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.

Imperious Mark Lawrenson starred at Brighton before hitting Liverpool heights

MARK LAWRENSON was without doubt in my mind the best player ever to play for Brighton and Hove Albion. Peter Ward was exceptional but Lawrenson did it for Brighton and went on to have a glittering career with Liverpool, the top club in the country at the time.

And, whatever your thoughts about his contribution as a pundit – and many are very disparaging – you can’t take away his longevity on our TV screens and across our media.

Although now slightly less prominent as a TV pundit, for a good many years, Lawrenson reprised his successful Liverpool central defensive partnership with Alan Hansen in the BBC Match of the Day studios.

But where did it all begin? Born on 2 June 1957 in Penwortham, Lancashire, Lawrenson joined nearby Preston at 17 in 1974, who at the time were managed by the legendary Bobby Charlton.

Lawrenson made his full debut for the Lilywhites the following year, two months before his 18^th birthday. However, it was Charlton’s fellow World Cup winner, Nobby Stiles, to whom Lawrenson was most grateful.

“I was a winger when I joined Preston, while he was coach, and he was the one who converted me to my present position – in the middle of the back four,” Lawrenson told Keir Radnedge in Football Weekly News.

“Nobby was very good with the youngsters. He was almost like a father-figure. He commanded respect not only because of what he’d achieved himself but because of the way he’d help iron out your faults.”

At the age of 19, and thinking he’d never be good enough to play for England, Lawrenson opted to play for the Republic of Ireland when player-manager Johnny Giles (perhaps not coincidentally, Nobby’s brother-in-law) found out that he qualified to play for them through his grandfather.

That debut for Ireland in April 1977, in a 0-0 draw with Poland, came at the end of a season in which he was voted Preston’s Player of the Year.

Within weeks, he joined the Albion for £112,000 (£100,000 + VAT @ 12 per cent) after Brighton manager Alan Mullery persuaded Albion to outbid Liverpool to get their man.

Shoot article

Mullery recalled in his 2006 autobiography how he had taken the board of directors to see Lawrenson perform superbly in an end-of-season game at Crystal Palace, where he marked their new star striker Mike Flanagan out of the game.

Lawrenson recollects how he was on an end-of-season ‘jolly’ in Spain with his Preston team-mates when Brighton chairman Mike Bamber and director Dudley Sizen turned up and ‘sold’ the club to him in a Benidorm beachside bar.

There was nearly a hitch in the deal when his medical showed high sugar levels in his blood – but it turned out he had been drinking blackcurrant-flavoured Guinness while on the Spanish holiday.

Mullery was building on the success of guiding the Seagulls to promotion from Division Three in his first season in charge, and the young defender replaced the experienced Graham Cross, who went to Preston in part-exchange.

Shortly after signing Lawrenson, Mullery told Shoot magazine: “I know a lot of people have not heard too much about him yet. But they will – believe me, they will. He is only 20, is big and strong and will make his mark in a big way.”

And, in his autobiography, Mullery said: “Any manager would love to have a player of Mark’s ability in their side. He had a calm, strong temperament, he never caused any problems and he always performed brilliantly on the field. His presence helped to lift the team to a whole new level of performance in the 1977-78 season.”

Lawrenson made his Brighton debut on the 20 August 1977 in a 1-1 draw against Southampton at The Dell and went on to make 40 league appearances by the end of his first season at the club.

The following season, when Albion went one better and earned promotion to the top division for the first time, Lawrenson was a stand-out performer. In his book, A Few Good Men, author Spencer Vignes said: “His timing in the tackle and ability to read the game belied his relative youth, but what really caught the eye was his skill on the ball, which, for a centre-back still earning his wages in English football’s second tier, was little short of remarkable.”

Skipper Brian Horton told Vignes: “The way he used to bring the ball out from the back had to be seen to be believed.”

In a special Argus supplement of April 1997, to mark Albion’s departure from the Goldstone, Lawrenson was interviewed by Mike Donovan, and told him: “The Goldstone was a great place to play and I was extremely happy there.

“It was an excellent team that played good football the way it should be played – by passing it around. Also, we had a great team spirit, mainly because a lot of the team were outsiders coming in and stuck together. We all played and socialised together.”

Unfortunately, Albion’s first season amongst the elite was only five games in when Lawrenson received a serious injury in a clash with Glenn Hoddle at White Hart Lane.

Badly torn ankle ligaments and a chipped bone was the diagnosis and it sidelined Lawrenson for 12 matches, although his absence created an opportunity for young Gary Stevens.

lawro yellow When Lawrenson was fit to return, Mullery sprung a surprise by utilising him in midfield, but it was an inspired decision and he stayed there for the rest of the season, helping Albion to finish a respectable 16^th of 22.

He went on to make 152 league appearances by the end of 1980-81.

