REGARDLESS of the often overblown ‘bitter rivalry’ between Brighton and Crystal Palace, many people have served both clubs with equal distinction, none more so than Martin Hinshelwood.
A player at Palace until injury curtailed his career when only 27, he went on to have a long career in the game, much of it with Brighton; more often in youth development as a coach and briefly as the no.1.
In the summer of 2002, his appointment as Albion boss 11 weeks after his former Palace teammate Peter Taylor had quit came as something of a surprise considering chairman Dick Knight declared he had interviewed seven candidates for the post.
In more recent times, Albion have had a Uruguayan, a Spaniard, a Finn and an Italian as head coach, back in 2002 it looked a strong possibility Knight might appoint wild-haired German coach Winfried Schafer, who had just managed Cameroon at the World Cup, but the chairman suspected his lack of command of English might be too big a hurdle to get over.
A terrific start
A clear favourite had been Steve Coppell but when the ex-Palace manager fell asleep during his conversation with Knight, apparently fatigued after a long-haul flight, the chairman was suitably unimpressed and, with time running out before the 2002-03 season got under way, Hinshelwood was appointed instead.
A 3-1 win away to Burnley looked like a terrific start but after a 0-0 home draw with Coventry, the side went on a disastrous 10-game losing spell (a 2-1 League Cup win over Exeter City the only bright spot amid the gloom).
Knight had already publicly signalled he would take decisive action after the sixth defeat in a row – a 4-2 home reverse to nine-man Gillingham!
He told the Argus: “If the team went ten matches losing every one, then you have got to do something about it.
“It’s very easy to criticise him (Hinshelwood). Obviously, he is a manager under pressure because we have just lost six games.
Getting his message across
“To suggest we should instantly sack him puts out the wrong message. Most people right now will think it was the wrong decision to appoint him, but I am not going to panic. I am going to monitor the situation.”
Of course, that monitoring didn’t take long to reach an inevitable conclusion – four more defeats and Hinshelwood was relieved of first team duties. He was made ‘director of football’ and Knight went back to Coppell to try to keep the Albion in the division. He very nearly managed it, too, but such a bad run of defeats had taken their toll on the points total.
As it happened, it wasn’t the first time Hinshelwood had found himself in the Albion hotseat: he was caretaker manager on three occasions: in 1993 (before Liam Brady’s appointment), in 2001 (after Micky Adams left for Leicester) and again in 2009, when he was in charge for a 4-4 FA Cup first round tie at Wycombe Wanderers after Russell Slade had been sacked and before Gus Poyet’s arrival.
When researching backgrounds of any number of players for this blog, Hinshelwood’s name is often cited as the one who either made the approach to bring them to Brighton or who was a major influence in their development.
For example, when Hinshelwood first joined the Albion in 1987, from Chelsea, he was instrumental in bringing from Stamford Bridge to the Goldstone Doug Rougvie and Keith Dublin, who both played their part in getting Albion promoted straight back to the second tier in 1988.
Hinshelwood had been reserve team manager at Chelsea for two years during the managerial reign of John Hollins, after first team coach Ernie Walley, his former Palace youth team coach, put in a good word for him.
His long association with Brighton began with a ‘phone call to Barry Lloyd to congratulate him on landing the Albion manager’s job. The former Fulham captain asked Hinshelwood to join him at the Goldstone – and he stayed for the next six and a half years.
He returned to the club in the summer of 1998, when Brian Horton had taken over, and was appointed Director of Youth, with Dean Wilkins as youth team coach.
Pensive Hinsh
An interview with the matchday programme pointed out that across the following 14 years, he oversaw a youth system that produced 31 players who made it through to the first team, although he said such success had very much been a team effort, name-checking Wilkins, centre of excellence managers Vic Bragg and John Lambert, scouting chief Mark Hendon and physio Kim Eaton.
Dean Hammond, Adam Hinshelwood, Adam Virgo, Adam El-Abd, Dean Cox, Jake Robinson, Dan Harding and later Lewis Dunk, Jake Forster-Caskey and Solly March all graduated from that period. “To have been a part of their journeys makes me immensely proud,” he said.
Hinshelwood left the Albion for a second time in 2012 and worked variously for Crawley, Portsmouth, Stoke City and Lewes. He returned to the Seagulls once again when the former head of academy recruitment at Stoke, Dave Wright, who had joined Brighton in 2019, invited him to take on a role of scouting 13 to 16-year-olds.
When Hinshelwood himself was that age, he had visions of following in his dad Wally’s footsteps. He had been a professional for Fulham, Chelsea, Reading, Bristol City and Newport County, and, although born in Reading (on 16 June 1953), young Martin had become accustomed to an unsettled childhood, moving around the country to wherever dad’s next club took him.
The family finally settled in New Addington, near Croydon, with Wally playing non-league football in Kent and Martin played representative football for Dover Under 15s, Croydon Boys and Surrey Under 16s.
He was on schoolboy terms at Fulham when Bobby Robson was manager but they didn’t think he would make it. It was while he was playing for Surrey Schools that former Spurs and Palace manager Arthur Rowe scouted him for Palace and he was taken on as an apprentice in 1969.
Hinshelwood playing for Palace, up against Stoke’s George Eastham
Hinshelwood was given his first team debut by Bert Head in 1972. He played in midfield in the old First Division for a dozen matches but the side were relegated in his first season. The flamboyant fedora-wearing Malcolm Allison took over as manager and he was later replaced by Terry Venables.
Martin’s younger brother Paul (Jack Hinshelwood’s granddad) played in the same side at full-back and the brothers were alongside the likes of Kenny Samson and Peter Taylor. In 1975-76, when still a Third Division side, they shook the football world by making it to the semi-finals of the FA Cup, where they lost to eventual winners Southampton, although Martin missed the game through a right knee injury. It eventually forced him to quit playing in 1978, after he’d made 85 appearances for Palace in five years.
Venables appointed him as youth team coach at Selhurst Park and although he spent 18 months as player-manager of non-league Leatherhead, he then resumed his Palace role under Steve Kember.
Alan Mullery dispensed with Hinshelwood’s services during his brief managerial reign at Palace but he kept his hand in at coaching with non-league clubs Kingstonian, Barking and Dorking.
Selsey-based Hinshelwood then had a spell as manager of Littlehampton before the Chelsea job came up.
DEAN WILKINS might have lived in the shadow of his more famous elder England international brother Ray but he certainly carved out his own footballing history, much of it with Brighton.
Albion fans of a certain vintage will never forget the sumptuous left-footed free-kick bouffant-haired captain Wilkins scored past Phil Parkes at the Goldstone Ground which edged the Seagulls into the second-tier play-offs in 1991.
Supporters from the mid-noughties era would only recall the balding boss of a mid-table League One outfit at Withdean comprising mainly home-grown players who Wilkins had brought through from his days coaching the youth team.
After Dick Knight somewhat unceremoniously brought back Micky Adams over Wilkins’ head in 2008, he quit the club rather than stay on playing second fiddle and subsequently went west to Southampton where he worked under Alan Pardew and his successor Nigel Adkins as well as taking caretaker charge of the Saints in between the two reigns.
Wilkins’ initial association with the Seagulls went back to 1983, when Jimmy Melia brought him to the south coast from Queens Park Rangers shortly after Albion’s FA Cup final appearances at Wembley.
Melia’s successor Chris Cattlin only gave him two starts back then and although he pondered a move to Leyton Orient, where he’d had 10 matches on loan, he opted to accept to try his luck in Holland when his Dutch Albion teammate Hans Kraay set him up with a move to PEC Zwolle. Playing against the likes of Johann Cruyff, Marco Van Basten and Ruud Gullit proved to be quite the footballing education for Wilkins.
Wilkins in the thick of it in Dutch football for PEC Zwolle
After two years in the Netherlands, 25-year-old Wilkins rejoined the relegated Seagulls in the summer of 1987 as the club prepared for life back in the old Third Division under Barry Lloyd.
Relegation had led to the sale for more than £400,000 of star assets Danny Wilson, Terry Connor and Eric Young but more modest funds were allocated to manager Lloyd for replacements: £10,000 for Wilkins, £50,000 for Doug Rougvie, who signed from Chelsea and was appointed captain, Garry Nelson, a £72,500 buy from Plymouth and Kevin Bremner, who cost £65,000 from Reading. Midfield enforcer Mike Trusson was a free transfer.
The refreshed squad ended up earning a swift return to the second tier courtesy of a memorable last day 2-1 win over Bristol Rovers at the Goldstone.
