A GOALSCORING scourge of Newcastle United once pulled on the famous black and white stripes – and was booked in three of the five games he played for them!
Baird, who notoriously got himself sent off in the crucial last ever game Brighton played at the Goldstone Ground, led the line in an infamously fiery New Year’s Day derby between Newcastle and Sunderland when the Toon won 3-1 courtesy of a hat-trick by Peter Beardsley.
Jeff Clarke, who’d previously spent seven years at Sunderland and had five games on loan at Brighton at the start of that season, was at the back for Newcastle and future Albion veteran Clive Walker was in attack for the visitors.
A crowd of 36,529 watched the First Division fixture on 1 January 1985 when Sunderland were reduced to nine men through the sendings off of Howard Gayle and Gary Bennett. Baird was one of five bookings made by ref David Scott.
It was Baird’s fourth match for Newcastle after England World Cup winner Jack Charlton signed him on loan from Southampton. He made his debut three days before Christmas 1984 in a 4-0 defeat away to Aston Villa when his former England Schoolboys strike partner Paul Rideout scored a hat-trick. Baird’s only goal for United came in a Boxing Day 2-1 defeat at West Brom.
Three days later, as United lost 3-1 at home to Arsenal, Baird’s involvement was from the bench as a sub for David McCreery. His last game, on 12 January, was another tonking, 4-0 away to champions-in-waiting Everton.
Five years after his Toon cameo, Baird twice stymied Newcastle’s hopes of promotion from the second tier, scoring against them for Leeds in a 1-0 win in December 1989 (it turned out to be his last goal for them) and, after he’d fallen out with manager Howard Wilkinson and been transferred to Middlesbrough in January 1990, netted twice for Boro as they beat Newcastle 4-1 in the last game of the season.
Baird nets for Boro against the Toon
Leeds finished that campaign as second tier champions (Newcastle, who by then had Mark McGhee up front, were five points behind in third place) and Baird’s goals in Boro’s win put paid to the Magpies’ hopes of automatic promotion. To add salt to the wound, Newcastle lost to Sunderland in the semi-final of the play-offs.
Six years later Baird was Brighton’s captain in the penultimate must-win game of the season, when Doncaster Rovers were the visitors.
Albion needed all three points to give themselves a chance of avoiding relegation out of the league when they travelled to Hereford the following week for the final fixture of that tumultuous season.
What they really didn’t need was for the captain to get himself sent off after just 18 minutes of the match!
Talking to The Athletic about it in a 2022 interview, Baird recalled: “I was fired up for it. Darren (Moore) had come right through me, literally in the first minute. The referee didn’t give anything.
“Then he came through me again, and the referee gave a foul. The third time, I lost it. I just turned around and tried to wallop him. There was a big melee. Everyone knew what was at stake.”
Both players were dismissed (it was one of 11 sendings off in Baird’s career) and thankfully Stuart Storer’s memorably-scrambled goal in the 67th minute settled the game in Albion’s favour, although Baird admitted: “It was nerve-racking. I felt guilty that I’d let my team-mates down, let everybody down by getting sent off. It was a massive relief when we won.”
Thankfully, disciplinary rules were different back then (bans were only applied 14 days after the offence) and Baird was able to play his part in the match at Hereford when a 1-1 draw ensured Albion stayed up and The Bulls went down.
Baird’s exploits for the Albion highlighted in the matchday programme
Brighton were the tenth and last league club Baird had played for and he had only ended up with the Seagulls because of a pre-season falling out with Plymouth Argyle manager Neil Warnock.
Living near Southampton, only a 15-minute drive from Brighton manager Jimmy Case, a move east along the coast made good geographical sense, and a £35,000 fee took him to the Goldstone at the start of the 1996-97 season.
“Whenever I’d played against Brighton, I seemed to score,” Baird told The Athletic. “I loved the Goldstone Ground and there was the lure of playing for Jimmy.”
Although born in Rotherham on 1 April 1964, Baird had moved to Southampton with his family, via Glasgow, when he was a young lad, his father having sailed from the port when he worked on the Queen Mary.
After surviving meningitis as a six-year-old, Baird’s footballing ability saw him turn out for Bitterne Saints, St. Mary’s College, Southampton, Southampton and Hampshire Schools. He joined Southampton on schoolboy terms after he’d been spotted in the same boys’ team, Sarisbury Sparks, as Lawrie McMenemy’s son, Sean.
Baird won two England schoolboy caps: he was in England’s Victory Shield team that beat Wales 2-1 at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground on 27 April 1979, playing alongside Rideout and winger Mark Walters, who went on to star for Aston Villa, Rangers and Liverpool.
In the same competition, he also played at St James’ Park – two days after Brighton had won 3-1 on the same pitch to win promotion to the top division for the first time in the club’s history.
On 7 May 1979, young England drew 1-1 with Scotland and 14-year-old Rideout’s goal was enough to enable England to retain the Victory Shield. The following month, Baird was an unused sub when England drew 2-2 with West Germany at Wembley.
A Saint with hair!
Baird was offered pro terms by Swindon, but he chose instead to sign for his adopted home town club. However, with McMenemy preferring the more experienced Frank Worthington and Joe Jordan, Baird was restricted to 21 starts and three sub appearances for Saints, and, after that loan spell at Newcastle, he moved to Leeds.
His two spells at Leeds (sandwiched either side of an unhappy time at Portsmouth) produced 50 goals in more than 160 appearances and he was in the Leeds side alongside Mervyn Day and Micky Adams that lost the 1986-87 Division Two play-off final to a Charlton Athletic team that included his future Brighton boss Steve Gritt and teammate John Humphrey.
Baird scored 19 goals that season for Billy Bremner’s side, four of them in the FA Cup as United reached the semi-final where they were beaten 3-2 by eventual cup winners Coventry City.
He had taken Saints’ teammate Jordan’s advice to move to Leeds and his next move was to Scotland where Jordan was in charge of Hearts. He later played under the Scottish international striker at Bristol City too.
The Pilgrim who fell out with Neil Warnock
Baird scored six in 29 appearances for Plymouth before that move to Brighton. Discipline might have been a problem but Baird scored eight goals in 10 games from January 1997 as nine wins and a draw at the Goldstone went a huge way to enabling Albion to escape the drop.
As Albion began the 1997-98 season in exile at Gillingham, Baird began the campaign with a three-match ban for that red card against Doncaster — and it wasn’t long before he was seeing red again!
It came in the 13th game of the season and it was certainly unlucky for Baird, well, unlucky in that a linesman spotted his off-the-ball headbutt on a Chester defender. Gritt publicly condemned Baird’s “out of order” behaviour and stripped him of the captaincy.
The following month, with another knee operation required, a surgeon advised him to pack in the game and he left Brighton in December that year having scored 14 goals in 41 appearances in 16 months.
“At least we kept Brighton up,” he told The Athletic. “There were a multitude of problems, it was a weird period, but it was a big thing.”
Post-Brighton, Baird ended up coaching in Hong Kong and was put in charge of the national side for three Asian Cup qualifiers, playing in Jakarta in front of 75,000 people, and then in Cambodia in front of 1,200 people. “It was certainly an experience, that is for sure,” he said.
Baird eventually returned to Hampshire, developed business interests in the vehicle sales and leasing and sports gear industries, while keeping his football links going in non-league circles: at Eastleigh, Sutton United and Havant & Waterlooville.
ROCK-solid centre-half Andy Crosby won a Division 3 Championship medal with the Albion in 2001 before experiencing two frustrating near-miss seasons as captain of Oxford United.
Brighton’s achievement provided him with his first-ever promotion, but it didn’t turn out to be his last: he climbed out of the same division with Scunthorpe United and then, against all the odds, reached the Championship with the Iron – twice.
Micky Adams, who was a player at Leeds when Crosby was in their youth ranks, had been unsuccessful in trying to sign the defender when he was in charge of Brentford.
But as Adams set about building his first squad at the Albion, he managed to secure Crosby’s services for a £10,000 fee in the summer of 1999.
“I didn’t need any convincing at all to sign,” said Crosby. “It was good timing for me and it worked out fantastically well,” he told Richard Walker. “Sometimes it’s hard to see where you’re going when you’re just keeping your head down and working hard at a struggling club so the Albion did wonders for my career.”
In a matchday programme interview with Spencer Vignes, he added: “I couldn’t wait to sign. Even at that level, I still thought of them as a big club.
“My only reservations were that I’d never lived down south and that we’d just bought a house. We also had a one-year-old daughter. But in the end the pros outweighed the cons.”
The family moved into a house at Stone Cross, near Eastbourne, and Crosby made his debut (albeit with a broken toe!) in the 6-0 Withdean win over Mansfield (as featured in my recent blog post about Darren Freeman).
He developed an effective central defensive partnership with Danny Cullip, and he said: “Although we were very different characters away from the 90 minutes, something really clicked between us and everyone knows how vital it is to have a good centre-half pairing, just as much as a good front two working for each other.
“Our paths have crossed since, and the talk’s always of great memories from Brighton days.”
Hired as a stopper rather than a scorer, Crosby helpfully weighed in with five goals as Albion found their feet back in Sussex.
Then in the following season, Crosby was at the heart of the defence when Albion won the league. “That win down at Plymouth and the home game against Chesterfield where we sealed the Championship will stay with me forever,” he said. “It was just an amazing ride.”
Crosby continued: “We had this great spirit, a team desperate to do really well.
Pouncing to score and celebrate against future employer Hull City
“I’ve got nothing but good memories of the place. It was the first time I’d ever been involved in a promotion campaign as a player. For the first time in my life, I was seeing on a day-to-day basis what it takes to be successful.
“We played some great football and the fans were fantastic. I’ve said it before but if you can’t play for them you can’t play for anyone.”
He added: “Withdean was a funny place but somehow we were able to use it to our advantage. Other clubs didn’t like playing there.”
Getting to grips with Paul Watson
Once elevated to the higher level, Crosby lost his starting place to Simon Morgan and Adams’ successor Peter Taylor continued with Cullip and Morgan as his preferred centre-back pairing.
By then 28, Crosby didn’t fancy a watching brief and in December 2001 he moved on a free transfer to Oxford, the first United signing made by Ian Atkins. He said: “I didn’t want to go, and Peter said he wanted me to stay, but I wanted to play. Going to Oxford meant first team football.”
Although Crosby’s first half season with Oxford saw them struggle near the foot of the division, the 2002-03 campaign ended with them only a point off the play-off places and the central defender scored winning goals in four of the 53 matches he played.
It got better for him on a personal level the next season when his fellow pros named him in the 2003-04 PFA team of the year, but United missed out on the play-offs by three points.
Another string to Crosby’s bow at Oxford was being an accomplished penalty taker. He never missed a spot kick in normal play and, in 2003-04, one of the five he buried was at Scunthorpe’s Glanford Park.