It was his sale to Liverpool in the summer of 1981 that was part of the reason Mullery’s reign at the club came to an end. Mullery had negotiated with Ron Atkinson to sell him to Manchester United with two United players coming to Brighton as part of the deal.

But, behind his back, chairman Bamber had been talking to Liverpool and, in exchange for what was then a Liverpool club transfer record of £900,000, he was destined to be heading back to the North West with midfielder Jimmy Case coming South as part of the deal.

Interestingly, though, Lawrenson revealed in his autobiography how new manager Mike Bailey had actually made him Albion captain, but then asked him how he saw his future, which sowed a seed of doubt about the club’s intentions.

“I don’t know if there was a financial crisis and they were looking for a big transfer fee from my sale to sort themselves out, but the uncertainty did unsettle me,” he wrote. Lawrenson was sent off in an ill-tempered pre-season friendly (against FC Utrecht in the Dordrecht Tournament) and put it down to his personal frustration.

“On our return flight, there was a message that Terry Neill of Arsenal was waiting to meet the chairman at Gatwick,” Lawrenson recalled. “Somehow they missed each other and the next day there was talk of me going to Manchester United.

“But then Mike Bailey asked me if I would meet Liverpool, and I travelled to the Aerial Hotel at Heathrow to meet Bob Paisley, Peter Robinson and Liverpool chairman John Smith.

“Terry Neill was, at the time, waiting in the next hotel in case discussions broke down. He missed out because it only took me 15 minutes to agree to move to Liverpool.

“I travelled North and had a medical at 11.30 at night. I even took the registration forms to the League offices myself, because they are only a few doors away from my mother’s home at St Annes.”

Argus front page

Lawrenson went on to form a formidable central defensive partnership with Hansen after England centre back Phil Thompson suffered an injury, but, as he had showed at Brighton, he was versatile enough also to play at full back or in midfield.

Indeed, Lawrenson made his first start for Liverpool at left-back in a 1-0 league defeat to Wolves. In his first season, Liverpool won the League championship and the League Cup. They won it again in 1982 and retained both for another two seasons, becoming only the third club in history to win three titles in a row. They also added the club’s fourth European Cup in 1984.

Many believed Lawrenson and Hansen were the best central defensive partnership in English football by the time Liverpool clinched the League and FA Cup “double” in 1986.

But Lawrenson was being put under pressure by young centre back Gary Gillespie and an Achilles tendon injury in 1988 prematurely ended his career after 332 appearances and 18 goals, although he earned a fifth and final title medal when that season ended.

Lawrenson tried his hand at management at Oxford United in 1988 but, in almost a mirror image of the situation over his own transfer from Brighton, he resigned after their star striker Dean Saunders, the former Albion player, was sold by the board of directors without Lawrenson’s blessing.

Lawrenson later managed Peterborough United for 14 months between September 1989 and November 1990, but it was a largely unsuccessful tenure.

Apart from one brief foray back into football as a defensive coach at Newcastle during Kevin Keegan’s first reign in the North East, Lawrenson’s involvement since has been one step removed as a pundit and newspaper columnist.

At the 2018 World Cup, Lawrenson particularly hit the headlines when many observed his cantankerous and sarcastic observations were just too much.

Never shy of voicing his opinions, they once led to him losing what at the time was a trademark moustache!

He was so convinced that Bolton would be relegated that he said live on Football Focus that he would shave it off if they proved him wrong, which they did!

In 2003, my friend Andrew Setten somehow blagged tickets which gave us the opportunity to go into the exclusive Football Association area at the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Southampton at the Millennium Stadium and, all those years later, I finally got the chance to meet Lawro and to get his autograph.

• Pictures from Shoot magazine, cuttings from the Evening Argus and the matchday programme.

Irish international pals brought wing wonder Steve Penney to Brighton

BRIGHTON & Hove Albion can thank former Middlesbrough goalkeeper Jim Platt for landing one of the most exciting players ever to play for the Seagulls.

Platt was the Teesside club’s man between the sticks for 12 years. During his call-ups on international duty with Northern Ireland, he struck up a friendship with Arsenal defender Sammy Nelson, who joined Brighton towards the end of his career.

When Platt took over as manager of Ballymena United, he quickly recognised that a talented teenage winger at his disposal – Steve Penney – could make a career for himself in England.

Platt tipped the wink to his old pal Nelson, newly-appointed as Albon’s assistant manager to Chris Cattlin at the time, and the youngster was invited for a trial.

Penney was put up in a house near the Goldstone recently vacated by the sacked Jimmy Melia. His housemate was another young triallist: Ian Wright! Penney was taken on while Wright was released. Whatever happened to him?!