At the higher level, Wilkins had the third highest appearances (40 + two as sub) as Albion finished just below halfway in the table. The following season Wilkins was appointed captain and was ever-present as Albion made it to the divisional play-off final against Notts County at Wembley, having made it to the semi-final v Millwall courtesy of the aforementioned spectacular free kick v Ipswich.
Wilkins scored again at Wembley but it turned out only to be a consolation as the Seagulls succumbed 3-1 to Neil Warnock’s side.
As the 1992-93 season got underway, Wilkins, having just turned 30, was the first matchday programme profile candidate for the opening home game against Bolton Wanderers (a 2-1 win) when he revealed the play-off final defeat had been “the biggest disappointment of my career”.
The 1993-94 season was a write-off from October onwards when he damaged the medial ligaments in both his knees after catching both sets of studs in the soft ground at home against Exeter City.
Although injury plagued much of the time during Liam Brady’s reign as manager, the Irishman acknowledged his ability saying: “He is a very fine footballer and a tremendous passer of the ball and he possesses a great shot.”
Ahead of the start of the 1995-96 season, Wilkins was granted a testimonial game against his former club QPR, managed at the time by big brother Ray. But at the end of the season, when the Seagulls were relegated to the basement division, he was one of six players given a free transfer.
Born in Hillingdon on 12 July 1962, Wilkins couldn’t have wished for a more football-oriented family. Dad George had played for Brentford, Leeds, Nottingham Forest and Hearts and appeared at Wembley in the first wartime FA Cup final. While Ray was the brother who stole the limelight, Graham and Steve also started out at Chelsea.
In spite of those older brothers who also made it as professionals, Wilkins attributed his development at QPR, who he joined straight from school as an apprentice in 1978, to youth coach John Collins (who older fans will remember was Brighton’s first team coach under Mike Bailey).
He made seven first team appearances for Rangers, his debut being as a substitute for Glenn Roeder in a 0-0 draw with Grimsby Town on 1 November 1980. After joining the Albion in August 1983, he had to wait until 10 December that year to make his debut, in a 0-0 draw at Middlesbrough, in place of the absent Tony Grealish. He started at home to Newcastle a week later (a 1-0 defeat), this time taking the midfield spot of injured Jimmy Case.
Perhaps the writing was on the wall when Cattlin secured the services of Wilson from Nottingham Forest, initially on loan, and although Wilkins had a third first team outing in a 2-0 FA Cup third round win at home to Swansea City, boss Cattlin didn’t pick him again. Instead, he joined Orient on loan in March 1984.
A long career in coaching began when Wilkins was brought back to the Albion in 1998 by another ex-skipper, Brian Horton, who had taken over as manager. With Martin Hinshelwood as director of a new youth set-up, Wilkins was appointed the youth coach – a position he held for the following eight years.
Return to the Albion as youth coach
His charges won 4-1 against Cambridge United in his first match, with goals from Duncan McArthur, Danny Marney and Scott Ramsay (two).
That backroom role continued as managers came and went over the following years during which a growing number of youth team products made it through to the first team: people like Dan Harding and Adam Virgo and later Adam Hinshelwood, Joel Lynch, Dean Hammond and Adam El-Abd.
At the start of the 2006-07 season, with Albion back in the third tier after punching above their weight in the Championship for two seasons, Wilkins was rewarded for his achievements with the youth team with promotion to first team coach under Mark McGhee.
By then, more of the youngsters he’d helped to develop were in or getting close to the first team, for example Dean Cox, Jake Robinson, Joe Gatting and Chris McPhee.
After an indifferent start to the season – three wins, three defeats and a draw – Knight decided to axe McGhee and loyal lieutenant Bob Booker and to hand the reins to Wilkins with Dean White as his deputy. Wilkins later brought in his old teammate Ian Chapman as first team coach.
Into the manager’s chair
Tommy Elphick, Tommy Fraser and Sam Rents were other former youth team players who stepped up to the first team. But, over time, it became apparent Knight and Wilkins were not on the same page: the young manager didn’t agree with the chairman that more experienced players were needed rather than relying too much on the youth graduates.
Indeed, in his autobiography Mad Man: From the Gutter to the Stars (Vision Sports Publishing, 2013), Knight said Wilkins hadn’t bothered to travel with him to watch Glenn Murray or Steve Thomson, who were added to the squad, and he was taking the side of certain players in contract negotiations with the chairman.
“In my opinion, his man-management skills were lacking, which was why I made the decision to remove him from the manager’s job,” he said. It didn’t help Wilkins’ cause when midfielder Paul Reid went public to criticise his man-management too.
Knight felt although Wilkins hadn’t sufficiently nailed the no.1 job, he could still be effective as a coach, working under Micky Adams. The pair had previously got on well, with Adams saying in his autobiography, My Life in Football (Biteback Publishing, 2017) how Wilkins had been “one of my best mates”.
But Adams said: “He thought I had stitched him up. I told him that I wanted him to stay. We talked it through and, at the end of the meeting, we seemed to have agreed on the way forward.
“I thought I’d reassured him enough for him to believe he should stay on. But he declined the invitation. He obviously wasn’t happy and attacked me verbally.
“I did have to remind him about the hypocrisy of a member of the Wilkins family having a dig at me, particularly when his older brother had taken my first job at Fulham.
“We don’t speak now which is a regret because he was a good mate and one of the few people I felt I could talk to and confide in.”
Youth coach
Knight knew his decision to sack the manager would not be popular with fans who only remembered the good times, but he pointed out they weren’t aware of the poor relationship he had with some first team players.
Knight described in his book how a torrent of “colourful language” poured out from Wilkins when he was called in and informed of the decision in a meeting with the chairman and director Martin Perry.
“He didn’t take it at all well, although I suppose he felt he was fully justified,” wrote Knight. “He was fuming after what was obviously a big blow to his pride.”
Reporter Andy Naylor perhaps summed up the situation best in The Argus. “The sadness of Wilkins’ departure was that Albion lost not a manager, but a gifted coach,” he said. “Wilkins was not cut out for management.”
Saints coach
One year on, shortly after Alan Pardew took over as manager at League One Southampton, he appointed Wilkins as his assistant. They were joined by Wally Downes (Steve Coppell’s former assistant at Reading) as first team coach and Stuart Murdoch as goalkeeping coach.
Saints were rebuilding having been relegated from the Championship the previous season and began the campaign with a 10-point penalty, having gone into administration. The club had been on the brink of going out of business until Swiss businessman Markus Liebherr took them over.
A seventh place finish (seven points off the play-offs because of the deduction) meant another season in League One and the following campaign had only just got under way when Pardew, Downes and Murdoch were sacked. Wilkins was put in caretaker charge for two matches and then retained when Nigel Adkins, assisted by ex-Seagull Andy Crosby, was appointed manager.
It was the beginning of an association that also saw the trio work together at Reading (2013-14) and Sheffield United (2015-16).
Adkins, Crosby and Wilkins were in tandem as the Saints gained back-to-back promotions, going from League One runners up to Gus Poyet’s Brighton in 2011, straight through the Championship to the Premier League. But they only had half a season at the elite level before the axe fell and Mauricio Pochettino took over.
When the trio were reunited at Reading, Wilkins, by then 50, gave an exclusive interview to the local Reading Chronicle, in which he said: “This pre-season has given me time to learn about the characters of the players we’ve got at Reading and find out what makes them tick.
At Reading with Crosby and Adkins
“It’s my job then to make sure every player maximises his potential. That’s what I see my role as, to bring out the very best of them from now on and make them strive to attain new levels of performance.
“I will always keep working toward that goal. If we can do that with every individual and get maximum performances out of them, I believe we will be in for a great season.
“We’re back together now and it’s going fantastically well. I have loved every minute of it. I’m used to working with Nigel and Andy and we are carrying out similar work to what we’ve done in the past.”
The Royals finished seventh, a point behind Brighton, who qualified for the play-offs, and the trio were dismissed five months into the following season immediately following a 6-1 thrashing away to Birmingham City.
Six months later the trio were back in work, this time at League One Sheffield United, but come the end of the 2015-16 season, after the Blades had finished in their lowest league position since 1983, they were shown the door.
Between January 2018 and July 2019, Wilkins worked for the Premier League assessing and reporting on the accuracy, consistency, management and decision-making of match officials.
In the summer 0f 2019, he was appointed Head of Coaching at Crystal Palace’s academy, a job he held for 15 months.
A return to involvement with first team football was presented by his former Albion player Alex Revell, who’d been appointed manager of League Two Stevenage Borough. Glad to support and mentor Revell in his first managerial post, Wilkins spent a year as assistant manager at the Lamex Stadium.