In the summer of 2004, he declined a new contract believed to have been on worse terms than the previous one and chose to move back to the north to join Scunny.
Nonetheless, the Oxford Mail said of him: “The 31-year-old centre back has been a model of consistency in his time at the Kassam Stadium.
“Ideally suited to the Third Division with his uncompromising, no-nonsense style, the hard-tackling defender, who is also good in the air, was also greatly respected by his teammates for his cool professionalism.”
He may have started out in the basement division with Scunthorpe, but what followed was the stuff of dreams. Crosby himself later admitted: “When I joined, if someone had told me I’d be playing for Scunthorpe in the Championship, I would have called them a doctor.
“But it reaffirms your belief in football a little bit, especially when you’re involved first-hand, to see a club of Scunthorpe’s size still being able to pull off what was nothing short of a minor miracle.”
In an interview with the Scunny website, Crosby pointed out: “I was 31 when I arrived at Scunthorpe and I had to use my knowledge and experience in whatever capacity I could, and set standards on and off the pitch. It was something I enjoyed doing and I think it’s something that’s either in you or it’s not.
“My whole time at Scunthorpe was great and I never thought when I signed that we’d get to the Championship twice. It was fantastic and the highlight of my career without a shadow of a doubt.
“I was captain of a promotion-winning team from League One to the Championship, playing at some massive stadiums.”
Although knee injury issues limited him to nine appearances in the 2008-09 season, he was restored to the side for the play-offs and led Scunny to a 3-2 League One play-off final win over Millwall at Wembley in May 2009 (Matt Sparrow scored twice for Scunny).
“It was a great way to end playing,” he admitted. “I have some fantastic memories and look back at my time at the club with nothing but fondness.”
By then he had already been working as assistant manager to Nigel Adkins, the former Iron physio and after playing a total of 715 games for six league clubs he was also Adkins’ assistant manager at Southampton, Reading, Sheffield United, Hull City and Tranmere Rovers.
Crosby, who took over from Adkins as manager of League Two Tranmere in February 2025, said “I’ve got a fantastic relationship with Nigel. He’s been fantastic for me, changed me as a person and polished off a few of the rough edges. I’ve got nothing but great words to say about him.”
Into the manager’s chair
In an interview with tribalfootball.com, he said: “My coaching journey has been full of learning experiences, and I’m a much better coach now than when I started. I was fortunate to work with some fantastic players.
“My best experience was at Southampton, where we achieved back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League, working with incredible players like Lallana, Lambert, and Schneiderlin. Even the difficult moments teach you a lot, though. Results didn’t always go our way, but even then, those experiences helped me grow as a coach.”
Crosby also saw the development of the likes of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, James Ward-Prowse and Luke Shaw during nearly two and a half years at Southampton. While at Bramall Lane, he also worked with future England internationals Aaron Ramsdale and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Even at Hull, he had the fortune to work with Fikayo Tomori, on loan from Chelsea, and Jarrod Bowen.
Born in Rotherham on 3 March 1973, miner’s son Crosby was raised in the village of Maltby. He supported the Millers as a youngster but was rejected by them as a player when he was 11. At 14, though, he was taken on at Leeds.
When he didn’t progress beyond the youth team at Elland Road, former Leeds captain and manager Billy Bremner took him on at Doncaster Rovers and gave him his league debut aged 18.
He played 60 times for Donny over a couple of seasons (and spent a month on loan at Conference side Halifax) before moving to the north east and spending five years at Darlington, notching up a total of 211 appearances.
He was captain of the losing side in the 1996 Third Division play-off final at Wembley when Jim Platt’s Darlo lost by a single goal to Neil Warnock’s Plymouth Argyle.
Off-field financial issues marred his time at Chester City in the 1998-99 season, so his move to Brighton was a welcome change.
Reflecting on that time with the Seagulls, he said: “In any walk of life, if you get a really good group together, recruit well and get good characters in who complement each other well, then you should succeed. A lot of that was down to Micky.
“It was the fittest I’ve ever been – that was down to him – but that work and organisation brought its reward which is something I’ve taken with me into my own coaching career.”
Before his current (August 2025) position at Prenton Park, he also coached the Northern Ireland under 21 international side and spent three years coaching and managing at Port Vale.
BOURNEMOUTH-BORN Steve Gritt is synonymous with Brighton & Hove Albion’s darkest hour because he was in the almost scalding managerial hotseat at the time the club nearly went out of the league.
The mastermind behind Albion’s ‘Great Escape’ in 1997 grew up in the Dorset coastal resort and began his footballing career with his local club in the 1970s. He later worked as the Cherries chief scout, although, apart from etching his part in Brighton’s footballing folklore, most of his more memorable days in the game came at Charlton Athletic.
Somehow, against all the odds, he managed to keep the Seagulls up when most doomsters could only see the club losing its status – and possibly going out of business as a result.
Gritt, who had been out of work for 18 months having been cast adrift by a new chairman at Charlton, took over from the beleaguered Jimmy Case in December 1996 with Albion 12 points adrift at the bottom of the fourth tier.
“I was delighted when Brighton offered me the chance to return,” he wrote in his matchday programme notes. “I know a lot of people were calling it the ‘worst job in football’ but when you love football as I do then you don’t always see things that way.”
Gritt was certainly an old hand when it came to football’s vicissitudes: rejected by AFC Bournemouth as a teenager, he went on to enjoy the elation of promotion as well as enduring the despair of relegation during his time with the Addicks.
Quite what would have become of Albion if they’d lost their place in the league is now only speculation – thankfully it wasn’t a bridge Gritt had to cross.
“I’d spent 18 years at Charlton as player and joint-manager, with just six months away from it, at Walsall. Then a new chairman, Richard Murray, came in and he didn’t like the joint-manager situation, so he put Alan Curbishley in sole charge, and I left,” Gritt explained.
Without a full-time job in the game, he stayed in touch by doing some scouting work for Tony Pulis at Gillingham, Brian Flynn at Wrexham and a couple of stints for West Brom. He even pulled his boots back on to play for Welling and Tooting & Mitcham.
Eager not to continue to have to queue at the benefit office for dole money, he applied for the vacant Albion manager’s job and got it after an interview in Crewe with the despised chairman Bill Archer and his ‘henchman’ chief executive David Bellotti.
“I knew very little about what was going on at the club,” Gritt told Roy Chuter in a retrospective programme piece. “I’d read bits in the papers, but my only interest was in the football. I wasn’t going to get involved.
“The place was very low. Some of the senior players filled me in on what was happening. In my first few days, there was graffiti on the walls saying I was a stooge, a whistle protest, a fan chained himself to the goal at half-time at my first match – that bothered me as we were winning at the time and went on to beat Hull 3-0.
“Then the next week I had to go onto the pitch with a megaphone at Leyton Orient to get the supporters to leave after the match – and they already hated me! I thought ‘What is going on?’ but my job was to get some sunshine back into the fans’ Saturday afternoons.”
After familiarising himself with the issues at a fans’ forum – “It helped me understand that the fans had to do what they had to do” – he devoted himself to improving the football and although the budget was tight, brought in the experienced defender John Humphrey and Robbie Reinelt, who would go on to score one of the most crucial goals in Albion’s history.
Puzzled by the plight of a side that contained good players in the likes of Craig Maskell, Ian Baird and Paul McDonald, Gritt maintained: “I never thought we’d go down.”
He recalled: “There was such a lot of experience. If I could organise them, we’d have a chance.”
Looking back years later
Ultimately, the club’s fate was decided in the final two games of the season – at home to Doncaster Rovers and away to Hereford United.
“We knew we could beat Doncaster,” he said. “There was a big crowd and a tremendous atmosphere – very tense. Maybe that got to the players – we didn’t play as well as we had done, but once we were 1-0 up, we weren’t going to get beat. We had a great defence.”
Gritt recalled: “I was beginning to think that there wasn’t going to be any goals in the game as there hadn’t been too many chances during the game that I can remember.
“Suddenly we had a corner from which Mark Morris eventually hit the bar, confirming my thoughts. But suddenly the ball fell to Stuart (Storer) who struck it into the net to spark off unbelievable celebrations on the pitch, off the pitch and in the dugout.
“Could we now keep our composure and see the game out to a memorable 1 nil win? We did! What a day and what a memory.”
And so to Hereford, who needed to win to avoid dropping out of the league. Albion only needed a draw to stay up. Everyone knows the story. A goal down at half-time when Kerry Mayo put through his own net, Gritt reminded the players at half-time that their jobs were on the line.
Relief at Hereford
He sent on Reinelt as a sub and in the 62nd minute he slotted a second half equaliser to send the Albion faithful into ecstasy and condemn the Bulls to their fate.
“I think if it had been Brighton, we could have faded into obscurity,” he said. “Most of the players would have left, and I don’t think we could have coped.”
As things subsequently transpired, it was Gritt who would soon be on his way.
It’s perhaps a bit of a cliché to say there is no sentiment in football but when Gritt’s side had managed only four league wins up to February in the 1997-98 season, and were second bottom of the table, chairman Dick Knight wielded the axe.
“No one who cares about the Albion will forget Steve’s tremendous contribution to our survival last season,” said Knight. “This season, given our difficult circumstances, feasibly we were only seeking to preserve our league status by a safe margin, but to date that comfort zone has eluded us.”
Thankfully you can’t keep a good man down for long, though, and within two weeks of getting the Brighton bullet, Gritt was back in the saddle as assistant manager to Billy Bonds at Millwall.
Although Bonds was sacked by the Lions only six weeks after Gritt’s arrival, successors Keith Stevens and Alan McLeary kept him on, working with the reserve team. Then Mark McGhee took charge and got Gritt back involved with the first team to take on organisational work such as set plays.
After McGhee took charge at Brighton, Gritt switched across south London back to Charlton, where he ran their academy for the next six years.
He returned to his hometown club in 2011 to become chief scout, initially under Lee Bradbury and then his successor, Paul Groves.
But he was disappointed to be let go in September 2012, telling theEcho: “They have changed the way they are doing their recruitment so there wasn’t really any need for me to be there.”
Bournemouth chairman Eddie Mitchell explained: “We have got analysts on board now and all games are available on DVD. We are trying to build a database from these clips.
“We felt it was impractical to send somebody all over the country to watch games every day when we can get DVDs of games and players.
“It was a role which diminished for us. Whether it is the right way to go remains to be seen but we have got to look at effectiveness and costs.”
Gritt said: “It was a big thing last year for me to come back to the club where I grew up. I am disappointed it has come to an end like this, but life goes on.
“I have lost jobs in the past and, hopefully, I will bounce back. I am looking forward to the next chapter in my career and will just have to wait and see what comes up.”