Penney’s Albion story is told in fine detail by journalist Spencer Vignes who devotes 12 pages of his excellent book A Few Good Men (Breedon Books) to a player who, for the record, played 148 games (plus 14 as sub) in eight years with Brighton.

Unfortunately, that rather low figure tells its own story, a succession of injuries robbing him of probably twice as many games as you might have expected him to have played over that length of time.

“He was, in short, a breath of fresh air, a flying winger whose close control and devastating pace left opponents and spectators alike lost for words,” said Vignes.

Among former teammates who voiced their appreciation of Penney, full back Graham Pearce told Vignes: “I always thought of Steve as a bright young winger, very naturally talented, who had all the attributes you need in that position, especially pace.”

Born in Ballymena on 6 January 1964, the son of a teacher and a nurse, although he played football at primary school, he went to what he described himself as “a fairly posh grammar school” where rugby was the preferred sport for boys, and he was a scrum half.

He got the chance to play football in the Boys Brigade, where Nigel Worthington, who later managed Northern Ireland, also played.

“I had to choose between rugby and football and when I decided to join Ballymena United, the school were so furious they suspended me,” he told interviewer Dave Beckett in a matchday programme feature.

“Playing for my home town was excellent, although I had the chance to join Linfield who were one of the best teams in the country.

“I guested for them in Holland a couple of times so I knew they were interested and that’s where I expect I’d have ended up if I hadn’t moved abroad.”

Instead, Platt alerted Nelson and, bearing in mind Albion’s high profile having only recently played against Manchester United in the Cup Final, Penney didn’t take much persuading.

Beckett recounted: “Penney, at 19 years old, made his debut in a 3-1 defeat by Barnsley but was soon a hot favourite on the terraces. Even in his opening match he set up the goal goal for Alan Young, and John Vinicombe wrote in the Evening Argus: ‘The eye for an opening that Penney unquestionably has will serve Albion well. The Goldstone are going to like him’.”

It wasn’t long before he was playing to a much bigger gallery when he was part of the Albion side who toppled Liverpool in the FA Cup (for the second season running), winning 2-0 in front of a live television audience.

Penney tormented the experienced Liverpool left-back Alan Kennedy and his perfectly-flighted pass over the top of the Liverpool defence played in Terry Connor to score the decisive second goal.

His first goal came in a 3-0 win at Derby County in March 1984 and such was his impact in that first season that he was voted runner-up to Jimmy Case as player of the season.

Away from football, Penney was a decent golfer, his regular companions on the golf course being Dean Saunders, Chris Hutchings, Steve Gatting and former Albion favourite Peter O’Sullivan.

During the winter, he loved nothing more than playing snooker at a club in Hove, especially taking on Saunders and competing for a trophy awarded each week to the winner.

So, life was sweet for the young Irishman and it got even better when his form with Brighton led to full international honours.

SP w Irish shirt

At the time of writing, he remains the highest-capped Albion player, all of his 17 caps for Northern Ireland being won while with the Seagulls.

After making his debut on 16 October 1984 in a 3-0 friendly win over Israel in Belfast, he was a regular for four years, playing his last game on 21 December 1988 in a 4-0 defeat to Spain in a World Cup qualifying match. He scored twice for his country, in a 1-1 draw with Israel on 18 February 1987 and in a 3-0 win over Malta on 21 May 1988.

The highlight of his international career was playing for Northern Ireland at the 1986 Mexico World Cup.

“The whole experience of going to the World Cup was something I’ll never forget,” he said three months later, in a matchday programme interview.

“Six weeks away from home is a long time, but the spirit in the squad was very good and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

Steve had been in the side that qualified for that World Cup by drawing 0-0 against England at Wembley. “We only needed a draw to get to Mexico and we got it,” he said.

“(Manager) Billy Bingham had been a right winger and obviously appreciated what I could do, which was a source of great strength to me. He’d been part of the team that had played in the World Cup in Sweden in 1958, a lovely man who was very good at getting the best out of his players and encouraged me no end, something I’ll always be grateful to him for.”

Unfortunately, Steve’s World Cup came to a juddering halt after Spain’s hard man Emilio Butragueno went over the top in a tackle and did his ankle in only the second group game.

On his return to Brighton, Penney found himself sufficiently impressed by Cattlin’s successor, Alan Mullery, that he was persuaded to sign a new, three-year contract.

However, it wasn’t long afterwards that Penney started having problems with his left knee and, although he played through the pain barrier, in a game against Derby County in March 1987 a bad tackle damaged his ankle ligaments, sidelining him for the rest of the season.

Barry Lloyd had succeeded Mullery and Penney was in the team at the start of the next season but, after only two games, found himself back on the treatment table after a chip of bone was found floating in a knee.

That kept him out for an agonising seven months before he was able to return to the side in March 1988 to play a crucial part in the final 11 games, scoring three times as the Seagulls earned promotion in second place behind Sunderland.

