I pulled myself together and went home and confessed to my then wife that I’d lost every penny I had gambling.”

Gradually Parris pieced his life back together and obtained coaching qualifications, such as the UEFA A licence, and became a Football Association-approved level-two coach educator.

Parris stayed on the south coast, living in Rottingdean, and had spells as player-manager of non-league Shoreham and St Leonards, but also ran youth football and cricket schools.

In 2016, Parris took interim charge of Albion’s women’s team and guided them to promotion to Women’s Super League Two. When Hope Powell took over the women’s team in August 2017, Parris reverted to the role of regional talent club technical director, a post he left in September 2019.

In November 2017, Parris was honoured alongside Albion manager Chris Hughton (another former playing colleague) at the Football Black List Awards in London for their contributions to coaching and management.

Midfielder Alan Curbishley helped Seagulls to promotion

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ALAN Curbishley completed a hat-trick of promotions with new clubs when he was part of Brighton’s successful third tier side in 1988.

He’d previously been promoted after switching from West Ham to Birmingham City and also when moving from Aston Villa to Charlton Athletic.

Curbishley was what you might call West Ham through and through.

Born at Forest Gate on 8 November 1957, within a mile of West Ham station, he was one of five children (elder brother Bill famously promoted and managed The Who and Led Zeppelin and was producer of the films Tommy and Quadrophenia).

Curbishley first played in Brighton at under 11 level, in a Newham Boys side against Brighton Boys at Longhill School, in May 1967. He was later capped for England Boys aged 15 and after joining the Hammers straight from school played for England Youth.

Curbishley won nine England Youth caps under Ken Burton, scoring on his debut in a 1-1 draw against Poland in Las Palmas on 21 January 1975 when England went on to win the Atlantic Cup. Among his teammates were future England captain Bryan Robson, Peter Barnes and Keith Bertschin.

He vied for a starting berth with Mark Nightingale (Palace, Bournemouth, Norwich, Peterborough), making six starts and three appearances off the bench. His last appearance was in a 1-0 win over Wales in Cardiff on 11 February 1976, playing alongside Glenn Hoddle and Gary Owen.

Almost a year earlier, on 29 March 1975, he had made his first team Hammers debut at the tender age of 17, lining up in midfield alongside Trevor Brooking and Graham Paddon in a 1-0 home defeat against Chelsea. Mervyn Day was in goal for West Ham and guarding the opposition net was John Phillips.

At the time, Curbishley was the youngest to play in the senior team although that record was subsequently eclipsed by Paul Allen.

A contemporary of Geoff Pike, Paul Brush and Alvin Martin, they were all in the West Ham youth team defeated 5-1 on aggregate by Ipswich in the 1975 FA Youth Cup Final.

In a midfield dominated by Brooking, Paddon and Pat Holland, and later Alan Devonshire and Pike, Curbishley found first team chances limited, although in 1977-78 he made 36 appearances.

After 85 matches for the Hammers, in 1979 he moved to Birmingham for £275,000. Manager Jim Smith used the proceeds of the £1m transfer of Trevor Francis to Nottingham Forest to buy Curbishley, Frank Worthington, Colin Todd and Archie Gemmill. Curbishley was still only 21 when he made his debut for the Blues on 18 August 1979 in a 4-3 defeat at home to Fulham and he went on to be ever present for Birmingham in that 1979-80 season.

Curbishley earned his one and only England Under 21 cap in a 5-0 thrashing of Switzerland at Portman Road when Justin Fashanu was among the scorers. He had hopes of going to the 1982 World Cup with England, having broken into the England B squad but fractured a kneecap sliding into a tackle with Albion’s Brian Horton. “I missed the rest of the season and the start of the next, and the World Cup squad which I might have broken into otherwise,” he said. “It was the worst disappointment I’ve ever faced.”

He was on the front cover of the matchday programme for a game I went to watch at St Andrew’s on 27 March 1982 when he played for Ron Saunders’ Blues in a 1-0 win over Brighton. But financial issues meant the side was broken up and, the following year, after a total of 155 games, he committed what today seems to be viewed as a cardinal sin by signing for Villa for £100,000, ironically making his debut against Birmingham in a 1-0 win on 4 April 1983.

“I had high hopes of success there with them just having won the European Cup,” he told Dave Beckett in an Albion matchday programme article. “It was soon obvious though that Tony Barton was under pressure from the moment he took over and all the players thought it was just a matter of time before he was sacked.

“He got a raw deal. That season we finished ninth in the league, got to the semis of the League Cup and were knocked out of the UEFA Cup in the last minute on the away goals rule. Villa have never been near that form since, but Tony Barton’s face didn’t fit and he was soon on his way along with all the men he signed.”

After only 36 appearances, scoring once, Curbishley returned to London, dropping back down to the 2^nd division, to begin what would be a long association with Charlton Athletic, punctuated only by his spell at Brighton.

Amazingly, although homeless at the time and playing at Selhurst Park, Charlton won promotion back to the 1^st Division. Unfortunately Curbishley sustained an achilles tendon injury and only played 10 games in the 1986-87 season.

“I knew I had an achilles injury but the operation was delayed until a week before the start of the new season and consequently I wasn’t fit again until December,” he said. “The manager bought two new midfield players, which I understood, but when I was fit again I couldn’t get back into the side.