Born in Bournemouth on 31 October 1957, Gritt’s early footballing ability was first seen in the Kings Park First School football team of 1969, as the Echo discovered when readers were asked to send in their old sports photos.
A rare sight: young Gritt with hair!
Gritt, a forward, was taken on as an apprentice by the Cherries and played a handful of games for the first team under John Benson before being released at the age of 18.
Colin Masters remembered on the Where Are They Now? website (in an October 2020 post) how Gritt linked up with non-league Dorchester who paired him up front with Ron Davies, the former Welsh international centre-forward who’d played for Southampton, Man Utd and Portsmouth.
“They were an exciting pair to watch at that level,” said Masters. “After three matches I was so impressed with Steve that I went and found the Dorchester club secretary and asked if he had signed Steve Gritt on a contract.
“The reply was ‘No’. Within two weeks, Charlton Athletic came in and took him (presumably for nothing) and he went on to have a very successful career for many years. Dorchester’s loss was Charlton’s gain!”
Between 1977 and 1993, Gritt played a total of 435 matches for the Addicks, including a relegation to the old Third Division in 1980 and two promotions – to the Second Division in 1981 under Mike Bailey and the First Division under Lennie Lawrence in 1986. He had a six-month spell with Walsall in 1989 before returning and experiencing another relegation in 1990.
Gritt became joint player-manager with Curbishley in 1991 and, under their stewardship for the next four years, the likes of Lee Bowyer, John Robinson, Richard Rufus and Shaun Newton established themselves as mainstays of the side.
When Charlton decided in 2021 to re-name their East Stand in Curbishley’s honour, a generous Gritt told londonnewsonline.co.uk it was a fitting tribute to his former colleague.
“We had our trials and tribulations but I’ve always judged that we did what was required to keep the club going. We had to steady the ship.
Joint Charlton manager with Alan Curbishley
“We would have loved to have kept Rob Lee, for example, but we had to do things for the well-being of the club so we could keep it going and give the fans something to shout about.
“It was a great time when we got back to The Valley (they’d spent several years sharing Selhurst Park with Crystal Palace).
“Then the club made a decision which I was never going to agree with. But when I look back to see what Alan did – he went on to do a significant job – I cannot complain. Ultimately what he achieved he thoroughly deserved.”
Gritt said: “When I was there we had to make sure we weren’t seen to be having disagreements although I cannot recall us having too many anyway.
“When we were on the training ground, we each knew what the other one would be doing during the sessions. We both had jobs to do on the day.
“I was more of a player than he was at that time – so the management side was more in his hands. It was fairly straightforward, until the club decided that they wanted one man in charge. That was obviously disappointing for me at the time but I have thoroughly enjoyed my career.
“Alan gave the club a massive block to build on – but no one could have envisaged how the club went after he left. It was a massive disappointment.”
After he left Bournemouth in 2012, Gritt dropped out of league football and spent five years as assistant manager at Ebbsfleet United, working with his former Charlton teammate (and ex-Albion youth team manager) Steve Brown and then Daryl McMahon, who he subsequently followed to League Two Macclesfield Town, Conference side Dagenham & Redbridge and Isthmian League Hornchurch.
DIMINUTIVE midfielder Jamie Smith spent 11 years at Crystal Palace, going through the youth ranks before signing as a pro, but didn’t play league football until he joined Brighton.
Russell Slade took on the 19-year-old during his brief reign in charge of the Seagulls (and signed the player again when he was in charge at Orient).
Albion picked up the discarded 5’6” Smith in the summer of 2009 and he did enough as a triallist in pre-season friendlies to be awarded a contract by the Seagulls.
Slade said: “Jamie has done exceptionally well throughout pre-season. He’s worked hard to convince us he is worth a contract and he has the potential to be a very good player.”
His first league start was memorable for all the wrong reasons. In only the third league game of the season, he was selected in midfield away to Huddersfield Town.
But when regular no.1 ‘keeper Michel Kuipers was sent off six minutes before half time, the young midfielder was sacrificed to allow substitute goalkeeper Graeme Smith to take over between the sticks. Depleted Albion then went on to succumb to a 7-1 battering.
“I had mixed feelings really,” he told the matchday programme. “It was great to make my debut and I thought we started the game well, but the sending off changed everything and it was all downhill from then on.”
It was Smith’s only start of the whole season. He was on the subs bench on half a dozen occasions but only went on in one of them, away to Wycombe Wanderers at the end of the year.
Gus Poyet had succeeded Slade by then and with Albion coasting at 5-2 – Glenn Murray having scored four of them – Smith replaced Dean Cox in stoppage time.
During the close season, Andrew Crofts was sold to Norwich City and Cox left for Orient, but new arrivals Radostin Kishishev and Matt Sparrow provided new competition for midfield places.
But Poyet reckoned there was something about Smith and enthused about an “outstanding” performance he’d delivered in a pre-season friendly at Burgess Hill. He told the Argus: “We really like him. He could be an interesting player for the future, I’m telling you. He has got some qualities we need to use a bit better.”
After also impressing in a pre-season game against Aberdeen, Smith was in the starting line-up for the opening game of the 2010-11 season, when Albion won 2-1 at Swindon (Sparrow scored twice on his debut).
He played the following two league matches too: a 2-2 draw home to Rochdale (although Smith was sacrificed on 54 minutes after Gordon Greer was sent off for punching Anthony Elding and Adam El-Abd was sent on to play in the centre of defence).
I was sat in the Leppings Lane end at Hillsborough seven days later when Smith retained his place in midfield against Sheffield Wednesday (above left).
The youngster even came closest to netting an equaliser for the Seagulls; his shot from Ashley Barnes’ cutback clipped the bar.
However, Albion then re-signed Kazenga LuaLua and Poyet reckoned Smith didn’t do enough to show he wanted it more than the explosive winger. “Because he is young, maybe he took it too nicely,” Poyet told the Argus. “I need people to react, to show me I have made a mistake or even to put me under pressure. He was just normal, not at his best to give me a headache to have to play him.”
Smith himself admitted: “When LuaLua)was playing I seemed to take it that he would be playing instead of me.
“Sometimes, when we were both on the bench, I used to think he would go on, not me, whereas I should have been doing everything I could to make sure I was involved. If I had the time again, I would have done things differently.
“I wouldn’t be one to go in and moan and stuff because there are always ups and downs in football but you can always go out every day and do your best and work hard.
“The season started really well for me, a lot better than I expected. I didn’t expect to be playing as much as I was but when that happens you just want more and I just want to be playing every week.
“Maybe when the team was doing really well, on a long unbeaten run, I was slacking off in training and things like that.”
The door opened ajar again after LuaLua suffered a broken leg and Smith impressed after going on as a 53rd-minute sub away to Southampton (below, left).
Smith told Andy Naylor: “LuaLua was class. He changed games when he came on and when he started he was really good. Hopefully I can do as well, if not better, than he was doing if I get the chance.
“We are really different players. He is really explosive with pace and loads of ability. I like trying to play clever little passes and making space for myself and my team-mates.”
One such cute pass at St Mary’s let in Glenn Murray to earn the Seagulls a penalty and the longstanding Albion reporter said: “The door is ajar for Smith again after that Southampton cameo and now he has to walk through it. His Albion future depends on it.”
Smith told the matchday programme: “I feel I’ve done well in most of the games I’ve played in and want to use the Southampton game as a platform for the rest of the season.
“The manager told me after that game that he wants me to give him performances like that all the time.”
Enjoying time in the limelight, the player explained: “I love to get the ball, drive forward and create chances.
“I am slight in size and most managers from the Championship downwards want strong, athletic midfielders but our manager wants footballers, players who get the ball down and play.
“As long as I’m on the ball and doing a job for the team, then the manager will be happy.”
Smith added: “I knew that if I didn’t progress this season there’s every chance I would be let go in the summer so I’ve been using that as an incentive.
“With the way the club has been progressing on the pitch and off it, there’s no way I want to leave. I want to stay here for years to come because I’m happy at the club.”
Unfortunately, the new year wasn’t even three weeks old when an accidental collision in training saw Smith sidelined for two months.
He sustained a fractured metatarsal after colliding with teammate Jake Forster-Caskey and, with his contract due to expire at the end of the season, the outlook was bleak.
But Poyet said: “I have already had a good chat with him. I told him not to worry and that we will look after him.
“He will be out until March but it is important he doesn’t feel under pressure to rush back because of his contract situation.
“I want him to make sure his foot is properly healed first, and then I expect we will see him back to fitness before the end of the season.”
Come the end of the season, Poyet was as good as his word and gave Smith a six-month contract to prove his worth.
But he wasn’t able to capitalise on the opportunity, Poyet saying: “Jamie was a revelation at the beginning of last season before we got Kazenga (LuaLua) back.
“Then he was injured for months and we were established at the top of the table, so he didn’t get the chance to play.
“I thought I would give him the chance to prove himself but it hasn’t really happened for him.”
Albion supporter ‘The Phantom’ on an Argus report of Smith’s imminent departure from the club wrote: “Shame it hasn’t worked out for Jamie Smith as showed at times that he had what it takes to be an influential attacking midfielder.
“Way too much competition in the squad now so best that he moves on. Surprised he has not been able to pick up a club so far.”
Eventually, former boss Slade offered him a chance at Orient, but he made just the one substitute appearance for the Os before dropping out of league football with Dover Athletic.
Born in Leytonstone, East London, on 16 September 1989, Smith was on Palace’s books from the age of eight to 19 and although he progressed through the ranks he didn’t get to make a competitive first team appearance.
Nevertheless, Palace under 18 coach Gary Issott said: “Jamie Smith is a diminutive attacking central midfielder in the mould of Eyal Berkovic.
“He is very clever and improved after a frustrating first year. He started this season well and, up until Christmas, his form was electric.”
He was involved in pre-season friendlies ahead of the 2008-09 season and scored the winner from the penalty spot after going on as a substitute in a 4-3 win over Aldershot. (Calvin Andrew, later an Albion loanee, made his debut for Palace in the same match).
But while Smith saw several of his contemporaries make it through to competitive first team action, such an elevation remained elusive for him.
“That was disappointing but we had the likes of Nick Carle and Neil Danns in my position and it was hard to break through,” he said.
A year below him, the likes of Victor Moses and Nathaniel Clyne did progress. Smith said: “I spoke to Neil Warnock but he said there were experienced players ahead of me and couldn’t see me breaking into the team. We agreed it would be best for me to move on.”
Smith had a spell at Doncaster Rovers but returned to Palace to keep his fitness up before joining Brighton for pre-season training, and then being taken on after a successful trial of three or four weeks.
MUCH-MALIGNED Mark McCammon was not afraid to stand his ground, answer his critics directly and to challenge injustice when he felt aggrieved.
Fans of Brentford, Brighton and Millwall voiced some strident – nay, downright offensive – opinions of his ability as a footballer.