Penney told Vignes: “At that time, playing for Barry was great. The two of us were getting on even though I always thought there was something not quite right between us. To be honest, he had to play me because I strengthened the team and made a difference.”

Halfway through the 1988-89 season, Crystal Palace tried to sign Penney but weren’t prepared to meet Albion’s £175,000 asking price. And then his left knee went again.

Vignes tells the whole gory story in detail, which I won’t repeat here, but, suffice to say, the wrong treatment by one doctor had to be put right by a Harley Street expert.

Penney row Manager Lloyd and Penney also fell out, principally over Penney putting country before club. “He’d play for them, then come back injured. That didn’t please me,” said Lloyd. “It was a crying shame. He just wanted to play but was so plagued with injuries it was beyond belief.”

The split came in 1991 when Lloyd clearly thought the player’s level of fitness didn’t merit a new contract. Interest was shown in him by Heart of Midlothian, managed by Joe Jordan, and Charlton Athletic, where the joint manager was his ex-Albion teammate Alan Curbishley.

Having played a couple of trial games for Hearts, he plumped for them but suffered a groin strain early on and only played 14 games all season.

A 15^th game would have triggered the award of another one-year deal – and it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. Freed at the end of the season, he signed for Burnley, newly-promoted from the old Fourth Division, in August 1992. Continue reading “Irish international pals brought wing wonder Steve Penney to Brighton” →

Goals dried up at Brighton for Pompey favourite Alan Biley

1 150th goal v Leeds (1-1) ALAN BILEY was a fans favourite at all six English league clubs he played for but the prolific goalscoring that made his name at Cambridge United and Portsmouth wasn’t replicated at Everton or Brighton.

His spiky, long blond hair reflected his devotion to singer Rod Stewart and, on the pitch, the way he wore his football shirt outside his shorts, clutched the cuffs, and saluted a goal with a raised forefinger was a tribute to Scottish footballing legend Denis Law, another of his heroes, .

Biley was quite the hero at Portsmouth, with a goalscoring record of more than a goal every other game, having been signed by Bobby Campbell in 1982.

But when he fell out of favour with Campbell’s successor, Alan Ball, Brighton’s Chris Cattlin stepped in and paid £50,000 to take the striker along the coast in March 1985.

Within a month of the move, he was back at Fratton Park in Albion’s colours for an Easter Saturday south coast derby when honours were even in a 1-1 draw.

Biley had made his Seagulls debut as a substitute for Frank Worthington in a 0-0 draw away to Barnsley, then got his first start the following game (another goalless draw, at home to Oxford) and kept his place to the end of the season.

The first of four goals during that spell came in a 2-0 win at home to Oldham, and the goal he scored in a 1-1 home draw with Leeds on 20 April was his 150^th in league football (top picture). Although Albion finished with three wins, it wasn’t enough to reach the promotion places, and they finished sixth.

Biley made a great start to the 1985-86 campaign, scoring against First Division Nottingham Forest in a remarkable 5-1 pre-season friendly win, and then in the opening league fixture, a 2-2 home draw with Grimsby Town.

However, competition for places in Albion’s forward line had intensified. In addition to Terry Connor, £1m man Justin Fashanu arrived together with Dean Saunders, on a free transfer from Swansea, (Saunders went on to be named player of the season).

With the much-derided Mick Ferguson also managing a brief purple patch of scoring, it meant Biley struggled to hold down a regular spot, making 24 starts plus three appearances as a sub, and only managing to add three more goals to that season’s opener.

Cattlin’s dismissal as boss, to be replaced by the returning Alan Mullery, also spelled the end of Biley’s time at the club. He initially went back to Cambridge on loan, then tried his luck with New York Express in the States, had a spell in Greece before ending up in Ireland, playing for Waterford who were managed by his old Everton teammate, Andy King. He ended up back at Cambridge on a non-contract basis in November 1988 and made three more appearances for United before hanging up his boots.

But let’s go back to the beginning. Born in Leighton Buzzard on 26 February 1957, Biley was spotted by nearby Luton Town at the tender age of 10 and signed schoolboy forms aged 12. He was then offered an apprenticeship and professional forms as he worked his way through the different levels. But financial issues hit the club and when their chief scout left to link up with Cambridge, he recommended Biley to manager Ron Atkinson, and in 1975 he made the move to Fourth Division United.

Biley netted a total of 82 in 185 games as United rose from the Fourth Division to the Second between 1975 and 1979, when his eye for goal caught the attention of First Division Derby County, who paid £450,000 for his services.

Biley continued to find the net regularly in the top flight, scoring nine in 18 games for the Rams, but he couldn’t prevent them from being relegated. He stuck with them in the 1980-81 season and scored 10 playing in the second tier but was sidelined through injury for several months.