ENGLAND World Cup winning hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst gave Colin Pates his Chelsea debut as an 18-year-old – and what an extraordinary footballing baptism it was.
Replacing the injured Micky Droy for a visit across London in a second tier match against Orient, young Pates was involved in a madcap 10-goal match that saw Chelsea win 7-3.
“It was an amazing feeling to go out there but it was chaos, “ he told chelseafancast.com in a 2021 podcast.
And in another interview, he recalled: “It certainly wasn’t a good advertisement for defenders but as long as you come away with the win the fans are happy. It’s one of those days where you’re so fired up it just goes so quickly.
“You come off the pitch at the end and have no recollection of what happened really. I was up against some good, experienced pros and it was quite daunting, but I really enjoyed it.”
That game at Brisbane Road marked the start of a Chelsea first team career that spanned 346 matches, 137 of them as captain, in a turbulent period for the club.
Pates’ future Brighton teammates Gary Chivers and Clive Walker were also in that side at Orient and Walker scored two of Chelsea’s hatful (Lee Frost (3), Micky Fillery and Ian Britton the others).
Pates and Robert Codner celebrate reaching the Wembley final
Fast forward 12 years and Pates was reunited with Chivers and Walker when he joined Brighton on loan from Arsenal in February 1991 to help out after young Irish centre-back Paul McCarthy was sidelined by injury.
Manager Barry Lloyd pulled off something of a coup to persuade his old Chelsea teammate, George Graham, then manager of Arsenal, to loan Pates to the Seagulls for three months.
The Argus Albion reporter John Vinicombe described it as a “masterstroke” and doubted that Albion would have made it to the divisional play-off final at Wembley without him.
Match magazine pic of Pates at Wembley
Lloyd’s faithful no. 2, Martin Hinshelwood, said Pates got better and better over the three months, pointing out: “He has steadied us a little bit. He talks to players, he is a great trainer and he has brought a lot to our back four.”
The player himself told Luke Nicoli of the Albion website in a 2021 interview: “Although I was dropping down a division, it didn’t matter to me – I was just happy to be playing football.
“I immediately struck up a partnership at the back with Gary, and it was like the good old days at Chelsea again.
“I spent three months at the club and I loved every minute; I loved the area, the Goldstone, the club, the fans and, of course, we went all the way to Wembley that season in the play-offs – where the turnout from our fans in the final was incredible.
“We lost (3-1) to Notts County, which was one of those games where it just wasn’t meant to be.”
It has since emerged that Lloyd’s insistence on changing a successful formula by playing Romanian international Stefan Iovan as a sweeper in that match upset the players.
But Pates said: “I know we changed formation that day, and maybe that contributed to our defeat, but I didn’t look at it like that – it was just one of those games where it wasn’t meant to be.”
“We came with a fantastic late run in the league, but it proved to be a game too far for us,” he recalled in a matchday programme article. “We made a slow start to the game and that defeat still hurts, knowing what it meant to everyone connected with the club.”
In another interview, Pates said: “The result in the play-off final didn’t go our way but it was a fantastic experience for the team to play at Wembley, the side was so close to the Premiership, or First Division as it was called then.
“I’d been lucky to have played there before but to others it was the pinnacle of their careers.”
Indeed, the last time Pates had played there was five years previously when he made history by becoming the first-ever Chelsea player to lift a trophy – the Full Members Cup – at the iconic stadium (when Ron Harris lifted the FA Cup in 1970 it was at Old Trafford, where the replay had taken place after a 2-2 draw at Wembley). That was arguably the pinnacle of his career.
The Full Members Cup was a short-lived competition between North and South clubs from the top two divisions of the league, with the regional winners meeting in a national final. It was introduced after English clubs were banned from competing in Europe following the Heysel disaster. In truth, it struggled to be taken seriously and it was a surprise it lasted as long as seven seasons.
The most remarkable element of Chelsea’s win was that the game took place the day after they’d played a league game at Southampton – when Pates scored the only goal of the game with a deflected free kick past Peter Shilton in Southampton’s goal.
Chelsea beat Manchester City 5-4 but extraordinarily were cruising at 5-1 before City scored three in the last six minutes (one an 89th minute own goal by Doug Rougvie!).
“When the referee blew his whistle, was I relieved!” said Pates. “It’s great to play at Wembley with thousands of fans screaming their heads off, and once you’re on the pitch you don’t care what cup it is, you just want to win it.”
Born on 10 August 1961 in Wimbledon, Pates went to school only five miles from Stamford Bridge and was a Chelsea fan as a boy. He signed for the club aged 10, starting training with them in 1971, the year they won the European Cup Winners’ Cup having won the FA Cup the previous year. Pates worked his way through the different age levels and as an apprentice cleaned the boots of hardman defender Ron Harris.
He made that first team debut on 10 November 1979, by which time he had already played five times for England Youth that autumn. A further six appearances followed in 1980, alongside the likes of Micky Adams, Gary Mabbutt, Paul Walsh and Terry Gibson. Mark Barham, Steve Mackenzie and Terry Connor featured in the early 1980 games.
Pates in action for Chelsea against Albion’s Terry Connor, a former England Youth teammate
Simultaneously, Droy’s lack of fitness meant young Pates got an extended run in the side. However, because he was comfortable on the ball and could play in a number of positions, manager Hurst often used him as something of a utility player.
For example, in 1980-81, his 15 appearances were spread across all back four positions. But when John Neal took over for the 1981-82 season, Pates was ever present in the centre alongside Droy.
While the side’s league fortunes didn’t improve under the new man (they finished 12th), they had the consolation of reaching the quarter finals of the FA Cup after beating reigning European champions Liverpool 2-0 in the fifth round (Pates had the job of man-marking Graeme Souness).
Remarkably, Chelsea only narrowly avoided relegation to the old Third Division in 1983, and, as a result, manager Neal had a clear-out of the ‘old guard’ and Pates’ performances and attitude earned him the captain’s armband just before his 22nd birthday.
“I think he wanted someone who had come through the ranks and knew the club,” Pates said. “I was fortunate enough to be one of the few players – along with the likes of John Bumstead – who he kept on from before.”
Pates has nothing but praise for Neal and his assistant Ian McNeill (who played more than 100 games for Brighton between 1959 and 1962) and their eye for good players, like Pat Nevin, Joe McLaughlin, Nigel Spackman, David Speedie and Kerry Dixon, who were brought in to rebuild the club.
“I loved John Neal, he was a man of few words but when he said something you listened because it was going to be something poignant or important,” said Pates. “He was a good man-manager and would always take care of you if you had problems and be there for a chat. You wanted to play for him.”
Combined with the new arrivals, Pates and his pal Bumstead were part of a core of local lads Neal relied on (it included Dale Jasper, Chivers and Fillery): they all came from the same estate in Mitcham.
In his first season wearing the armband, “Pates stepped into the role with ease and led the team to the Second Division title” wrote Kelvin Barker.
“Colin’s classy displays in the top division catapulted him into the limelight, his impressive captaincy of a club on the up particularly catching the eye.
“A string of niggly injuries after Christmas led to him missing a handful of matches and his importance to the defence was highlighted when, in his absence, Chelsea slipped to consecutive defeats at Coventry and Ipswich.
“Pates made a total of 48 appearances during the 1984-85 campaign and scored once, the goal coming in a stunning 4-3 win at Goodison Park against the season’s champions, Everton.”
It had been a proud moment when Pates led Chelsea out at Highbury for the 1984-85 season-opener against Arsenal. The game finished 1-1, Paul Mariner opening the scoring for the Gunners on 35 minutes, Dixon equalising for the visitors four minutes later.
Chelsea made a decent fist of their return to the big time, finishing sixth. They also reached the semi-finals of the League Cup only to be knocked out over two legs by a Clive Walker-inspired Sunderland.
Chelsea did make it to Wembley the following year but it would be fair to say winning
that Full Members Cup final ultimately damaged their progress in the league. Chelsea were riding high in the top flight at the time and being spoken of as title contenders but immediately after that trophy win they were beaten 4-0 at home by West Ham on Easter Saturday and 6-0 by QPR at Loftus Road on Easter Monday.
Pates’ future Brighton teammate John Byrne scored twice for the Rs playing alongside Michael Robinson and Gary Bannister, who got a hat-trick. Substitute Leroy Rosenior (father of Liam) scored the other.