Remarkably, the Barnet-born striker played in a FA Cup final and Europe for the Lions before Mark McGhee signed him a second time – for Brighton – having previously taken him to Millwall from the Bees on transfer deadline day in 2003.
McCammon and Neil Harris at the 2004 FA Cup Final in Cardiff
When his suitability to contribute to the Seagulls’ flagging cause in the Championship was called into question in a post-match radio phone-in, McCammon took umbrage and called the show himself to argue the toss with presenter Ian Hart.
Also, in what was something of a landmark case, McCammon took a subsequent employer, Gillingham FC, to courtand won a claim that he had been racially victimised.
It certainly wasn’t uncommon for McCammon to be at odds with the people running whichever club he was playing for.
He first joined the Seagulls on loan when he was out of favour and on the transfer list at Millwall.
He made his debut in a 1-0 home defeat to Stoke City in December 2004 and said: “I just want to get back playing and enjoying my football again.
“I have been in and out at Millwall and my fitness has dipped a little bit because I haven’t played. I’m happy to be playing under Mark again and I want to show what I can do.”
Although he didn’t get on the scoresheet in five matches, when McGhee made it a permanent move in February 2005 he told BBC Southern Counties Radio: “Not everyone understands the contribution Mark makes. We have become a much more effective team with him in the squad.”
McGhee was a great believer in the ‘one big one, one little one’ striking line-up, and was sure McCammon’s presence would help pint-sized Leon Knight to score goals.
Because of what followed, it is easy to forget McCammon scored three goals in his first two home games after signing on a permanent basis.
He scored a brace and won the man of the match award in a 3-2 defeat to Derby County and he got 10-man Albion’s second in a surprise 2-1 win over promotion-chasing Sunderland (Richard Carpenter scored the other, and Rami Shabaan made his debut in goal).
The Argus enjoyed building up the visit of McCammon’s old side Millwall to the Withdean, interviewing the player and the manager, who we learned called his new signing ‘The Fridge’.
McGhee urged McCammon to stay cool if he managed to score against his old club, but it was fellow striker Gary Hart who got the only goal of the game, in the 89th minute.
Ahead of the game, McCammon told the newspaper: “It would mean a lot to me to score the winning goal against them. I wasn’t given a chance there, but I’ve got a fresh start here. I’ve got a lot to prove.”
In the following game, he was subbed off at half-time in a 2-0 defeat at Stoke when he gave away a penalty. He underwent blood tests and McGhee said: “Mark is seeing a specialist to find out why he was feeling lethargic. It wasn’t the back injury he suffered against Millwall, he was just feeling ill and weak.”
That game was the first of a run of six defeats and Albion only won once in 11 matches – form which saw them avoid relegation by a single point.
One of several infamous McCammon incidents occurred following the Seagulls’ 1-1 draw at Turf Moor on 16 April.
After a lucklustre first half display when Albion went in 1-0 down, McGhee ripped into the team at half-time and McCammon and fellow striker Chris McPhee were told they weren’t holding the ball up well enough.
According to an account in the Daily Telegraph, McCammon argued back in a fiery exchange with the boss, claiming a lack of service from midfield was the issue. He didn’t reappear for the second half, being replaced by fired-up teenager Jake Robinson and Albion managed to salvage a point courtesy of an equaliser from Dean Hammond.
A delighted McGhee said of Robinson: “We say when people get their chance they have to take it and I thought he took it absolutely brilliantly. He was different class.”
But McGhee’s ire with McCammon hadn’t cooled at the final whistle – he ordered him off the team bus and told him to return south in the kit-carrying vehicle instead.
Not fancying a tight squeeze alongside sweaty shirts, shorts and socks, McCammon chose to return by train.
“After the match I told him I didn’t want him travelling back on the team bus with the rest of us and that he was to return home with two other members of staff in another club vehicle,” McGhee told Sky Sports News.
McCammon apologised to McGhee afterwards but any subsequent first team opportunities were few and far between after that.
At the start of the 2005-06 season, he managed a recall for a Carling Cup match away to Shrewsbury Town and pleased his manager by scoring a goal and laying one on for Robinson, even though the Albion went down 3-2.
“I thought Mark was much better. That type of performance is what we expect of him and it’s what he can do,” said McGhee. “Now he’s got to reproduce that in the Championship.
“He set his standard tonight in terms of his effort and the simple way he played the game. He didn’t complicate things; he laid it off, held it up, laid it off, then got in the box; he won a lot of headers; took a lot of stick and kept going. He got a goal, made a goal and I thought he was terrific.”
But McGhee, with other forward options in the shape of Colin Kazim-Richards, Robinson, Knight and Gary Hart only called on McCammon for three starts and five sub appearances.
“He (McGhee) asked me to go out on loan to a lower league team and I think I’m better than that,” said McCammon when, incensed by criticism of him on the BBC Southern Counties Radio post-match phone-in after a game in February, called in and took issue with show host Hart.
“I went on trial at Watford and I got called back to train for no apparent reason. I think I was hard done by there, a bit unlucky. I’m back but I’m not in the squad but I don’t think I’ve been given a long enough chance.”
Once again suggesting the team’s issue was service through to the front players, he responded to Hart’s personal criticism of him saying: “When you kick a ball in professional football you can tell me whether I’m good enough for this standard.
“You don’t know anything about me. What you said is very disrespectful.
“I’ve been out since the beginning of the season with ankle and knee injuries. I had surgery on both. I came back and made three first-team starts but it takes about seven or eight games to get your rhythm back. I think it’s a bad comment you have made.”
The striker also took aim at the Withdean faithful, claiming: “All we hear is supporters whingeing.
“If they get behind the team it will give the players an extra boost. All the first team players at Brighton listen to the radio and they hear the supporters being 100 per cent negative.
“It’s a team game, it’s not about individuals. The supporters need to get behind the team a bit more.”
If the player didn’t think much of the fans, it would be an understatement to say they were none too impressed by the player.
Amongst a veritable litany of abuse from Albion supporters, this from ‘The Full Harris’ on North Stand Chat encapsulated the opinions of many.
“Mark McCammon is the worst player to have played for us in this division … he just simply doesn’t have a clue. He is unfit, he doesn’t know where he is meant to be running, he can’t shoot. For a man of his size, he is pathetic in the air.
“He is clumsy, he has the touch and control of a Sunday league centre half, he is about as prolific as an impotent monk, he is an embarrassment, he is a disgrace, he is lazy and, personally, I object in the extreme to my paying his wages when I believe many of the crowd around me could do a better job and they would do it for free.”
Long before Dominic Cummings referred to his erstwhile boss, Boris Johnson as “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”, supporters voiced something similar of McCammon. The song went like this:
Super, super Mark Super, super Mark Super, super Mark Supermarket Trolley.
Perhaps it was no surprise that McCammon was allowed to leave Albion on loan, linking up with League One Bristol City, where he scored four goals in 11 appearances.
He didn’t play another game for the Albion and, in the summer of 2006, joined Doncaster Rovers after impressing boss Dave Penney on trial.
Although born in Barnet on 7 August 1978, McCammon qualified to play for Barbados through his mother and he won five caps for the Caribbean country. He scored on his debut against Antigua and Barbuda in a 3-1 win in September 2006 and two days later hit a hat-trick when Barbados beat Anguilla 7-1.
Two years later he returned to international action for two World Cup qualifiers against the United States. Barbados lost 8-0 in California and 1-0 in Bridgetown.
McCammon was with QPR as a teenager but it was Cambridge United who took him on as a YTS and he joined Cambridge City on loan at 19 to gain experience.
He played just six games for United between 1997 and March 1999 but was signed by Premier League Charlton, managed by Alan Curbishley.
After relegation to the old First Division, McCammon played five times for the Addicks as they won the title with a squad that included John Robinson, Steve Brown and Paul Kitson on loan from West Ham. McCammon also spent time on loan at Swindon Town in January 2000.
That summer, McCammon left The Valley to sign for Second Division Brentford for a fee said to be £100,000. He scored six times in 33 appearances in his first season at Griffin Park. He scored 10 in a total of 75 appearances for the Bees but it seems their supporters were also unconvinced about his merits.
Stan Webb, on the excellent BFCTalk website, said: “Mark McCammon was yet another misfit who cost a significant fee. Despite looking every inch a footballer, he signally failed to deliver.
“He is best remembered for his cataclysmic miss from a free header at Loftus Road which might have changed our recent history had he scored, as he surely should have done.
“And yet for all the criticism he faced, he eventually became a sort of anti-hero as fans recognised that he was always giving everything he had and appreciated his efforts even though he was just not up to scratch.”
By contrast, McCammon’s time in south Yorkshire was relatively successful, although if he felt he was dogged by bad luck, in November 2006 he had a headed goal away to Brentford chalked off after the ref didn’t notice the ball went through a hole in the back of the net. Thankfully Donny still won 1‑0.
Across two seasons, he scored 13 goals in 70 matches for the south Yorkshire side and went on as a 71st minute sub for Richie Wellens in the 2008 League One play-off final at Wembley when Donny beat Leeds United 1-0. Leeds had Casper Ankergren in goal and Bradley Johnson in their line-up.
However, McCammon chose to head south that summer and signed a three-year contract with recently relegated League Two Gillingham.
He scored five goals in 35 matches in his first season at Priestfield but 2009-10, when the Gills were back in League One, was a different story.
By February 2010, a lack of starts saw him seek a loan to get some match fitness. Gills boss Mark Stimson told BBC Radio Kent: “Going out on loan will be good for him and the club. He needs games and if he comes back fit in four weeks that would be great.”
He added: “We want him sharp and scoring goals then he could come back because we might need someone like him. Last season he stepped in and put in a good shift.
“At the moment he’s frustrated, like all the other boys who are not playing. He didn’t want to drop down to League Two. Now he’s seriously thinking about it because it might get his career back on track.”
McCammon joined Bradford City for a month, playing four games, before returning to the Gills. But the following season, when Andy Hessenthaler had returned as manager, saw the final dismantling of McCammon’s league playing career.
The club dismissed him in 2011 for alleged misconduct but he didn’t go quietly and took them to an employment tribunal claiming he had been unfairly sacked and ‘racially victimised’. He won £68,000 in compensation and Gillingham and chairman Paul Scally were subsequently each fined £75,000 by the FA “for failing to act in the best interests of the game and bringing the game into disrepute”.
Furious Scally appealed the fines, which were set by an independent regulatory commission, saying they were “manifestly excessive, totally disproportionate and completely unjust” and, although the board reduced the club’s fine to £50,000, the sanction against Scally was upheld.
McCammon told the original hearing in Ashford, Kent, that he and other black players at the club were treated differently from white players. For example, he said, he was ordered to attend the ground amid ‘treacherous’ snowy driving conditions or be fined, while some white players were told they were not required.