He recounted recently how he fell out with manager Colin Addison and there was talk of him being sold to West Brom, where his old boss Atkinson had moved, but instead, in July 1981, he became new Everton manager Howard Kendall’s first signing for a £300,000 fee. Everton fans who go back that far refer to the Magnificent Seven – because that’s how many players Kendall signed in a short space of time.

Biley EVE Biley was an instant hit, scoring on his Everton debut as Birmingham City were beaten 3-1. He scored again in his next game away to Leeds, but things quickly started to go wrong for him, as he explained in great detail to Everton fan website bluekipper.com.

“I was always appreciative of the Evertonians’ footballing knowledge and the support and gusto, particularly through the tough times,” said Biley. “They were very loyal through the tough times, and they are a different class.

“I would like to think they took to me but my only big regret was that I wasn’t there long enough to enjoy them.”

By October, Kendall had dropped his new signing and Biley was mystified.

“Years later, as I look back at it, I wasn’t Howard Kendall’s cup of tea. Whatever that was, I can’t put my finger on it because history tells you what I was and what I did and where I played, and he had a different opinion of that.

“I would have loved him to have had the faith in me he had in lots of other players.”

Eventually his lack of involvement in first team action saw him go out on loan to struggling Stoke City and in eight games he helped them to retain their status in the top division, but hopes of a permanent move fell through.

Instead he departed Goodison Park with just 18 appearances (plus three as sub) and three goals to his name and dropped down to the Third Division with Portsmouth.

The Pompey faithful had already had a taste of what they could expect when, at Christmas 1977, as a 20-year-old playing for Cambridge, Biley had scored twice for table-topping Cambridge at Fratton Park.

And, sure enough, when paired up front with Billy Rafferty, he became an instant hit and the duo scored 40 between them as Pompey won promotion. Biley’s performances earned him a place in the PFA select XI that included Gillingham’s Steve Bruce and Micky Adams, Portsmouth colleague Neil Webb and Kerry Dixon, then of Reading.

The following season saw Biley gain a new strike partner in the shape of Mark Hateley, who would go on to earn England international recognition. However, a series of 10 home defeats put paid to their promotion hopes and Campbell was sacked on the coach on the way back from the season’s penultimate game at Derby. In the final game of the season, with Alan Ball in temporary charge, Biley hit a hat-trick in a 5-0 demolition of Swansea.

Ball was installed as manager and Biley was very much a part of the side that began the 1984-85 season. He played in 22 games and came off the bench twice, scoring a total of 13 goals before Ball mysteriously sold him to Brighton in March.

Biley’s heart never left Fratton Park, though, and in 2015 he told Neil Allen, the author of a book Played Up Pompey: “Pompey was – and still is – my club.

“Pompey was a three-year box in time and if I could possibly open that box again and recover moments, a day even, then I would die happy. I fell in love with the club and it has never gone away.”

Biley has revelled in many opportunities to reminisce about his playing days, attending numerous reunions and enjoying all the memories.

In June 2017, he got together with other former players to talk about his goalscoring days at Cambridge and in October 2017, broadcaster and Albion fan Peter Brackley helped a number of former Pompey players, including Biley, recall a famous occasion when a fan ran on the pitch dressed as Santa Claus and, after the disruption, Biley scored two late goals to win a dramatic cup tie against Oxford.

But in all my research for this piece, I could find no loving references to his time with the Albion, although five years ago the excellent thegoldstonewrap.com brought together some footage of some of his best moments.

After his playing days were over, he moved back to his Bedfordshire roots and got involved in non-league football with various sides in and around the Home Counties, alongside running his own gym in Biggleswade.

Pictures from the Albion programme / Evening Argus and various online sources.

Terry Connor had an eye for goal for Leeds and Brighton

Connor action 1 TERRY CONNOR is a familiar face to today’s football fans as a loyal assistant manager to Mick McCarthy.

But Leeds United and Brighton fans of a certain vintage remember him as a pacy striker with an eye for goal.

His time with the Albion saw him at his most prolific with a record of almost a goal every three games (51 in 156 appearances) – form which earned him a solitary England under 21 cap as an over-age player.

Relegation-bound Brighton took the Leeds-born forward south in exchange for Andy Ritchie shortly after they had made it through to the semi-final of the 1983 FA Cup, but the new signing could take no part because he’d already played in the competition for Leeds.

If Brian Clough had allowed Peter Ward to have remained on loan to the Seagulls that spring, who knows whether Connor would have joined, but, when the former golden boy sought an extension of his loan from Nottingham Forest, which would have enabled him to continue to be part of the progress to Wembley, according to Ward in He Shot, He Scored, the eccentric Forest boss told him: ‘Son, I’ve never been to a Cup Final and neither will you’.