Byrne later remembered: “There were some big name players in the Chelsea line-up, including centre-back Doug Rougvie who seemed like he wanted to kill somebody when the score was 5-0! He was certainly looking for blood!
“We had the Milk Cup Final coming up and I remember saying to Banna with about 15 minutes to go ‘I ain’t going anywhere near Rougvie’. And Gary replied: ‘Neither am I!’ So we both ended up playing on the wings with no one in the middle!”
Pates and Doug Rougvie both played for Chelsea and Brighton
There was talk that Pates might force his way into the England squad for the Mexico World Cup that summer but Terry Butcher, Alvin Martin and Terry Fenwick were ahead of him.
Competition at club level emerged at the start of the following season when centre-half Steve Wicks was recruited and Pates was moved to left-back. However, injuries to Wicks meant Pates was soon back in the middle.
In his sporting-heroes.net piece, Barker continued: “As Chelsea’s farcical season went from bad to worse, he found himself being played in midfield again. With the Blues looking down the barrel of a drop into Division Two, Colin was returned to the centre of defence and relegation was averted.”
An injury-disrupted 1987-88 season also saw Pates have the captaincy taken off him and given to fellow defender Joe McLaughlin. Pates actually missed the start of the season having had a cartilage operation and when he returned in October the team were on something of a downward spiral. Injured again at the end of March, by the time he was fit to return, Chelsea were heading close to the relegation trapdoor.
At the time, as part of a restructuring plan to reduce the top division’s number of teams from 22 to 20, the team finishing fourth bottom of Division One had to play-off against the third, fourth and fifth-placed teams in Division Two. The top two in Division Two were promoted automatically and the bottom three in Division One went down.
Chelsea ended up fourth from bottom and had to play Middlesbrough (who’d finished third in Division Two) over two legs.
Boro won the first leg at Ayresome Park 2-0 but Chelsea only won their home leg 1-0, so they were relegated. However, history has since remembered the match more for the riotous behaviour of Chelsea supporters.
gazettelive.co.uk recalled: “There was trouble before, during and after the high-stakes game. Chelsea fans invaded the pitch on the whistle and stormed the away end sparking hand to hand fighting with barely a steward in sight.
“And it was only the intervention of mounted police that eventually cleared the pitch. The trouble didn’t stop there with more attacks outside the ground as Boro fans returned to their cars, coaches and the tube.”
Boro striker Bernie Slaven remembered: “We were locked in the dressing room celebrating promotion for maybe an hour while the police dealt with the trouble and cleared the pitch then we went out and celebrated again with the Boro fans who had been kept back in the stadium.
“The trouble and the ugly atmosphere was a real shame because it took all the headlines away from what we had achieved.”
John Hollins resigned as manager and was replaced by Bobby Campbell. One of his first moves was to sign the powerful central defender Graham Roberts who he made captain.
Pates was given a testimonial as part of the pre-season friendly fixtures (a 0-0 draw with Spurs) but the season was only three months old when he suddenly found himself unwanted at the Bridge.
As Pates returned to the dressing room at the end of a 2-2 Littlewoods Cup home draw with Scunthorpe United, Campbell informed him Charlton Athletic manager Lennie Lawrence was upstairs waiting to sign him, the club having already agreed terms over the transfer (a £400,000 fee).
“It came right out of the blue,” said Pates. “At first, I was taken aback. I have been at Stamford Bridge since I was a schoolkid. Chelsea has become a way of life.”
When the Albion visited Chelsea for a Division 2 league game on 29 October 1988, the matchday programme carried an article headlined ‘Colin’s farewell’, detailing the circumstances.
“The transfer of Colin Pates to Charlton Athletic not only surprised many Blues fans but Colin himself,” it began.
And reflecting on what happened many years later, Pates told Luke Nicoli: “I was allowed to leave and did so with a heavy heart as I wanted to stay.”
Nevertheless, the move at least presented the defender with the chance to return to playing in the top division, and he admitted: “After 11 years at Stamford Bridge, this is a new lease of life for me.”
Charlton, who had to play home matches at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park at the time, finished 14th by the end of that 1988-89 season, but Pates had left for Arsenal by the time the Addicks were relegated in 19th place at the end of the following season.
Despite those moves across London, and to the south coast, Chelsea hadn’t seen the last of Pates, though. He subsequently became head of football at the independent Whitgift School in South Croydon, where he coached most sports and was the first football coach in what had previously been a rugby-dominated school and pupils Victor Moses and Callum Hudson-Odoi both went on to play for the Blues.
Pates was also seen back at the Bridge on matchdays working in the hospitality lounges.
MIKE TRUSSON has spent a lifetime in football since Plymouth Argyle spotted his raw teenage talent, took him on as an apprentice and gave him his professional debut at 17.
After playing more than 400 matches over 15 years, he became prominent in football marketing, coaching and scouting, often in association with his good friend Tony Pulis, who he played alongside at Gillingham after leaving the Albion.
As recently as late 2020 he was assistant manager to Pulis for an ill-fated brief spell at Sheffield Wednesday.
Much fonder memories of his time in the steel city were forged when he was twice Player of the Year at Sheffield United.
In an exclusive interview with the In Parallel Lines blog, Trusson told Nick Turrell about his time with the Seagulls, his first coaching job at AFC Bournemouth and the formative years of his career.
A goalscoring home debut for Mike Trusson
A MOVE TO SUSSEX in the summer of 1987 ticked all the right boxes for Mike Trusson.
An experienced midfielder with more than 300 games under his belt already, he welcomed the opportunity to be part of the rebuilding job Barry Lloyd was undertaking at the Goldstone following the club’s relegation back to the third tier. He was one of seven new signings.
The move also brought him a whole lot closer to his family in Somerset than south Yorkshire, where he’d lived and played for seven years.
And it gave him the chance to earn more money.
The only problem was he had a dodgy left knee – it was an injury that prevented him making his first team debut for the Seagulls for four months, and it troubled him throughout his first season.
Frequent leaping to head the ball had resulted in a torn patella knee tendon that had needed surgery during the latter days of the player’s time at Rotherham United, where for two years his manager had been the legendary former Leeds and England defender Norman Hunter.
Prior to the injury, Blackburn Rovers had bid £200,000 to sign him, but nothing came of it and a contractual dispute with the Millers (who were not keen to give him what he said he was entitled to because of the injury) led to him being given a free transfer (Hunter subsequently signed former Albion midfielder Tony Grealish).
Trusson fancied a move south to be nearer his folks and had written to several clubs, Albion included, who he thought might be interested in his services (these were the days before agents).
Although Millwall and Gillingham had shown an interest, it was a call from Martin Hinshelwood, Lloyd’s no.2, that saw Trusson head to Sussex for an interview where he met the management pair, chairman Dudley Sizen and director Greg Stanley.
Trusson looks back on the encounter with amusement because not only did they agree to take him on but they offered him more money than he was asking for because they said he’d need it in view of the North-South disparity in property prices.
“Brighton was a big club. Only four years earlier they’d been in the Cup Final and some of those players from that time were still at the club,” he said. “From my point of view, it was a big career move. It ticked all the boxes.”
Initially Trusson shared a club house in East Preston with fellow new signings Kevin Bremner, Garry Nelson and Doug Rougvie before moving his wife and daughter down and settling in Angmering, close to the training ground (Albion trained at Worthing Rugby Club’s ground at the time).
Before he could think about playing, though, he had to get fit. Scar tissue after the operation on his knee had left him in a lot of pain, and although he passed his medical, the pain persisted.
New physio Mark Leather told him straight that he wouldn’t be able to train, let alone play, with the leg in the condition it was. It had shrunk in size due to muscle wastage so his first two months at the Albion were spent building it back up and regaining match fitness in the reserves.
In the meantime, former full-back Chris Hutchings was keeping the no.8 shirt warm until he finally got a move to Huddersfield that autumn.
Trusson recalled: “I was aware there was a rebuilding process going on. It was a very different group to ones I’d experienced at other clubs. A lot of the lads travelled down from London so there was not much socialising.”
There was certainly lots of competition for places during his time at the club. Sometimes Dale Jasper would get the nod over him and he could see Lloyd preferred the ball-playing types like Alan Curbishley and Dean Wilkins, and later Robert Codner and Adrian Owers.
“I thought if I was going to play, I had to change,” Trusson reflected. “I became more of a midfield enforcer and left it to the better players to play.”
As such, he was surprised yet delighted to score on his home debut, albeit, more than 30 years on, he doesn’t remember much about it.