The club tried to “frustrate him out” by refusing to pay private medical bills for injury treatment, while a white teammate had been flown to Dubai for treatment at the club’s expense, he claimed.
McCammon, who, on £2,500 a week, was the club’s highest-paid player, was also told not to blog while others were permitted to, he said. During an injury spell, he had to stay behind at the club for four hours longer than other injured and non-injured players, he claimed.
The tribunal heard he was dismissed after a disciplinary hearing following a confrontation in which he accused club officials of being “racially intolerant” regarding the decision to order him in during the heavy snow.
The tribunal found in McCammon’s favour and his solicitor, Sim Owalabi, said it was believed to be the first time a footballer had successfully brought before an employment tribunal a case of race victimisation against a professional football club.
After all the legal to-ing and fro-ing, the player himself, by then aged 35, said: “It was traumatising and it sort of sabotaged my career in the football world, my progress.
“I had football clubs after me and that just deteriorated. It’s very, very unfortunate.”
He dropped down to Conference level with Braintree Town in October 2011 and later played for Lincoln City, on loan and then on a permanent basis, when they were in the same division.
EXPECTATIONS of a bright future in Albion’s colours fizzled out for Taylor Richards after the most audacious of starts.
Richards cheekily scored with a Panenka chipped penalty in a pre-season friendly against Crawley Town which instantly made the watching supporters take notice of the new signing from Manchester City.
It was reported Albion paid £2.5 million for the 18-year-old when he decided to move on after four years moving through the youth ranks at City.
“I did not have to leave because I still had years on my contract,” he told the Argus. “I just felt that I needed a new challenge.
“When I found out that Brighton were interested in me I was also made aware that I had a chance of breaking into the first-team further down the line.
“That is all I wanted to hear, that if you do well and train well, you’ll be given opportunities.
“But I would not change my time at City for anything. The only thing I would change is probably not taking my opportunity as well as I should have done.
“When you’re in that comfortable environment, you do not always realise what you have and maybe take your foot off the gas a little, but it’s all a learning experience and one I really enjoyed.”
Richards did get his wish of making it through to Albion’s first team, but his involvement was very sporadic and after a season on loan at Championship side Queens Park Rangers, he eventually moved there permanently in the summer of 2023.
For Richards, it was a case of moving home. Having been born in Hammersmith on 4 December 2000, he grew up in Shepherd’s Bush – although his football journey began in the academy at Fulham.
City took him north at the age of just 14 and he earned a scholarship aged 16. Eventually, he became a regular for City’s under-18s.
In February 2017, he played for England under-17s in a tournament on the Algarve, starting in a 1-0 defeat to Portugal and going on for City teammate Phil Foden in a 3-2 win away to Germany. Two days later, he started in England’s 1-0 win over the Netherlands. That side featured Jadon Sancho, who went through the age groups at City at the same time as Richards.
“I hung around with Sancho quite a lot because we went into the academy at the same time and we had a good connection,” he said. “What’s happened with his career proves you never know what might happen. It’s all about working hard and taking your opportunity when it comes.”
Taylor made seven appearances for City’s under 23s – three in 2017-18 and four in 2018-19 – although he didn’t feature in the first team. He was on the scoresheet in a Checkatrade Trophy quarter final match in January 2019 when City fought back from 2-0 down to beat Rochdale 4-2 (former Albion player Jim McNulty was on the scoresheet for Rochdale).
“Once you’re in that environment, winning is the only thing on the table and losing is no option,” he said. “Everyone’s at it and it’s a good place to be for a young player to get you ready for the men’s game. Every age group tried to do what the first team did. It was the same philosophy that went right through the academy, so when you stepped up to the next level, it made it easier.”
Richards made an instant name for himself shortly after signing for the Albion with that penalty against Crawley. He told the matchday programme: “I knew I was going to chip it, but I took a long run-up to make the goalkeeper think I was going to smash it.
“I’ve never had the fans sing my name before, so it’s a great moment for me and one I’ll cherish for life. Hopefully that left a nice impression, but it was only my first game.”
Head coach Graham Potter told the club website: “He showed his confidence with the penalty. He’s not been here long but is ambitious and wants a taste of first-team football. That’s always the challenge for young players, to get the right next step from youth football.
“He has quality and ability, so we’ll make an assessment of him and the right pathway for him to gain that first-team experience.”
The 2019-20 season was only two months old when Richards made his Albion competitive first team debut. A team comprising several youngsters lost 3-1 to an experienced Aston Villa side in the Carabao Cup at the Amex. “I remember chasing Douglas Luiz around the whole evening,” he said. “It was a long night, but a good night, apart from the result. It helped me a lot in understanding the level and what I needed to do to play against that level of opposition.”
With further first team chances unlikely because of the competition for places, Richards was sent on a year’s loan to Doncaster Rovers in 2020-21.
The attacking midfielder scored 11 goals in 48 appearances and learned a lot from the experience. “The manager, Darren Moore, wanted us to play football, which was a similar style to Brighton, but sometimes the other teams didn’t want to play,” he recalled. “They were a bit more long-ball, more physical, and I definitely came back a better player for it.”
He signed a new three-year contract at Brighton and was a non-playing substitute in the opening Premier League matchday squad, with head coach Potter saying: “Taylor has impressed during pre-season, and he was deservedly part of the first-team squad at Burnley last weekend.
“He had a very productive loan spell at Doncaster last season, and this new contract is a reward for his hard work and progress he’s made since he arrived.”
Richards made starts in two Carabao Cup matches (against Cardiff and Swansea) and went on as a sub in two league matches, replacing Jakub Moder in a 2-0 home defeat to Everton and taking over from Enock Mwepu in a 1-0 home defeat to Wolves.
Having made his league debut against Everton, with mum Shani watching on, he said: “I thought I did well. I was nervous, like most people would be, but I tried to keep the ball as much as I could, tried to give more going forward but this is my first game and I will learn from these moments and go again.
“Despite the result, because that comes first, I am happy I got on the pitch. My mum has been with me through this whole journey and she got to see me make my Premier League debut so it is a proud moment for me.”
But, in the second half of the season, he once again went out on loan, this time to Championship side Birmingham City, Albion boss Potter explaining: “Taylor has been with the first-team squad for the first part of the season, he has benefited from that time and he has made great progress during that time.
“He has played in the Carabao Cup ties and also made his Premier League debut. But we feel it is now important for him to play regular football during the second half of the season and he will get that opportunity with Birmingham, a club I know well.”
In a bizarre turn of events, it was two months before he was fit to start for the Blues because he injured an ankle doing the medical associated with the move.
Bemused Brum boss Lee Bowyer said: “I’ve never heard anything like this. It’s crazy. I have never heard of a player getting injured in the medical.”
After he had finally made his debut, Birmingham Mail reporter Brian Dick had a favourable impression. “He looked very, very neat on the ball, not afraid to take possession and retain it in tight spots and also good at finding little angles around and in the box.
“He is a languid mover with good pace and plays with his head up, looking to bring others into the game,” the reporter observed. “Of all the January recruits there was more buzz at the club about Taylor than anyone else – and the very early signs are promising.”
Bowyer pointed out: “He can score, he can assist, he can make that pass.”
However, he only made two starts for Blues, plus three from the bench, and in the summer the player switched to QPR on a season-long loan with the plan to make the move permanent.
“I haven’t got the words, it feels great to be at QPR,” said Richards, who had been taken to Loftus Road by his mum as a seven-year-old to watch his first ever game.
“I am from Shepherd’s Bush and all my family and friends support QPR,” he said. “Everyone is excited and I just can’t wait to get on the pitch, that’s where it matters.”
Mick Beale, the manager who signed him, declared: “Taylor is a very, very talented boy who I have watched extensively in the past.
“Given his age and the fact that he’s a Hammersmith boy, I think he’s perfect for us in terms of the identity we have as a team and as a club.
“He can travel with the ball and is powerful in his play, so we’re delighted to have him.”
Excited by the player’s versatility, Beale added: “He can play as a number 10, wide left, wide right – but predominately he is an attacking midfielder, a number eight. He gives more competition and our midfield is looking stronger for it.
“He is a midfielder who can dribble at speed, from one line to another – he can score and he can play.”
But Richards made only one start throughout the whole season, joining the action from the bench on 15 occasions. Nevertheless, when Gareth Ainsworth took over from Neil Critchley in February 2023 he was quick to acknowledge the player’s attributes.
“I like Taylor. I think he is a fantastically talented boy, I really do,” said Ainsworth. “He is very similar to some of the players I have come across in my management career before.
“But I think with young players today there is so much more to them than what you see on a Saturday, and it is our job as managers to work with them day in day out and work with them and give them clarity.
“Taylor is a fantastic player. I don’t want to put too much pressure on the boy, but he has been at some top places and is highly thought of and highly thought of by this manager as well.”
Richards joined the Rs on a three-year deal ahead of the 2023-24 season.
A non-playing sub for their opening day 4-0 defeat to Watford, Richards was in the starting line-up for a first round Carabao Cup match at home to Norwich City, facing former Albion players Shane Duffy and (sub) Ashley Barnes, and the visitors edged it 1-0.
Having played only four league matches for QPR in 2023-24, in July 2024 Richards switched to League One Cambridge United on a season-long loan.
United manager Garry Monk said, “Taylor is an exciting talent who has huge potential to be an outstanding player in this league. He will bring another dimension to our team and we are very excited to work with him this season.”
Richards told the club website “It’s a big opportunity for me to come here and play some football – I just want to get out there and show what I can do.
“I want to get back to enjoying my football and if I am enjoying it, then everything else will come along with that.”
CHELSEA loanee Zeke Rowe scored three goals in nine matches for doomed Brighton and ended his spell with the ignominy of being sent off.
Rowe, a 22-year-old striker who had scored plenty at youth level for Chelsea, was one of five new faces to join Jimmy Case’s relegation-bound Seagulls in the spring of 1996.
Winger Paul McDonald and striker Craig Maskell joined permanently from Case’s old club, Southampton, together with Saints defender Derek Allan, on loan initially and then permanently. Future captain Gary Hobson signed from Hull City.
All found themselves plunged into what turned out to be a fruitless battle to avoid relegation against a toxic backdrop created by the people running the club at that time – the hated Archer / Stanley / Bellotti regime – who tried to sell the club’s home without having a new ground to move to.
In the same matchday programme that announced the arrival of the five new players, the publication also detailed the impending departures of the likes of former first team regulars Steve Foster, Ian Chapman, Dean Wilkins, John Byrne, Stuart Myall and Stuart Munday; not to mention directors Bernard Clarke, Peter Kent, Dudley Sizen and Denis Sullivan. To misquote Shakespeare: Something was definitely rotten in the state of Hove!