So the Connor-Ritchie swap went ahead and, with the rest of the team’s focus on the glory of the cup, the new arrival scored just the once in five appearances, plus two as sub, as the Seagulls forfeited the elite status they’d held for four seasons.

lpool goal Connor would have his moment of cup glory (celebration above) in the following season, though, as the TV watching nation saw him and Gerry Ryan score in a 2-0 win over Liverpool at the Goldstone; the second successive season Albion had dumped the mighty Reds out of the FA Cup.

*Connor was best man when teammate Hans Kraay got married. Frank Worthington (right) was there too.*

Born in Leeds on 9 November 1962, Connor went to Foxwood School on the Seacroft estate in Leeds. He burst onto the football scene at just 17, scoring the only goal of the game after going on as a sub for Paul Madeley to make his hometown club debut in November 1979 against West Brom.

“I got such an early break at Leeds because the club were rebuilding their side after those days when they were riding high,” Connor told Shoot! magazine. “Eddie Gray was still in the team when I came in. He was the model professional. It was terrific to have someone with his experience alongside you.”

Connor went on to make a total of 108 appearances for Leeds over four seasons, scoring 22 goals, before the by-then manager Gray did the swap deal with Ritchie.

In February 2016, voice-online.co.uk carried an interview in which Connor recalled racial abuse he received as a player.

“It was difficult for black players to thrive. I can remember going to many away games and there were bananas thrown on the pitch and `monkey’ chants from the stands,” he said.

“I remember receiving mail from Leeds fans telling me not to wear the white shirt, even though I was born and bred in Leeds. I had bullets sent to me and the police were called on a couple of occasions.”

Even so, the move to Brighton still came as a bit of a shock to him.

“‘I’d never imagined myself playing for anyone else but Leeds,” he told Shoot! at the time. “I was born and bred in the city. My parents and friends live there, and really Elland Road was a second home to me.”

Unfortunately for Connor, manager Jimmy Melia gave him the impression he was going to be forming a double spearhead with Michael Robinson. But after relegation, Robinson and several others from the halcyon days were sold, in Robinson’s case to Liverpool.

TC phoenix The man who bought him didn’t last long either; Melia making way for Chris Cattlin in the autumn of 1983. It didn’t stop Connor making his mark in the second tier and despite having several different striking partners of varying quality, his goalscoring record was good at a time when the side itself was struggling to return to the top with the Cup Final squad being dismantled and under investment in replacements.

In his first full season, he missed only two first team games all season and was top scorer with 17 goals as Albion finished ninth in the league. His main strike partner Alan Young scored 12.

Connor got only one fewer in the 1984-85 season when the side finished sixth; the veteran Frank Worthington chipping in with eight goals in his only season with the Seagulls.

In 1985-86 Connor had two different strike partners in Justin Fashanu and the misfiring Mick Ferguson but still managed another 16 goals, including four braces.

The disastrous relegation season of 1986-87 contained a personal high for Connor when, in November 1986, he was selected as an over-age player (at 24) for England under 21s and scored in a 1-1 draw with Yugoslavia.

He had formed a useful partnership with Dean Saunders but, as money issues loomed, Saunders was sold to Oxford and soon, after being voted player of the season, Connor also left as the Albion were relegated; Barry Lloyd being unable to halt the slide back to the third tier.

Reflecting on his time at Brighton in a matchday programme interview, Connor said: “I really enjoyed my football, playing on the south coast. We also loved the lifestyle and my eldest daughter was born there, I loved playing in the atmosphere created at the Goldstone. There was a bond with the players and their partners, with Jimmy Melia and Mike Bamber, and it was like one big happy family.”

As Lloyd was forced to sell players, Connor returned to the top flight via a £200,000 move along the coast to newly-promoted Portsmouth. A terrible run of injuries plagued his Pompey career meaning he only managed 58 appearances and scored 14 goals over the course of three seasons.

A £150,000 transfer fee saw him join then Third Division Swansea City for the 1990-91 season and although he managed 39 appearances, he scored only six times.

Next stop was Bristol City in September 1991 for £190,000 but he scored only once in 16 games for the Robins. By the summer of 1993 he dropped out of the league to play for Conference side Yeovil Town and when he retired from playing he became a coach at Swindon Town.

John Ward took Connor as a coach to three clubs he managed, Bristol Rovers and City and then Wolverhampton Wanderers, where, across the reigns of several managers, he remained for the next 13 years. He worked at youth, reserve and first team level before becoming McCarthy’s assistant in 2008. He briefly took the reigns himself after McCarthy was sacked in early 2012 but, unable to halt the team’s relegation from the Premiership, reverted to assistant under the newly-appointed Ståle Solbakken for just four games of the new season before leaving Molineux.