For the record, it was on 12 December 1987, in front of a rather paltry 6,995 Goldstone Ground crowd, that Trusson scored the only goal of the game against Chester City as Albion extended an unbeaten run to 15 matches. (Chester’s side included former Albion Cup Final midfielder Gary Howlett, who was on loan from Bournemouth).
In that injury-affected first season, he played 18 games plus seven as sub. He had been on the subs bench for three games as the season drew to an exciting climax, but he was not involved in the deciding game when Bristol Rovers were beaten 2-1 at the Goldstone.
Teaming up with Garry Nelson against Arsenal in the FA Cup
When the 1988-89 season got under way, Trusson was on the bench for the first two league games and he got a start in a 1-0 defeat away to Southend in the League Cup. After the side suffered eight defeats on the trot, Trusson was back in the starting line-up for the home game v Leeds on 1 October and Albion chalked up their first win of the season (1-0).
Unsurprisingly, Trusson kept his place for the next clutch of games, although Curbishley returned and kept the shirt for an extended run.
It wasn’t until the new year that he won back a starting place but then he had his best run of games, keeping the shirt through to the middle of April.
The previous month he was sent off (above) in the extraordinary match at Selhurst Park which saw referee Kelvin Morton award five penalties in the space of 27 minutes, as well as wielding five yellow cards and Trusson’s red. Four of the penalties went to Palace – they missed three – but they went on to win 2-1 against the ten men. Manager Lloyd said: “I don’t think I’ve ever been involved in such a crazy game – we could have lost 6-1 but were unfortunate not to gain a point.”
Looking back, Trusson reckoned: “I was always conscious I wasn’t Barry’s type of player.” With a gentle but respectful sense of understatement, he said: “He was not the most communicative person I have met in my life!”
In essence, perhaps not surprisingly, Trusson would seek an explanation as to why he wasn’t playing when he thought he deserved to, but it wasn’t always forthcoming. He recalled that defender Gary Chivers, who he was reunited with at Bournemouth and who he stays in touch with, used to call Lloyd ‘Harold’ after the silent movie star!
Nevertheless, he said: “Tactically Barry was a good manager. When he did talk, he talked a lot of sense.”
It was during his time at Brighton that Trusson started running end-of-season soccer schools for youngsters. He was honest enough to admit they gave him an opportunity to earn a bit of extra money to put towards a holiday rather than laying the foundations for his future career as a coach.
That was still a little way off when, at 29, he left the Albion in September 1989 having played 37 games. By then, Curbishley, Codner and Wilkins were firmly ensconced as the preferred midfield trio, and he wanted to get some regular football. Cardiff wanted him but his family were settled in West Sussex so he opted for Gillingham, which was driveable, although he stayed in a clubhouse the night before matches.
It was at Priestfield where he began to establish a close friendship with Tony Pulis, who was winding down his playing career and was similarly commuting to north Kent (from Bournemouth).
“We had always kicked each other to bits when we played against each other but often ended up having a drink and a chat afterwards, and got on,” said Trusson. “We were also keen golfers, and both talkers; we had our views (even if we didn’t always agree) and the friendship developed.”
This is a good point to go back to the beginning because it was his early appreciation of the art of coaching that would ultimately become the foundation for what followed later.
Born in Northolt on 26 May 1959, Trusson had trials with Chelsea as a schoolboy but a bout of ‘flu put the kibosh on any progress. It also wasn’t helped by the family relocating to Somerset, not a renowned hotbed for nurturing football talent.
The young Trusson went to Wadham Comprehensive School in Crewkerne and his hopes for another crack at professional football were given a huge boost when a Plymouth Argyle vice-president, who was involved with the local youth football side he played for, organised for him to have a trial at Home Park.
Argyle liked what they saw and offered him an apprenticeship, and the excellent greensonscreen.co.uk website details his career in the West Country.
It was Trusson’s good fortune that former England goalkeeper Tony Waiters – a coach ahead of his time – was Argyle boss and he gave him a first team debut aged just 17 in October 1976.
Waiters was a great believer in giving youngsters their chance to shine at an early age; he’d already worked for the FA as a regional coach, for Liverpool’s youth development programme, and been manager of the England Youth team, before being appointed Argyle manager. He later went on to manage the Canadian national team at the 1986 World Cup.
Waiters and his assistant Keith Blunt, who later took charge of the Spurs youth team in the 1980s (and was technical director at the English National Football School at Lilleshall between 1991 and 1998) together with Bobby Howe, the former West Ham and Bournemouth defender, completely opened Trusson’s eyes to what could be achieved through good coaching.
“They were in the vanguard of English coaching in the mid to late ‘70s,” he said. “I joined Plymouth as a kid having never been coached. Growing up in Somerset, we just used to play games.
“From when I was 15 to 17, they taught me so much, talking me through so many aspects of the game, and coaching me to understand why I was doing certain things on the pitch, giving advice about things like timing and angled runs.”
In an Albion matchday programme interview, Trusson told reporter Dave Beckett: “They kept us in a youth hostel and looked after us really well, even providing us with carefully planned individual weight and fitness programmes.
“Certainly you couldn’t fault them on their ideas. Out of the 20 apprentices I knew brought on by the scheme, 17 made the grade as pros. That’s an astonishingly high return by anybody’s standards.”
Although Argyle were relegated in his first season, Trusson kept his place under Waiters’ successors in the hotseat: Mike Kelly, Lennie Lawrence and Malcolm Allison. Bobby Saxton was in charge by the time he left Plymouth in the summer of 1980 to join then Third Division Sheffield United.
He was signed by Harry Haslam but, halfway through a season which it was hoped would see Blades among the promotion contenders, things went horribly wrong when Haslam moved ‘upstairs’ and former World Cup winner Martin Peters took over the running of the team. United were relegated to the fourth tier for the first time in their history.
Peters and Haslam quit the club and former Sunderland FA Cup Final matchwinner Ian Porterfield, who had just won the Division Three title with Rotherham, took charge.
Player of the Year at Sheffield United
Blades bounced straight back as champions, losing only four games all season, and Trusson was their Player of the Year. He earned the accolade the following season as well, when they finished 11th in Division Three.
The side’s prolific goalscorer at that time, Keith Edwards, a former teammate who now works as a co-commentator covering Blades matches for Radio Sheffield recently told the city’s daily paper The Star: “He was such a likeable character in the dressing room.
“I had a great understanding with him. He was a great team man, good for the dressing room and could play in a lot of positions. Every now and then he got himself up front with me and he worked his heart out.
“He looked after you as a player, he could be a tough lad. We played Altrincham one week and he got sent off for whacking someone that had done me a previous week. He was handy.
“And he was such a good character to have in the team.”
After three years at Bramall Lane, and 126 appearances, (not to mention scoring 31 goals), he was then swapped for Paul Stanicliffe and, instead of involvement in a promotion bid, found himself in a relegation fight at Rotherham United.
Trusson enjoyed his time with the Millers under George Kerr and over four years he played 124 games and chipped in with 19 goals. It was a regime change, and the aforementioned injury, that saw life at Millmoor turn sour.
A brief spell playing for Sing Tao in Hong Kong followed the end of his time with Gillingham and on his return to the UK his pal Pulis, who had taken over as Bournemouth manager from Harry Redknapp, invited him to become youth team coach at Dean Court.
Linking up with former Gillingham teammate Tony Pulis at Bournemouth
“I loved it and, when David Kemp moved on, I got the opportunity to coach the first team,” he said.
“We were very young and we were struggling to avoid relegation,” he recalled. “We kept them up and it was great experience. We both learned so much and we spent a lot of time together.”
When Pulis was sacked, Trusson was staggered to be offered the job as his replacement but turned it down out of loyalty to his friend.
The pair have since worked together at various clubs. For example, he was a senior scout at Stoke City and head of recruitment at West Brom.
“I’ve worked for him as a scout at pretty much every club he’s been at,” said Trusson, who cites trust, respect and judgement as the attributes Pulis saw in him.
Trusson was also once marketing manager for football-themed restaurant Football, Football in London – he managed to woo Sean Bean, the actor who is a well-known Blades fanatic, to the opening – and he had a marketing job for the PFA.
He runs his own online soccer coaching scheme and was working as a European scout for Celtic when, in an unexpected return to football’s frontline in November 2020, he was appointed assistant manager of Sheffield Wednesday.
Assistant manager at Wednesday
Pulis replaced Garry Monk at Hillsborough and turned to Trusson as his no.2. In that interview with The Star, Edwards said: “He’s a great lad. I was slightly surprised to see him get the job at Wednesday, but it was completely understandable.