Rowe made his debut in a 1-1 draw at home to Rotherham United, on 30 March, and then got off the mark with a goal away to Swindon Town four days later, although the Albion went down 3-2 (Jeff Minton scored the other).
Rowe’s picture adorned the front cover of the matchday programme for the 9 April home match v Burnley when his goal earned the Seagulls a win.
And his solitary goal also proved to be the decider in another 1-0 home win, over fellow strugglers Carlisle United, managed at the time by Mervyn Day.
Rowe’s dismissal for fighting with York City’s John Sharples came in a Thursday morning game, played five days after the official end of the season, in front of a post-War record low gate of 2,106 fans at the Goldstone.
The fixture had been rearranged because the original game 12 days previously had been abandoned after disgruntled Albion supporters had stormed the pitch in protest at the proposed sale of the ground and broken both crossbars.
It drew hysterical reaction in some quarters (probably because it was only a few weeks before England played host to Euro 96) but had the desired effect of bringing the rogue direction of the club to the attention of the football authorities who somewhat late in the day intervened to stop the Albion going out of business.
The original York game had looked like being the last ever at the Goldstone but a stay of execution saw the club stay for one more season before the site was redeveloped and the Seagulls were forced to groundshare at Gillingham.
The only happy supporters at the Goldstone on 9 May 1996 were around 400 followers of the Minstermen because their side overcame going a goal down to a Maskell opener to win 3-1, a result which prevented them joining Albion in the drop. Gary Bull, who had enjoyed a successful time on loan with Brighton at the start of that season, had equalised for York.
One City fan, Simon Worden, wrote an amusing blog about the whole occasion, and explained: “Whilst I should have been in a lecture at university at Preston, as I was only 19 at the time, I decided that the match was too important to miss and travelled down the day before to watch the match and stayed in a very cheap B&B.”
After witnessing the win, he said: “All the York fans were jumping around on a Thursday morning singing ‘We are staying up’ and enjoying the sunshine.
“One of the best days even and, whilst I was very tired, it was an enjoyable (but expensive) trip back to Preston where I had to catch up with my studies!”
Also watching on was Michael Knighton, chairman of Carlisle United, who, as a consequence of the result, were relegated with the Albion. Greg Wood, covering the game for The Independent, spiced up his report with a couple of choice quotes from him.
“Once York had gone 2-1 ahead, Brighton just weren’t interested,” said Knighton. “We’ve been relegated and we’ll never know if we should have been. This competition should be based on fairness, and towards us it hasn’t been.”
Wood also observed: “After York’s third goal, a member of their board turned to Knighton and made some distinctly unsporting gestures. Ordinary supporters have probably been expelled for less.”
Born in Hackney on 30 October 1973, Rowe was a frequent goalscorer in Chelsea junior teams playing alongside the likes of Neil Shipperley, Muzzy Izzet, Michael Duberry and Craig Burley.
But a first team breakthrough eluded him and before his time at Brighton he had scored twice in 10 games on loan at Barnet and had a trial with Swindon Town that didn’t work out.
When Chelsea let him go in the summer of 1996, he moved to Second Division Peterborough United under Barry Fry and was quickly off the mark netting the Posh opener in a 3-3 home draw with Millwall on 10 September 1996.
He was on target again, four days later, ironically against York City, in a 2-2 draw. But the season didn’t end well for Posh, because they were relegated. Rowe only scored once more in his 15 starts and 14 appearances off the bench that season.
Over the next two seasons, he only made four more starts for United and 13 appearances as a sub, while also going out on loan to Kettering Town and Doncaster Rovers.
Rowe later moved to Welling United where, according to the fanzine Winning Isn’t Everything, he was a disappointment after a bright start. It said: “Ezekiel Bartholomew Rowe, to give him his full name. Another in the long line of loanees from Uncle Barry Fry, he was brought in late in the 1998-99 season as the club attempted another Houdini act. Joined permanently in the summer, was on fire pre-season and then… he was shit. Had an impressive tattoo, erm, apparently.”
At King’s Lynn, Rowe played under his former Peterborough teammate Tony Spearing, who won the FA Youth Cup with Norwich City. (That 1983 success saw the Canaries draw 5-5 with Everton over two legs – Mark Farrington scoring four of Everton’s goals – before edging a replay 1-0).
Rowe ended his playing days with Conference North side Hinckley United where he was a teammate of Stuart Storer, who famously scored the last ever goal at the Goldstone – against Doncaster Rovers – a year after Rowe’s dismissal at that much-loved old stadium.
FIERY Ian Baird was no stranger to yellow and red cards – in five games for Newcastle United he was booked three times!
And in Brighton’s last ever game at the Goldstone Ground, against Doncaster Rovers, Baird was sent off long before the game had even reached half time.
Something of a disciple of Joe Jordan, the tenacious centre forward who starred for Leeds United and Manchester United, Baird was his teammate at Southampton and played under the Scot at Hearts in Scotland and at Bristol City.
Baird didn’t fear incurring the wrath of supporters, happily playing for arch-rival clubs in his pursuit of goals. Indeed, on Teesside he earned a place in fans’ folklore by scoring two goals in an end-of-season clash that not only kept Middlesbrough up but prevented their noisy north-east neighbours Newcastle from getting automatic promotion to the elite (to make matters worse, they then lost a play-off semi-final to Sunderland).
Baird scored twice in that 4-1 win over United on the final day of the 1989-90 season at Ayresome Park, and earlier the same season he’d scored a winner for Leeds United against Newcastle at Elland Road.
Baird played on the south coast for both Southampton and Portsmouth before making the Albion his 10th and last English league club. He joined for £35,000 from Plymouth Argyle when the club was in turmoil off the field and floundering at the bottom of the basement division. But he went on to net 14 goals in 41 games.
“To be honest, as a player, all you are bothered about is making sure you get your wage, and you’re not really taking any notice of what he is saying.
“I played at Brighton on many occasions, I have been there with Leeds and Middlesbrough, and it was always a favourite place of mine to go – and as soon as I got there as a player, I knew the importance of survival.”
Baird continued: “Brighton are a big club, and I could not believe what was happening. It took a strain on Jimmy, that’s for sure, and he was not the man he was normally with all the pressure.
“Then he was sacked and we were 12 points adrift at Christmas – they brought in Steve Gritt, and he brought a different kind of management.
“It got to February and March time, then all of a sudden Doncaster Rovers and Hereford were sucked into it – we had to beat Doncaster in the final (home) game.”
Sent off 11 times in his career, it was his dismissal just 18 minutes into that game in 1997 that threatened the very existence of the club – and he was captain that day!
Baird later told portsmouth.co.uk: “It was just a natural thing really. Sometimes my enthusiasm got the better of me. There were plenty of times I chinned someone or got into trouble.
“The most stupid one was when me and Darren Moore had a fight. He was playing for Doncaster and I was playing for Brighton in the last game at their old Goldstone Ground.
“He came through the back of me, there was a bit of afters and I ended up trying to give him a right hook, and there was a bit of a ruck.
“We had a bit of rough and tumble and I was just lucky he didn’t chase me up the tunnel because he’s huge!”
Thankfully, Albion famously still won that match courtesy of Stuart Storer’s memorable winner. Because red card bans were delayed for 14 days back then, Baird was able to play in what has since been recognised as the most important game in the club’s history: away to Hereford United.
As the history books record, it was Robbie Reinelt, on as a sub, who stepped into the breach to rescue a point for the Albion, enough to preserve their league status and to send the Bulls down.
In November of the following season, Baird still had six months left on his Brighton contract, but a surgeon told him he should not play pro football any more because of a troublesome knee, so he decided to retire.
But, when he had turned 35, he said: “I had a phone call from Mick Leonard (former Notts County and Chesterfield player) who played in Hong Kong, and he said they were desperate for a striker.
“I went for a month’s trial and ended up signing an 18-month deal. My knee flared up again and they offered me a coaching role, and it ended up with me managing the side.”
He added: “Then I was put in charge of the national side for the Asian Cup qualifiers and we played in Jakarta in front of 75,000 people, and then in Cambodia in front of 1,200 people – it was certainly an experience that is for sure.”
Over the 17 years of his league career, Baird commanded a total of £1.7m in transfer fees; £500,000 Boro paid Leeds being the highest.
Although born in Rotherham on 1 April 1964, the family moved first to Glasgow and then Southampton when Baird was small, his father having sailed from the south coast port when working on the Queen Mary.
The always comprehensive saintsplayers.co.uknotes the young Baird survived meningitis as a six-year-old and later came to the attention of Southampton when appearing in the same boys team, Sarisbury Sparks, as their manager Lawrie McMenemy’s son, Sean.
The excellent ozwhitelufc.net.au details how Baird’s footballing ability saw him play for Bitterne Saints, St. Mary’s College, Southampton, Southampton and Hampshire Schools, before earning England Schoolboy caps in 1978-79 alongside the likes of Trevor Steven and Mark Walters.
He was offered terms by Swindon Town but he chose to stay closer to home and Southampton took him on as an apprentice in July 1980. He turned professional in April 1982 but McMenemy’s preference for old stagers Frank Worthington and the aforementioned Jordan limited his opportunities and he made just 21 appearances for Saints, plus three as a sub, scoring five times.
He was sent out on loan a couple of times: to Cardiff City in November 1983, where he scored six goals in twelve League games, and that spell at Jack Charlton’s Newcastle in December 1984 where aside from a booking in each of his four starts and one appearance from the bench, he scored once – in a 2-1 defeat at West Brom on Boxing Day.
Taking the advice of former teammate Jordan, Baird signed for Eddie Gray at Second Division Leeds in March 1985 and undoubtedly his most successful playing years were there, in two separate spells.
He played more than 160 matches and scored 50 goals. In the 1986-87 season, Gray’s successor, Billy Bremner, made him captain. The Yorkshire Evening Post spoke of “the powerhouse striker’s fearless commitment, no-holds-barred approach and goalscoring ability”.
In the blurb introducing his autobiography Bairdy’s Gonna Get Ya! (written by Leeds fan Marc Bracha) it says “he’s best remembered for his spells at Leeds, where goals, endless running, will to win and fearless approach ensured he was adored by the fans”.
In the 1987-88 season, though, he was wooed by the prospect of playing at the higher level he had just missed out on with Leeds (they’d lost in end-of-season play-offs) and signed for Alan Ball at Portsmouth for £250,000; he later described it as “the worse move I ever made”.
The season was disrupted by injury and disciplinary problems, and he returned to Leeds the following season, being named their Player of the Year in 1989.
But when ex-Albion winger Howard Wilkinson, then manager of Leeds, signed Lee Chapman, Baird sought the move to Boro. He told Stuart Whittingham in 2013 for borobrickroad.co.uk:
“I felt a little aggrieved and basically I spat the dummy out and asked for a move.