“It became apparent that I wouldn’t get much of a chance unless something drastic happened so I’m pleased to have a fresh start.”

After 13 seasons playing in the top two divisions, he left Charlton having scored six times in 63 games and dropped down to the Third to join the Albion for £32,500.

He made his debut in a goalless draw at Chesterfield on 22 August 1987 in front of a crowd of just 2,286.

After the departure of Jimmy Case in 1985, the centre of Albion’s midfield had been crying out for someone who could put their foot on the ball and pass it, and Curbishley stepped neatly into that role, scoring six goals – mostly penalties – in 34 appearances as Brighton won promotion.

“Alan was a very level-headed guy, an excellent passer and really disciplined,” Albion boss Barry Lloyd told Spencer Vignes in a matchday programme article.

In total, over three years on the south coast, Curbishley played 127 games (plus five as sub) – making his 400th league appearance during the 1988-89 season – and scored 15 goals.

curbs pen The Albion matchday programme featured Curbishley when the Seagulls hosted the Hammers for a Barclays League Division 2 game on 16 September 1989. Describing his time with the East London club, he said: “It was a brilliant set up although I was definitely a bit headstrong in my early days.

“I didn’t really grow up until I moved to St Andrew’s and that’s where I had my best playing days.”

Lou Macari’s side in 1989 included Curbishley’s old pal Alvin Martin and future Albion manager Liam Brady but the Seagulls ran out 3-0 winners (goals from Kevin Bremner, Robert Codner and Garry Nelson).

In 1990, Curbishley began his coaching career, returning to Charlton initially as player-coach under Lennie Lawrence. When Lawrence left in 1991, Charlton made the somewhat unusual decision to appoint joint managers: Curbishley and Steve Gritt (who would later be at the helm when Albion narrowly escaped dropping out of the league).

Curbishley’s first signings for Charlton were former Albion teammates Nelson and Steve Gatting and he later plundered young winger John Robinson from the Seagulls. After four years, Curbishley took sole charge at The Valley and led Charlton to some of the most successful times in their history.

Considering their resources, Curbishley turned Charlton into a steady top flight club and model of stability, consistently securing a mid-table finish.

Sean Cole in The Bleacher Report described him as “one of the most promising managerial talents of the new millennium” and in 2006, in the wake of Sven-Goran Eriksson’s departure as England manager, Curbs had ‘tea and biscuits’ with then chief executive Brian Barwick – but Steve McLaren got the job instead.

In December 2006, Curbishley landed what surely would have been considered his dream job – manager of West Ham.

It was quite a reunion of old pals when Brighton visited Upton Park for one of his first games in charge, in the third round of the FA Cup in January 2007. Albion boss Dean Wilkins and coach Ian Chapman had both been teammates while physiotherapist Malcolm Stuart was still wielding the magic spray.

In front of 32,874, Hammers ran out fairly comfortable 3-0 winners with Mark Noble scoring his first senior West Ham goal and Carlos Tevez a real handful up front. These were the respective line-ups:

West Ham: Carroll, Dailly, Ferdinand (Spector 45), Gabbidon, McCartney, Benayoun, Mullins, Noble, Boa Morte (Newton 73), Cole (Bobby Zamora 68), Tevez.
Subs not used: Green, Sheringham. Goals: Noble 49, Cole 58, Mullins 90.

Brighton: Wayne Henderson, Joe O’Cearuill, Joel Lynch, Guy Butters, Kerry Mayo, Tommy Fraser (Gary Hart 51), Adam El-Abd, Dean Hammond, Alexandre Frutos (Sam Rents 67), Alex Revell (Joe Gatting 84), Jake Robinson. Subs not used: Michel Kuipers, Richard Carpenter.

Fans’ website westhamtillidie recalled: “Perhaps Curbs’ greatest legacy at the club was the £7m signing of his former Charlton protégé Scott Parker, who went on to win the Hammer of the Year prize three times and pick up a Football Writers’ Player of the Year Award during his time at the club.”

Sadly, though it was to all end in tears and Curbishley quit in protest at the then Icelandic owners’ failure to consult him over the sale of defenders Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney.

In what must have been a tough heart-v-head decision, he resorted to a legal resolution of the situation and eventually won a case for constructive dismissal, eventually receiving £2.2m in compensation. But it was the last manager’s job he had.

“It took me a year to sort out my problem at West Ham,” he told The Independent. “And then, after that, I was perhaps a little too picky. I was told by other senior managers ‘don’t be out too long’ but I was waiting for a job that I thought was the job for me.”

Job vacancies came and went, Curbishley’s name was generally on all the shortlists, but he never again made it through to the manager’s chair. There was a brief moment at Fulham when he was technical director assisting Rene Meulensteen but when Meulensteen was swiftly axed, new manager Felix Magath brought in his own people.

He rejoined the Fulham coaching staff in March 2015 and took charge of training in November 2015 when Kit Symons was relieved of his managerial duties but Stuart Gray took charge of the team before Slavisa Jokanovic was appointed.

In 2016, Curbishley brought out a book, Game Changers: Inside English Football: From the Boardroom to the Bootroom (published by HarperSport) and was a regular pundit on the Football on 5 programme covering Football League games.