“He’s a clever bloke, knows his football and has stayed in the game all this time, which is to his credit. His experience of scouting, coaching and having played in several different positions makes him a massive asset to any football club, I’d say.”
Edwards recalled how his former teammate had an eye for coaching from a young age. “He was always keen to get into that, he always wanted to lend a hand to the coaches,” he said.
“Some players would get off as quickly as they could to their families or whatever they were doing with their time. He wasn’t like that, he bought into the club thing. Some players were always around the place and he was like that, very understanding and willing to help out.
“I had massive fall-outs with the odd person, you know how it is, but I never saw Truss like that. He was always so calm and understanding of other people’s opinion. That’s how and why he’s stayed in the game throughout all this time. That either comes naturally to you or it doesn’t.
“I remember he always had a way of talking to people, whether that’s players or fans or board members or coaches. That’s stuck with him today.”
IT seems extraordinary to think Robert Isaac had to wait FOURTEEN MONTHS to experience a win as a Brighton player after joining the club from Chelsea.
The young defender who had realised every schoolboy’s dream by playing for the team he’d always supported left a disgruntled dressing room at Stamford Bridge only to join a side sliding inexorably toward the relegation trapdoor of what is now the Championship.
“I must admit it was a bit depressing at first because we just couldn’t do anything right,” Isaac told Dave Beckett in an Albion matchday programme article. “We just had no luck at all; if we had I think we might well have survived in Division Two.”
Isaac also appears to have gone out of the frying pan into the fire. Telling thegoldstonewrap.com how he’d left Chelsea because the management was losing support of the players and he wanted regular first team football, he added: “When I joined Brighton in February 1987 they were in freefall. The dressing room was even more at odds with the manager than at Chelsea.
“Barry Lloyd dropped Dean Saunders, our only hope of surviving the drop. I found Barry rather rude. He’d blank me in the corridor and make me train on my own.”
The young defender made his Seagulls debut on 21 February 1987 in a 2-1 defeat at home to Oldham Athletic and featured in four draws and five defeats by the season’s dismal end.
Back at what was for so long Albion’s normal level of third tier football, Lloyd’s side did begin to pick up points – but Isaac wasn’t involved because of a groin strain and a troublesome hernia injury that sidelined him for months.
“I had stomach trouble quite a lot but no-one could put their finger on the problem until I saw a specialist in Harley Street,” he explained.
“After the operation, I was out of action for the best part of six months and at times I didn’t think I would get back to full fitness. I had around 40 internal stitches and even when I began playing again they would stretch and pull and I felt sick after games.”
It wasn’t until March 1988, with Albion in sixth spot, that Lloyd shook things up, initially drafting Isaac in at right-back in place of Kevan Brown, and then selecting him to replace suspended captain – and Isaac’s former Chelsea teammate – Doug Rougvie at centre back alongside Steve Gatting.
Isaac also stepped in when Rougvie missed a couple of games with a ‘flu virus and, although a win in Seagulls’ colours continued to elude him in his first three games back in the side (a defeat and two draws), he kept the no.5 shirt ahead of the rugged Scot. That elusive win finally came in a 2-1 away win at Notts County on 4 April.
Five wins and a draw followed and the successful run-in saw promotion gained as divisional runners-up behind Sunderland. Isaac was one of three former Chelsea players in that back four, with Gary Chivers (who’d arrived from Watford) at right-back and Keith Dublin at left-back.
Dublin had played for England under 19s with Isaac three years earlier. They both played four games in Dave Sexton’s side at the Toulon Tournament in the south of France in 1985 (England beat Cameroon 1-0 and Mexico 2-0, lost 2-0 to the USSR and succumbed 3-1 to France in the final at the Stade Mayol in Toulon).
Sadly, the subsequent fortunes of the two players went in opposite directions: Dublin went on to become such a success with the Seagulls that he was the 1989-90 Player of the Year and was sold to Watford for £275,000; the injury-beset Isaac had to quit the game after only 33 matches in a Brighton shirt.
After Albion bounced back to the second tier, the defender played in the first 11 matches of the 1988-89 season – eight of which were defeats – but his appearance in a 1-0 defeat away to Leicester turned out to be his last as an Albion player.
“I got injured at Leicester,” he recalled. “I didn’t feel it until the next day and then it really hit me. My knee just blew up. Come Monday morning I couldn’t even walk.”
He required an operation to repair the patella tendon in his left knee and, as he sought to regain fitness, spent a fortnight at the National Rehabilitation Centre at Lilleshall.
Meanwhile, Lloyd signed experienced central defender Larry May (whose own playing career would be ended by injury later that season) and, subsequently, Nicky Bissett.
A programme item in the 1989-90 season reminded supporters that Isaac was still around, although he hadn’t played at all throughout 1989.
Looking ahead to 1990, Isaac said: “I just hope I have a better year. I’d like to think that I deserve it after all the frustrations of the last few years with two major operations.”
Sadly, it didn’t happen and in August 1990, he was forced to quit football. After retiring, he worked as a chauffeur for the Maktoums, the ruling family in Dubai, before running his own vehicle business.
Born in Hackney on 30 November 1965, Isaac was Chelsea through and through from an early age.
“We lived in Chelsea and my great grandfather went to the first ever match at Stamford Bridge,” he told thegoldstonewrap.com. “My family have been going to matches home and away since. I went to see Chelsea play Stoke in the (1972) League Cup Final aged six.”
Isaac went on to join the club as a junior, made his reserve team debut at the tender age of 15 and was named Chelsea’s young player of the year in 1984.
It was on 9 October 1984 that his promising career could have been snuffed out before it had even begun: it’s a horrifying tale, told the following day on the front page of The Sun, and covered in detail by that1980sportsblog.
Three knife-wielding Millwall thugs slashed his back from his shoulder to the base of his spine in a dark alley near the south London club’s notorious old stadium, The Den.
Isaac needed 55 stitches to repair the damage and only the thickness of a leather coat he was wearing prevented the wound being potentially life-threatening.
Remarkably, later the same season, in March, he had recovered well enough to make his Chelsea first team debut in a 3-1 win at Watford, although Eddie Niedzwiecki, a Chelsea coach who later worked with Mark Hughes for Wales and at several clubs, told Kelvin Barker’s Celery! Representing Chelsea in the 1980s: “He was a young, up-and-coming apprentice at the time and luckily he managed to pull through, although he never really recovered from it.”
In the 1985-86 season, Isaac played two league cup games for Chelsea and three times in the league. The following season saw him get a mini-run in the side, playing four consecutive league games in November, but his fifth match – a 4-0 home defeat by Wimbledon in which Rougvie was sent off in the first 10 minutes for headbutting John Fashanu – proved to be his last.
The website sporting-heroes.net said of him: “A steady, reliable centre-half and occasional full-back, Robert did little wrong during his time in the Chelsea first-team, but was unfortunate to play for the club at a time when Colin Pates, Joe McLaughlin and, a little later, Steve Wicks, were all demonstrating their considerable talents at the heart of the defence.”
Isaac asked for a transfer after a disagreement with manager John Hollins and his assistant Ernie Walley, and that led to his transfer to Brighton for a £50,000 fee.
FULL-BACK Kevan Brown made more than 120 appearances for Southampton reserves during three years as a young professional but it took a move east along the coast to Brighton to play league football.
Brown arrived at the Goldstone Ground for a fee of £7,500 shortly after Barry Lloyd had taken over from Alan Mullery early in 1987.
Lloyd preferred the youngster from Andover as right-back to the ageing Les Berry, who’d joined on a free transfer the previous summer.
The club put Brown into digs in Hove (run by Val and Dave Tillson) with another young player who had moved away from home, former Everton youngster Darren Hughes.
In a programme profile feature, Brown said Hughes had been a big help in him settling into his new surroundings. “He has been showing me around the area and we’ve become good friends,” he said. “I’m glad I wasn’t put in a hotel on my own.”
Unfortunately, Brown was only on the winning side twice in the 15 matches he played that season and Albion were relegated from the second tier in rock bottom place.
Brown was a permanent fixture in the no.2 shirt for 46 league and cup matches in the 1987-88 season until the arrival of experienced defender Gary Chivers from Watford.
With promotion in sight, while Lloyd dropped the experienced captain Doug Rougvie in favour of the relatively untried Robert Isaac in the centre of defence, he saw Chivers rather than Brown as the better option at right-back.
Chivers went straight into the side for the promotion run-in and the 2-1 home win against Walsall on 12 March 1988 was the last time Brown appeared that season.
He played in the opening two games of the following season but Chivers on the right and Keith Dublin on the left were Lloyd’s preferred full-back pairing, and Brown found himself on the outside looking in.