“He (Wilkinson) said that he didn’t want me to go but I insisted and within 24 hours I was speaking to Bruce Rioch and Colin Todd and I was on my way to Middlesbrough.”
Curiously, though, when Leeds won promotion at the end of the season, Baird picked up a medal because he had played his part in the achievement.
At the end of the 1990-91 season, Baird spent two years playing for Hearts under Jordan, although a torn thigh muscle restricted the number of appearances he’d hoped to make and at the end of his deal he moved back to England and signed for Bristol City, initially under Russell Osman and then Jordan once again.
After his experience in Hong Kong, Baird returned to Hampshire to put down roots back in Southampton, and pursued business interests in vehicle sales/leasing and the sports gear industry. He also spent five years managing Eastleigh before becoming Paul Doswell’s assistant at Sutton United. He then followed him to Havant & Waterlooville in May 2019.
THE SCOUSER searching for Brighton’s next Evan Ferguson had Everton blue coursing through his veins from an early age.
But John Doolan’s long association with the Merseyside club came to an end in February 2023 when he swapped places with another backroom man, Lee Sargeson, who joined Everton as their head of scouting operations. Sargeson spent more than five years working in Albion’s much-admired scouting set up.
Now Doolan, a former Everton academy player, has been tasked by another well-known Evertonian, Albion technical director David Weir, and head of recruitment, Sam Jewell, with scouting forwards for the Seagulls.
Although not making it into Everton’s first team himself, Doolan helped to develop the likes of Shane Duffy, Tom Davies and Ross Barkley at Finch Farm.
During more than a decade working behind the scenes, he coached youth teams, worked on player and team development and rose through the scouting and recruitment departments.
After being released by the Toffees on a free transfer, Doolan’s own playing career spanned 550 matches for six clubs in the lower leagues, starting at Mansfield Town. His former Everton coach, Colin Harvey, took him to Field Mill where he’d become assistant manager to another ex-Evertonian, Andy King.
Simon Ireland (Albion’s under 21s coach for 21 months between June 2013 and February 2015) was a teammate at Mansfield. In a matchday programme pen picture of Doolan, when the Third Division Stags visited the Goldstone, it said: ‘Big things are expected of this stylish midfield player.’
He played 151 games for Town in a four-year spell before moving on to Barnet for a £60,000 fee in 1998. In five years with John Still’s Barnet, Doolan made one short of 200 appearances and was a teammate of skilful wideman Darren Currie, who later proved a popular signing for Mark McGhee’s Albion side in the Championship.
He was also at the club when they lost their Football League status in 2001 and became regarded as one of the best midfielders in the Football Conference.
Doolan switched to fellow Conference side Doncaster Rovers for a small fee in March 2003 and helped them gain promotion back to the League via the play-offs.
Described on Donny’s website as “a combative but skilled midfielder” he was a key member of the side that won the Third Division championship in 2003-04 and, in total, made 92 senior appearances for Rovers, scoring three goals.
In a Bred a Blue podcast interview reflecting on his career, he said: “Donny was the best. We won the league twice. The lads were great. It was like Kelly’s Heroes; a bunch of misfits put together and we went on a double promotion. There were some very good players in there.”
The only period of his playing career he regretted was when he was drawn to League One Blackpool by money. By then he was 31, and the move only lasted six months. “I had to play 25 games to get a new deal and I played 24,” he said.
He went on loan to League Two Rochdale in January 2006 and made the move permanent within 10 days. Doolan had already begun to think ahead and had taken some coaching badges while still playing. In just short of two and a half years with Rochdale he clocked up 90 appearances before, aged 34, taking his next steps in the game.
When he left Dale in May 2008 to take up a player-coach role at Blue Square North side Southport,
Dale boss Keith Hill said: “John is a fantastic character and will be missed. He always gave 100 per cent and provided a fantastic example to the young players in the dressing room.”
He added: “I cannot speak highly enough of him and I am sure he will make a real success of coaching because he is a natural.”
Neil Dewsnip, who worked at Everton’s academy for 17 years, had already taken Doolan back to Everton as a part-time youth coach after they’d met on a coaching course. It was at the time Everton’s youth development centre was moving from Netherton to Finch Farm, and Doolan started coaching a couple of days a week while also fulfilling his duties at Southport before returning full time.
In the years that followed, he worked with all the different age groups and, under Kevin Reeves (the chief scout during the reign of Roberto Martinez) he moved into talent identification, watching promising young players across the region.
Born in Liverpool on 7 May 1974, Doolan joined Everton as a 14-year-old schoolboy, having been picked up after playing for Liverpool Schoolboys.
He started training two days a week – David Unsworth and Billy Kenny were contemporaries – before signing as a youth trainee. “My YTS days were the best days of my footballing career,” he told the podcast. “I loved every single minute of it.”
Doolan described to Bred a Blue the enjoyment he got when getting involved with the first team in training but, as a right-back, he had stiff competition and when Everton signed Paul Holmes he saw the writing was on the wall.
“I realised I wasn’t good enough,” he said. “They brought in Paul Holmes and that was like a kick in the teeth. They paid a fee for him (£100,000 from Birmingham City) and they were always going to prefer him.”
There was a momentary glimmer of a chance under Howard Kendall, but he broke an ankle in a youth cup game and the opportunity was gone.
He was sent to Bournemouth for a brief loan spell under Tony Pulis and on his return to Merseyside was told he wasn’t going to feature. “I still had a year on my contract but I decided to leave,” he said. “When I left Everton and went to Mansfield I changed position and went into midfield. I never played at the back again.”
Bred a Blue says of Doolan: “His is a story of how the adversity of being released can be overcome by resolve, hard work and confidence in your own ability.”
Doolan was one of a trio of senior scouts (Pete Bulmer and Charlie Hutton were the others) who were made redundant by the Albion in November 2024 as part of a shake-up of the recruitment department.
EXPLOSIVE pace, a feint of the shoulder, and a thunderbolt shot were trademarks of Kazenga LuaLua’s contribution to Brighton’s rise from the third tier.
Not to mention a somersault flipping goal celebration that delighted supporters but gave managers kittens as they could only see an injury in the making.
Sadly, that explosive pace came at a price — hamstrings that were all too often easily damaged, resulting in lengthy spells on the treatment table and in recovery. Ankle, knee and groin injuries also sidelined the pacy winger for long periods.
Left-sided LuaLua had three spells on loan to Brighton from Newcastle United before joining permanently, and his six seasons in Brighton colours were rarely dull. He was undoubtedly a crowd-pleaser when he was on top of his game, leaving full backs trailing in his wake to lay on chances or cutting inside and netting some memorable goals.
However, he invariably made most impact when entering the fray from the substitutes’ bench, although the ‘supersub’ moniker frustrated him.
“You don’t just want to come on as a sub,” he told the matchday programme. “Obviously it’s good in one respect as it means the team needs you, but as a footballer you want to be in the starting 11 in every game.
“I don’t view myself as just an impact player and I know that I can play 90 minutes of football.”
Albion fans first saw the Congolese game-changer in February 2010. Manager Gus Poyet had been tipped the wink about LuaLua by his former Swindon and Leeds managerial partner, Dennis Wise, who had been executive director at Newcastle.
Ashley Barnes celebrates with Albion’s speedy loanee winger
LuaLua started nine games (and went on as a sub twice) as Albion consolidated their position in League One. His impact on the side was appreciated by his teammates, as defender Tommy Elphick explained to the Argus in March 2010. After the 19-year-old winger had run Exeter full-back Steve Tully ragged, Elphick said: “He’s unbelievable for us. He really does stretch the game for you.
“It’s that raw pace and power which I personally think we have been missing for the last two years. Benno (Elliott Bennett) gives you something totally different. He is more technical. Kaz reminds me of Bas Savage in the sort of job he used to do for us in stretching the game and getting us up the pitch.
“It gives the defenders a chance to get to the halfway line and defend a bit higher.”
When Poyet secured his services for a second loan spell for the opening half of the 2010-11 season, he was delighted. “Kazenga is unique. He is pure power and speed,” said the manager. “That nowadays in football is very important and we didn’t have that.
“I don’t think there is another player like him in the division. He gives us something totally different.
“We are very pleased to have him. We know what we are getting and that is the key. He will fit in as a player, and in the dressing room.”
Poyet added: “He made a very big impact during his time here last season and I am hoping he can do the same and add a few goals to his game this time around.”
No sooner said than done; LuaLua marked his second debut with a 25-yard rocket of a free-kick to give Albion the lead in a 2-0 home win over MK Dons.
LuaLua departs the action injured
Sadly, after just seven starts plus four appearances off the bench, his involvement in that promotion season came to an end in November 2010 when a bad tackle in a 3-1 away defeat at Hartlepool left him with a broken ankle.
Born in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), on 10 December 1990, LuaLua came to England as a small child with his father and famous older brother, Lomana.
It was from Lomana that he perfected the thunderbolt shot — and the celebratory somersault.
“I have always had a hard shot on me,” he told the Albion matchday programme. “I think a lot of it comes from when I was a boy back in Newcastle and I would play with my brother.
“He would always strike a ball hard and I would try to copy him.”
It was football all the way from a young age, LuaLua recalled. “When I was growing up in Kinshasa, I remember skipping school to play football with my friends,” he said. “We were football mad and, as my brother had already moved to England, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“Lomana got me in at Newcastle. He moved to London with our dad some time earlier, but once he’d broken into football and moved from Colchester United up to Newcastle, then the rest of the family came over from our homeland.
“I had only been in the country a couple of months when Lomana arranged for me to have a trial at Newcastle and I was taken on straight away. It was fantastic for me and also for him; we’d go into training together and he was always there for advice when I needed it. He has been a massive influence on my career.”
The winger continued: “It was tough to begin with; I was in a new country and had to go to a new school, which was hard in itself given where I’d come from, and then I was brought into a professional football club and one of the biggest in the country.
“But Newcastle were very helpful. All the coaching staff were great towards me, and helped me find my feet. I learned such a lot from them and I quickly made new friends. I was close to Nile Ranger, Sami Adjei, Sami Ameobi, many players, and I learnt so much in terms of coaching and how to conduct myself as a professional.”
Kazenga progressed through the Toon academy and was part of the Toon youth team that reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup in 2005-06. He even earned a first-team squad call-up while still only 16, although he didn’t get to play.
LuaLua’s Newcastle chances were limited
Eventually, he got his first team chance as a substitute for Damien Duff in a 0-0 FA Cup third round match at Stoke in January 2008, right at the end of Sam Allardyce’s reign on Tyneside. It was Michael Owen’s first FA Cup game for Newcastle.
The game was being shown live on TV so LuaLua’s extended family back home in the DR Congo were able to see the moment. “I was one of the club’s youngest debutants at 17,” he said.
He also went on (for Charles N’Zogbia) in the replay at St James’s Park which Toon, under caretaker boss Nigel Pearson, won comfortably 4-1. “To play in front of 52,000 people took my breath away,” he said.