Within three months, he resumed his role as McCarthy’s assistant when the pair were appointed at Portman Road. When McCarthy took over as the Republic of Ireland boss in November 2018, Connor once again was his assistant and in 2020 the pair found themselves at the top Cypriot side APOEL. In early 2021, McCarthy and Connor were back in tandem at Championship side Cardiff City.

*In the 2018-19 season, Connor had the chance to work with the England under 21s when the FA decided to provide placements for BAME coaches*

When Chris Cattlin rocked up to play for and manage Brighton

1-cat-in-goal IT MUST BE difficult for today’s reader to imagine a player with the opportunity to sign for either Coventry City or Chelsea choosing the Sky Blues over the London giants.

But in 1968, when the choice faced Huddersfield Town’s Cattlin, he moved to Highfield Road because the following day they were playing a star-studded Manchester United side and, as the full-back who’d be marking the legendary George Best, he couldn’t resist pitting his ability against the Irish wizard.

It was one of several career insights Cattlin revealed in an excellent interview by Doug Thomson in the Huddersfield Examiner in June 2013.

Huddersfield were happy to collect a £70,000 transfer fee when Coventry bid for Cattlin, but he told the Examiner: “Chelsea also came in for me and I was due to speak to them in the afternoon after talking to Coventry in the morning.

“City were playing Manchester United the next day and the manager, Noel Cantwell, told me I would definitely be in the team.

“I knew that if I could say I’d played against George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, I could die a happy man, so I never got as far as Stamford Bridge!

“I signed for £65 a week when the man in the street was probably getting £20, so to be paid like that for playing football made me more than happy!”

As it turned out, Cattlin marked Best out of the game and his new team won 2-0 with goals from Ernie Machin (who later left the Albion at the same time Cattlin arrived at the Goldstone) and Maurice Setters, against his old team.

Cattlin went on to play more than 250 league and cup games for Coventry, (then in the equivalent of today’s Premier League), before moving to Brighton in 1976, where his playing career finished, but he returned as manager between 1983 and 1986.

Going back to the beginning, though, Cattlin was born in Milnrow, Lancashire, on 25 June 1946, the son of a rugby league player, Bob, and his early school days were spent at Milnrow Parish School. He moved on to Ashton-under-Lyne Technical College (Geoff Hurst was three years his senior there) and then took a job in textile engineering.

In the meantime, he trained and played for Burnley’s youth team but he struggled with the 40-mile round trip travelling from his home. A Huddersfield Town scout, Harry Hooper, had spotted his potential and he was offered a professional contract with the Terriers in the summer of 1964 which allowed him to carry on working two days a week at the textiles factory.

“I went across to Leeds Road, and just fell in love with the place. It was far from luxurious, but there was just a feel about the ground and the people there,” he recalled.

Maybe it was also a feeling that Huddersfield knew a thing or two about decent left backs. Cattlin took over from Bob McNab, who later made a name for himself at Arsenal, and played four games for England, and McNab had replaced England World Cup winner Ray Wilson, who Town transferred to Everton.

Cattlin was signed by Eddie Boot only for the manager to resign the day after, following a 2-1 home defeat by Plymouth. Boot’s successor was Tom Johnston and he insisted on Cattlin becoming a full-time pro, which caused a degree of angst with Cattlin’s concerned parents, but he went for it and didn’t look back.

It was emerging coach Ian Greaves, a former Manchester United player (who later took Town to the top flight as manager), who was to have a lasting effect on Cattlin. “Ian lived in Shaw, the next village to Milnrow, and he’d give me a lift to Leeds Road each day, in the days before the M62, on that winding old road over the moors,” he explained.

“He was a great coach and later manager, and a superb motivator, just a football man through and through.”

Cattlin made his debut in a 3-1 home win over Derby on the final day of the 1964-65 Division 2 (now Championship) campaign but didn’t fully establish himself in the side until the 1966-67 campaign.

In total, he played 70 times for Huddersfield and, for a while, he was playing for the town’s football team while dad Bob was playing for its rugby league side. “My dad played for Huddersfield at rugby league, I played for Huddersfield Town at football. I think we’re the only father and son to have done that,” he said.

After that 1968 transfer to Coventry, Cattlin became a firm favourite at Highfield Road and although he didn’t quite emulate Wilson and McNab, he did play twice for England Under 23s. He made his debut on 2 October 1968 in a 3-1 win over Wales at Wrexham in a side that also included Peter Shilton in goal, West Ham’s Billy Bonds and John Sissons and Everton’s Howard Kendall and John Hurst.

Six weeks later he won his other cap in a 2-2 draw with the Netherlands at Birmingham’s St Andrews ground, when Arsenal’s John Radford and Hurst were the scorers. Cattlin also represented the Football League v the Scottish Football League.