Born on 2 January 1966, Brown was an associate schoolboy with Southampton at the age of 13, following in the footsteps of his father Peter, who had played for Saints in the late 1950s.
Brown said in an Albion profile feature that his father and Saints youth development officer Bob Higgins had been the biggest influences on his career, although Higgins later drew opprobrium.
Lawrie McMenemy awarded Brown a professional contract but neither he nor his successor Chris Nicholl elevated the young full-back to the first team, although he did get to play against Manchester United in Trinidad and Tobago while on tour with Southampton.
Having had his fill of reserve team football at Saints, rather than repeat the experience at Brighton, he moved on to Aldershot in the autumn of 1988.
He spent four years there and made quite a few more appearances than the 175 that the record books show: the 1991-92 season records having been expunged after the club went out of business.
Aldershot found themselves in a worse financial situation than the Albion were to suffer later that decade and the club was finally wound up owing £1.2m on 25 March 1992.
Five days earlier, Brown played in a match – alongside future Albion hero Robbie Reinelt – that was the last game Aldershot would play.
Although his next career move saw him drop out of the league, he enjoyed huge success in terms of silverware and recognition.
He joined Geoff Chapple’s Woking in the Football Conference and captained The Cards to three FA Trophy wins – in 1994, 1995 and 1997 – with veteran former Albion winger Clive Walker the side’s talisman.
In addition to leading his team up the steps at Wembley to lift the silverware, Brown’s performances with Woking earned him international recognition with the England semi-professional ‘C’ side.
He made his debut in a 1-0 win over Wales at Huish Park, Yeovil, on 28 February 1995. He made three more appearances that year: away to Netherlands (0-0) on 11 April, home on 19 May (played in St Albans) against the Highland League (3-4), then away to Gibraltar (3-2) on 31 May.
His fifth and final appearance was on 2 April the following year as England beat the Netherlands 3-1 at the Nene Park home of Rushden & Diamonds.
Brown’s loyalty to Woking – he made more than 350 appearances across six years – was rewarded with a testimonial game at home to West Ham United in August 1998.
More than 5,500 turned out at the Kingfield Stadium to see the Hammers edge it 2-1 with goals from Frank Lampard and Steve Lomas. Rio Ferdinand limped off early in the match and Ian Wright played up front for West Ham.
The game took place five months after Brown had moved on from Woking to Yeovil Town.
Chapple’s former assistant, Colin Lippiatt, had taken charge at Huish Park in January that year, having joined three months earlier as a coach under Graham Roberts.
One of his first moves was to sign Brown and teammate Steve Thompson (who ended up staying with The Glovers for ten years). Brown stayed for two years, making a total of 88 appearances, latterly playing under Thompson when he took over as caretaker manager following Lippiatt’s departure.
The arrival of former Chelsea defender David Webb as manager in March 2000 spelled the end of Brown’s time at Yeovil and he returned to Woking to play a further 25 games as they battled against relegation from the Conference in the 2000-2001 season.
Playing part-time had enabled Brown to pursue a teaching career and in April 2007 he was appointed director of sport at independent co-educational St Francis School in Pewsey, Wiltshire.
Brown’s devotion to the club who set him on the road remains undimmed and on his Twitter account @KevanBrown05 he declares himself a Saints season ticket holder.
THESE DAYS Gary Chivers is a familiar face around the hospitality lounges at Brighton’s Amex Stadium and Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, the two clubs where he spent most of his playing days.
His association with Chelsea goes back to the tender age of 10, when he joined their academy, and he went on to play in their first team for five years. After six years with Brighton, he played out the final two years of his 16-year career at AFC Bournemouth under fledgling boss Tony Pulis. Among his teammates were Mark Morris, Warren Aspinall, Paul Wood and Steve Cotterill, all of whom also played for the Seagulls.
Born in Stockwell, London, on 15 May 1960, Chivers started supporting Chelsea at the age of eight, and, like many future professionals, got a foothold in the game at Stepney-based development club Senrab.
He told journalist Nick Szczepanik in a 2018 Backpass magazine article (below): “My brother had been training with Chelsea and my dad took me along when I was ten, and I went into their academy about two years before I should have.”
Although initially a midfielder, coach Ken Shellito turned him into a defender and Chivers’ versatility in defence meant he could play centrally or in either full-back berth. Among his early contemporaries were John Bumstead, Colin Pates and Micky Fillery: Pates would later join him at Brighton.
With Chelsea already relegated, Chivers made his first team debut on 21 April 1979, aged 18, as he recounted in a December 2017 interview on the Chelsea website. Irish legend Danny Blanchflower was the manager who handed him his debut, at Stamford Bridge against Middlesbrough, which finished in a 2-1 win in front of just 12,007.
Chivers did enough to keep his place for the last four games of the season, and he told Szczepanik how in one he had to mark Arsenal’s Malcolm Macdonald and another Manchester United’s Joe Jordan.
In the second tier the following season, an injury to first choice right-back Gary Locke gave Chivers a chance to establish himself under new manager Geoff Hurst, and he retained the shirt for much of the season.
In total he made 148 appearances for Chelsea, scoring four goals, one of which was voted runner-up in Match of the Day’s Goal of the Season competition in 1980-81.
He got on the end of a Clive Walker cross following a delightful flowing move as top-of-the-table Newcastle were beaten 6-0 by second-placed Chelsea.
Chivers deputised at left-back for the injured Chris Hutchings towards the end of the 1982-83 season, by which time John Neal had taken over as manager. Chelsea were at a low ebb and only a point from a goalless draw against Middlesbrough on 14 May 1983 saved from them from relegation to the old Third Division. Neal overhauled the playing staff, and Chivers was amongst the casualities.
Explaining how he didn’t see eye to eye with Neal, he added: “I didn’t want to go, but you have to play games.”
He briefly switched to relegated Swansea City, under John Toshack, but only stayed six months as managers came and went in rapid succession. Seeking a move back to London, he joined QPR under Terry Venables – “the best manager I ever played for” – where he played alongside John Byrne, another player he’d be reunited with at the Albion.
At the end of his contract, he moved on to Watford during the uncomfortable spell when former Wimbledon boss Dave Bassett was in charge, but he got the feeling he didn’t fit in. Brighton boss Barry Lloyd, himself a former Chelsea player, agreed a £40,000 fee with the Hornets as Chivers dropped down a division to third-tier Albion, where he linked up with some familiar ex-Chelsea faces in Doug Rougvie, Robert Isaac and Keith Dublin.
He explained to Szczepanik: “I decided to go to Brighton because I had a look at their fixtures and I even asked for a promotion bonus because I was so confident they would go up.”
The confidence was well-placed because promotion was duly gained, and Chivers went on to become part of the furniture for the next six years, including playing in the play-off final at Wembley in 1990-91.
An incident that led to a Notts County goal still rankles with Chivers. “At 0-0, I played the ball off Tommy Johnson for a goal kick and David Elleray, the referee, gave a corner that they scored from. I saw him a few years ago and went over to set the facts straight. He said: ‘You’re not still going on about that from 20 years ago?’ and I said: ‘Too right I am!’ I walked away from him because it was winding me up, but it was because of how much it would have meant to the club.
“We would have gone on from there if we had got into the First Division but instead we ended up having to sell Mike Small and Budgie (John Byrne) and we went down at the end of the next season.”
Albion played a benefit match for Chivers against Crystal Palace just before the start of the 1992-93 season and Chivers left the club in 1993, not because he wanted to, but because players on “decent money” had to go.
His enthusiasm for the club continues to this day, bantering with supporters in corporate hospitality and the Albion club website carried an article about the former defender’s divided loyalties when the Albion entertained Chelsea on New Year’s Day.
HISTORY may have judged Barry Lloyd’s reign as Brighton manager unfairly: while bleak times cloud the memory, the former Fulham captain did chalk up some successes.
For instance, it’s worth remembering he put together two of the most entertaining strike partnerships in Albion’s history.
However, when managers start getting involved in the boardroom, it’s probably not going to end well and that certainly proved to be the case after Lloyd was handed the role of managing director.
Frankly, there is probably not enough space in one blog post to cover the various off-the-field shenanigans that were an ugly backdrop to the Lloyd era.
From an outsider’s perspective, it appeared he was the unfortunate public figure put up to deal with a huge amount of flak generated by others wielding power in the background.
Inheriting the hotseat at a time of financial turmoil, from a distance it could be said he did well to win promotion as well as coming mighty close to restoring the elite status lost in 1983.