He made his Premier League debut three days later, going on as an 80th-minute sub for Duff at St James’s Park, in Kevin Keegan’s first match back in charge — a disappointing 0-0 draw with Bolton Wanderers.
Although a non-playing sub on other occasions, he got on in the last game of the season, replacing Jose Enrique in the 79th-minute as United went down 3-1 to Everton at Goodison Park.
Against the backdrop of the tumultuous 2008-09 season, when Toon were relegated from the Premier League after a veritable managerial merry-go-round, LuaLua made just four substitute appearances (three in the league and one in the FA Cup), and in January 2009 he was sent out on loan to Doncaster Rovers, then in the Championship, where he played four matches in six weeks under Sean O’Driscoll.
Once Toon settled on Chris Hughton to get them promoted from the Championship, LuaLua found chances hard to come by.
He started in a Carling Cup second round match at home to Huddersfield Town, when Toon edged it 4-3, but picked up a groin injury playing in the next round, a 2-0 defeat at Peterborough in September 2009 (future Brighton teammate Craig Mackail-Smith was one of the Posh scorers).
Three months later, with his fitness restored, he was itching to be given a first team chance and told the Chronicle: “I want to be part of this team. My aim has always been to play for the first team at Newcastle United.
“I’ve been here a long time, and last season I was involved in the first team before going out on loan.”
“I have been playing for the reserves for a while now, and I’m keen to play football at first team level.
“I would go out on loan if they let me.”
That opportunity finally came a couple of months later when Hughton sanctioned the move to Brighton. LuaLua told Albion matchday programme reporter Luke Nicoli: “They are a big club and are using a lot of experienced players at the moment, so it’s been difficult for me to break into the team.
“I’ve been playing reserve team football a lot and I just want to be playing games that mean something again. I want to be playing for points and I want to be learning all the time. I want to be in a position where I can return to Newcastle a better player.”
Immediately before re-joining the Seagulls for his second loan spell, LuaLua made only his second start for Newcastle in a 3-2 Carling Cup win over Accrington Stanley and was selected by Sky Sports as the Man of the Match.
After that broken ankle at Hartlepool had taken him back to Newcastle to recuperate, he recovered to make a Premier League appearance in the penultimate game of the season, a 2–2 draw away to Chelsea. Hughton’s successor, Alan Pardew, sent him on as a 69th minute substitute for Shane Ferguson and it was LuaLua’s run and cut inside around Branislav Ivanovic that won Toon a corner from which Steven Taylor scored a late equaliser.
Nevertheless, Poyet wasn’t giving up on taking LuaLua back to the Seagulls once more and, in July 2011, he took him on another six-month deal with a view to a permanent move.
Poyet told the club website at the time: “Kazenga was one of our main summer targets and I am delighted we have finally come to an agreement with Newcastle. I am sure the fans will be equally delighted to see him back at the club.”
The permanent move went through a month before the loan was due to expire and LuaLua told the club website: “Since I came to the club it has always been my intention to sign a permanent deal so this is a really happy day for me.
“When you are on loan you are never quite sure what the future will hold, but now I’ve signed this contract I can put my mind at rest and focus completely on my football.
“I have come here because I feel Brighton is the place where I can really kick on with my career. At Newcastle I wasn’t really involved in the first-team squad and at my age I want to start playing regular football.
“From the first day I came to the club on loan, everyone was so friendly and that helped me settle very quickly. Now I want to pay that back with my performances on the pitch.”
Albion famously suffered an ignominious 6-1 drubbing in the fifth round of the FA Cup at Anfield in February 2012, but it was LuaLua who temporarily gave the Seagulls parity after Martin Skrtel’s early opener for Liverpool.
LuaLua unleashed an unstoppable 25-yard shot past ‘keeper Pepe Reina and BBC Sport’s Neil Johnston said: “It was a goal worthy of winning a Wembley FA Cup Final.”
Few doubted LuaLua’s ability but inconsistency was one of his demons which often led to him being introduced as an impact substitute rather than starting games.
Poyet wasn’t afraid to explain his selection policy and in March 2012, when he gave the winger a start against high-flying Derby County, he was rewarded with a 2-0 win at the Amex.
“I thought it was the game for Kazenga,” Poyet told the Argus. “I know he played well in his first spell and my first season here, but I don’t remember a better performance from Kazenga for Brighton.
“It was his best performance against a team that has been in the Premier League and in the top ten in the Championship. That shows what he can do. It was his game and he’s a happy boy.
“He has probably been a little annoyed not to be playing, but that is natural and he is always very respectful and always talking to me.”
A troublesome knee affected LuaLua’s involvement
LuaLua ended up playing under four different Albion managers and Oscar Garcia quickly realised the limitations he faced when in September 2013 he told the Argus: “Kaz has a problem on his knee and he cannot play many minutes in all the games. We knew before if he had played for the whole game then maybe on Tuesday we cannot use him.
“Sometimes he has pain, sometimes not, but, if he plays many minutes, he has pain. He’s had this from the start of the season,” he said. “Sometimes he has to rest, he cannot train. We have to manage this.”
The following February, LuaLua was still troubled by knee tendon soreness but was contributing as a substitute.
For example, he went on to set up Leonardo Ulloa to score the only goal of the game at home to Leeds and Garcia told the Argus: “We thought in this game he could come off the bench and make an immediate impact and he did it.
“He is a player who can change a game. We are very happy with him, because every game when he has to come off the bench he comes on with the right attitude and plays really well.”
Happy days with Beram Kayal and Joe Bennett
Even though Sami Hyypia’s time in charge was short-lived, the winger impressed the new boss until a knee injury sidelined him in November 2014.
“He has the ability to hurt people one v one and maybe one v two as well sometimes,” said Hyypia. “He’s done well this season, he has been very concentrated all the time.”
By the time LuaLua returned to fitness, his old Newcastle coach and manager, Hughton, was at the helm.
LuaLua told the matchday programme: “It was difficult for me when he first came here because I was injured, but he was great with me, always stopping to talk to me about the injury, making sure I was okay, and he told me not to rush things. That’s what I’ve done and hopefully I can now show him what I can do on the pitch now that I’m fully fit.”
Although it was a few months before that happened, arguably LuaLua’s best spell with the club came at the start of the 2015-16 season, which coincided with a change of squad number for the player.
The returning Bobby Zamora resumed the no.25 that he’d worn during his first spell at Brighton, and at other clubs, and LuaLua admitted: “I had to give the number 25 to Bobby. There was no way I was going to refuse. He’s a legend at the club and it’s nice to have him back in the squad.”
With 30 on his back, LuaLua scored four goals in the opening seven games and won the Championship Player of the Month award (above). Hughton was simultaneously Manager of the Month and said: “Kaz thoroughly deserves his award, he’s had a wonderful start. The area where he has excelled in his game is where he has got on the ball and provided an end product.”
Once again, though, injury brought the purple patch to an end. LuaLua sustained a groin injury in training that eventually needed surgery. Coach Nathan Jones told the Argus in December: “There is no real timescale on it because someone like Kazenga is so important to the squad and what we do. You can’t rush him and he is such a potent athlete, that’s the problem.”
Hughton also lost Solly March to injury that autumn but Rajiv van La Parra was brought in as a temporary solution. He already had Jamie Murphy as a wide option and then Anthony Knockaert and Jiri Skalak were added, so, by the time LuaLua had recovered, competition for places was intense.
The run-in to the end of the season saw him mainly in a watching brief from the bench, although he did play in successive matches in April – 2-1 wins away to Birmingham and Nottingham Forest.
LuaLua’s Albion days were clearly numbered as the 2016-17 season got under way. He started two League Cup games in August – the 4-0 win over Colchester United and the 4-2 victory over Oxford United, when he scored Albion’s second goal. But he only managed three league appearances as a substitute. By January, it was time for a change of scene, and he was sent on a half-season loan to QPR.
At least he got some games in Ian Holloway’s Championship side, appearing 11 times and scoring once. Having missed out on Albion’s promotion to the Premier League at the end of that season, it was no surprise that he returned on loan at Loftus Road at the start of the 2017-18 season.
However, he left west London at the beginning of December 2017, Rangers boss Holloway telling the Argus: “I don’t feel he was doing as well as some of my lads who I’ve brought here.
“Unless he rips it up and shows me – and he’s trying to – I think the loss of confidence and loss of his father has really hit him.”
In January 2018, LuaLua finally cut his ties with the Albion when he joined Chris Coleman’s Sunderland on a free transfer on a deal until the end of the season. By then 27, the winger told the Sunderland website: “I’m excited to be here and get back out on to the pitch because it’s been a long time without playing football.
“I know the North East well and I know Sunderland are one of the big clubs, not just in the North East but England, so I’m really excited to get started.”
An unfortunate turn of phrase because he didn’t start a game as Sunderland fell through the Championship trapdoor. He made just six substitute appearances.
Released at the end of that season, his former Brighton coach Jones revitalised what looked like a flagging career by signing him for promotion-chasing League One side Luton Town.
Jones told the club website: “He’s a fantastic talent. He has something that not many have, totally different from what we have here.
“He’s a quick, powerful, potent attacking player which is something that is in rare supply – and is something we felt we needed.
“The fact that we’ve been able to get him in and persuade him to come here is a good coup for us.”
And the player said: “I know Nathan from Brighton, and he’s a very good coach. He’s good at what he does, so it made it so easy for me to come in and train with the boys here.”
LuaLua spent three years at Kenilworth Road and clearly enjoyed a good relationship with their supporters. After he signed a new deal with the club following their promotion to the Championship, he told the club website: “The supporters have made me feel welcome since the moment I arrived here.
“When they get behind you, like they did since I have arrived, it gives you a massive buzz. It’s a really nice feeling. It was a really special season. I think they liked the way I play, they got behind me and I really appreciated it.”
Once again, though, his involvement was more as a substitute than a starter (37 starts plus 50 appearances off the bench) and when his contract came to an end in the summer of 2021, he decided to continue his career in Turkey, once again following in the footsteps of brother Lomana, who played for a number of Turkish clubs.
“It was the right time for me to move on with my football career,” he said. “I always wanted to go abroad before I stopped playing football.
“Before signing, I was worried. I’ve never played abroad before. But it has been good. There’s a lot of boys here who speak English, including the manager, which helps a lot. I’m enjoying it.”
LuaLua then switched from Turkey to Greece and spent 18 months with Levadiakos before returning to the UK in March 2024 when Nathan Jones signed him for Charlton Athletic on a short-term deal, although he made just five substitute appearances for the League One side.
It was back to the north east for a third time in November 2024 when he signed for National League Hartlepool United under Brighton-born Lennie Lawrence, a former Luton and Charlton manager.
In parallel lines 