Cattlin was part of the only Coventry side ever to qualify for Europe (in 1970-71) and remembered relative success, only eventually getting knocked out by a Bayern Munich side that included the likes of Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller.

On another occasion, in a tour match, he played in a 2-2 daw against Santos of Brazil, with Pele in their team, in front of an 80,000 crowd. “Pitting your wits against those kinds of players was a fantastic education,” he said.

When manager Gordon Milne decided to give Cattlin a free transfer after nine years and 239 matches for Coventry, fans organised a petition to keep him at Highfield Road.

But there was no turning back and Peter Taylor signed him for Brighton – along with another experienced defender, Graham Cross (from Leicester City) – a short time before quitting the club to rejoin Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest.

It was Alan Mullery’s good fortune to inherit a squad that would take Division 3 by storm to earn promotion and Cattlin was able to contribute in both full back positions although mainly at left back, having the edge on Harry Wilson.

With the arrival of Gary Williams from Preston, Cattlin switched to the right and vied with Ken Tiler for the shirt, regaining the upper hand for the final two thirds of the season which ended with promotion from the old Division 2 in 1978.

“That Brighton promotion team – what a fantastic set of lads, with no little ability,” he said. “They could all play and were great characters. I was a very lucky lad to come along at the end of my career and join a dressing room like that.”

Although he made just one appearance (in the disastrous 4-0 League Cup defeat at Arsenal) during the 1979-80 season, he notched up a total of 114 games for Brighton.

And he obviously liked the place so much that once his playing days were over he opened a rock shop on Brighton seafront, as well as investing in property. However, three years after quitting as a player, he returned to the Goldstone as a coach, appointed in the summer of 1983 by chairman Mike Bamber to assist manager Jimmy Melia – without Melia’s knowledge!

It all got rather messy with Melia and Cattlin clearly not getting on and talk of a takeover rumbling on in the background.

By the middle of October, Melia quit and Cattlin took over as manager, with another well known former left back, Sammy Nelson, elevated from reserve team manager to assistant manager.

Cattlin then began to shape his own squad and among notable signings who served Albion well were Steve Penney, Danny Wilson and Dean Saunders while there were some memorable cup games, including beating Liverpool in what I believe was the first FA Cup tie – other than finals – to be shown live on TV.

One of TV’s pundits of today, Martin Keown, was another Cattlin signing, joining on loan from Arsenal and beginning with Brighton what was a memorable career with the Gunners, Aston Villa, Everton and England.

Cattlin admitted in 2010: “I had to sell a lot of the popular, best players for financial reasons and bring other ones in to keep the show on the road and make it interesting for the crowd. That was my job.” The likes of Steve Foster (to Aston Villa), Jimmy Case (to Southampton), Tony Grealish (to West Brom) and Gordon Smith (to Manchester City) were all sold by Cattlin.

In 1984, Cattlin certainly found an entertainer when he brought to the Albion a former teammate from his days at Leeds Road, the mercurial Frank Worthington, who moved along the south coast from Southampton.

By that time, Worthington wasn’t too mobile but he’d lost none of his skill and flamboyance and Cattlin told his 2013 interviewer: “He did a good job for me.

“Frank wasn’t only a great player, but a great bloke as well, a dedicated trainer and a great bloke to have around a club.”

Catt dog — *Barking up the wrong tree? Cattlin couldn’t quite restore Albion to the elite when he returned as manager*

Cattlin stayed in the manager’s chair until April 1986, overseeing finishes of ninth, sixth and 11th in the second tier, although he clearly felt the writing was on the wall as far as his job was concerned when the Albion board wouldn’t give him £6,500 to sign the experienced defender Jeff Clarke from Newcastle, as Cattlin explained at the Albion Roar live show in December 2018 (skip to 28 minutes in).

Distractions and changes in the boardroom were an uncomfortable backdrop to much of his time in charge and it was evident that the fans didn’t perceive Cattlin to be to blame for the failure to finish higher.

When he was sacked, there were protests from supporters, a 2,000-signature petition calling for his reinstatement and Cattlin himself addressed a 200-strong rally in Hove.

But it was all to no avail. His former boss, Mullery, returned and Cattlin went back to his non-football business interests.

In a 2010 interview in the matchday programme, Cattlin said: “I think I deserved another season at least to get them back into what is now the Premiership.

“If it had gone wonky then they wouldn’t have had to fire me – I’d have gone myself. Nevertheless, to play, coach and manage Brighton and Hove Albion made me a very proud man. But I wish I could have put them back where I felt they belonged.”

Pictures show (top) Chris Cattlin pictured in Goal magazine in Coventry’s sky blue; in an Evening Argus shot alongside new manager Alan Mullery and fellow close season signing Graham Cross; how the Albion programme headed his managerial notes.