But fans who had seen huge success under high profile bosses were not best pleased to see their club’s fortunes put in the hands of someone who had previously only managed outside of the league.
Let’s look first at Lloyd’s playing career because, from early on, he was obviously a shrewd observer who made contacts he would be able to call on in later years.
Born in Hillingdon on 19 February 1949, Barry’s early footballing ability was rewarded with selection for the Middlesex and South of England schoolboy sides. He was signed up by Chelsea and was in their 1964-65 youth team alongside former Albion right-back Stewart Henderson in defence and future England international and Chelsea legend Peter Osgood up front.
In an extended interview with Fulham’s club historian, Dennis Turner, Lloyd recalled: “I chose Chelsea because under Tommy Docherty’s management they were an exciting team, with the likes of Osgood, Charlie Cooke and Bobby Tambling.”
Former Albion player Dave Sexton was the reserve-team manager – “a really nice man and terrific coach” – and Lloyd says in his four years at Stamford Bridge he learned a lot.
He made his debut in the top flight in April 1967 aged just 18, but competition for places was tough and, after only 10 first team appearances, in January 1969 he moved to neighbours Fulham with their centre half John Dempsey moving in the opposite direction.
Fulham were struggling for survival in the old Second Division having been relegated from the top flight and the man who signed him, Bill Dodgin, was their fourth manager in a year.
They dropped down into the old Third Division but as part of his rebuilding, Dodgin made Lloyd captain in succession to the legendary Johnny Haynes, who was coming to the end of his career.
Lloyd is pictured below getting in a header against the Albion at the Goldstone, watched by John Napier (left) and Stewart Henderson. The packed East Terrace never looked like that by the time Lloyd was sitting in the Albion manager’s chair.
Fulham regained their tier two status in 1971 when they went up from Division III as champions. Manager Dodgin was sent packing in the summer of 1972, though, and Alec Stock took over, famously bringing in a number of top name players nearing the end of their careers – notably one Alan Mullery, along with Bobby Moore.
Lloyd remained part of the set-up but when Fulham surprised everyone by reaching the FA Cup Final against West Ham in 1975, he had to be content with what in those days was the single substitute’s berth on the bench, and didn’t get on.
Nonetheless, he chalked up 290 games for Fulham, before having brief spells at Hereford and Brentford (where Dodgin was the manager) and ending his playing days with Houston Hurricanes in the United States.
“I lived in Texas for a year. The league was never going to last but I learnt a lot about how the game can be promoted. They were very good at that over there,” he said in a matchday programme article. “Everyone was made to feel part of the club. It was an interesting experience; I’ve never regretted going.”
During his brief time at Hereford, Lloyd had an eye to the future and took his full coaching badge at Lilleshall, which wasn’t far away.
After his time in America came to an end, he got his first managerial experience with Yeovil Town (then a non-league club) and then headed to Sussex where he took Worthing from the Second Division of the old Isthmian League to runners-up in the Premier Division.
It was in 1986 when he got the call from Mullery to become reserve and youth team manager at the Albion. Dodgin was also on the staff.
In January 1987, Mullery was unceremoniously dumped and Lloyd came out of the shadows to take charge. Perhaps what fans didn’t know at the time was that the day after Mullery left, Lloyd was summoned to a meeting with chairman Bryan Bedson and told to “get rid of everyone” because the club was going bust.
Against that backdrop, it was 15 games before the side managed to register a win under Lloyd and, unsurprisingly, Albion were relegated. Some of the mainstays of the side, like Danny Wilson, Eric Young and Terry Connor were sold. Fortunately, Lloyd was able to re-invest part of the proceeds from those sales in some buys who gelled together to form a promotion-winning team.
He returned to former club Chelsea to secure the signing of centre back Doug Rougvie who was made captain and he paired left winger Garry Nelson, a £72,500 signing from Plymouth, with tenacious Scot Kevin Bremner, from Reading, to lead the line. Nelson in particular was a revelation, scoring 32 goals and voted player of the season.
Lloyd reckoned the backbone of the side were two other shrewd signings: Alan Curbishley and Gary Chivers. “Alan was a very level-headed guy, an excellent passer and really disciplined,” he told Spencer Vignes in a matchday programme article. “Chivers was exactly the same, and a real joker at the same time. But there were a lot of great individuals in that side.”
The following two seasons saw Albion maintain their status with lower half finishes but, with the Goldstone Ground crumbling and debts mounting, there was little investment in the team and Lloyd had to use all his contacts to try to find some gems.
One was former England international winger Mark Barham, another was a former Soviet international, Sergei Gotsmanov, a real crowd-pleaser obviously capable of playing at a higher level (as was proved when he opted to join Southampton the following season).
Then, in 1990-91, he rescued two forwards languishing with also-ran clubs in Europe and together John Byrne and Mike Small were superb in attack as Brighton made it to the play-off final at Wembley only to lose 3-1 to Neil Warnock’s Notts County.
No-one had been expecting Brighton to get a tilt at promotion, particularly as the season had once again begun with big money departures of players like Keith Dublin and John Keeley.
But with Byrne and Small on fire and former Fulham and Chelsea winger Clive Walker added to the squad they clawed their way into contention and famously clinched the play-off spot on the last game of the season, courtesy of Dean Wilkins’ curling free kick past Ipswich Town’s Phil Parkes.
Another crucial signing that season was thanks to one of Lloyd’s old Chelsea teammates, George Graham. The Arsenal boss loaned cultured central defender Colin Pates to the Seagulls and he proved a mainstay in the final third of the season. Pates would later sign permanently.
Even though they were clearly beaten by the better side on the day, looking back now, I don’t think anyone could have realised what bad news it was for Albion not to win the final against County.
Starved of the funds promotion would have delivered, Lloyd was forced to sell star performers Small and Byrne and, 11 months after appearing at Wembley, Albion were relegated back to the third tier.
Lloyd had tried to repeat his previous successful European scouting mission with two former league players, but the hapless Mark Farrington turned out to be one of the worst buys ever, managing to score one solitary goal while former Arsenal youngster Raphael Meade fared slightly better but only just got into double figures.
Mark Gall, a £45,000 signing from Maidstone, arrived towards the end of October and ended up top goalscorer and was player of the season, but his 14 goals were still not enough to spare the team from the drop.
In the following season, the very survival of the club was under serious threat with the taxman chasing an unpaid bill. Lloyd rescued the club at the 11th hour by managing to secure a £350,000 fee for goalkeeper Mark Beeney (bought two years earlier from Maidstone for £25,000), former Albion winger Howard Wilkinson buying him for League Champions Leeds United.
With the financial issues continuing in the background, a run of only two wins in 18 league games in the first half of the 1993-94 season eventually brought the Lloyd era to an end – the axe wielded by chief executive David Bellotti, who had arrived only a month earlier.
Fans who were euphoric to see Lloyd go might well have felt differently if they’d known what would eventually transpire, but that’s a story for another day.
The record books show Lloyd made a total profit of £1.2m in his seven years at the helm and he certainly knew his way around the transfer market, particularly in Europe, when it was a lot less fashionable than it is today.
Another of his discoveries was Dean Wilkins, playing for FC Zwolle in Holland, and in 2007 – 14 years after he had left the Albion – Lloyd returned as chief scout during Wilkins’ reign as first team manager.
Also part of the set-up then was director of football Martin Hinshelwood, who had been Lloyd’s assistant during his time in the dugout. Lloyd later returned to the club to assist in the recruitment department but retired in 2021.
He died aged 75 on 28 September 2024 and players in the Chelsea v Brighton game that afternoon wore black armbands in tribute to him.
FOOTBALL things came in threes for striker John Byrne. He had three different spells playing up front for the Albion and he featured for three different clubs under manager Denis Smith.
Add to that, on three occasions, he was signed by clubs who he’d played well against. And, for QPR fans, he was also the third no.10 who got the crowd off their feet at Loftus Road, following in the footsteps of Rodney Marsh and Stan Bowles.
Ironically, it was former Albion boss Alan Mullery who took Byrne to Rangers, in 1984, during his six turbulent months as manager. Mullery took over from his former Spurs teammate Terry Venables, who’d left to manage Barcelona.
While Mullers’ reign at Loftus Road was brief, the skilful forward he brought in stayed four years and won plenty of admirers amongst the Hoops supporters.
Alongside former Albion striker Michael Robinson, he was part of the QPR team that lost to Oxford (a club he would play for later in his career) in the 1986 League Cup Final (QPR’s sub that day was Liam Rosenior’s dad, Leroy).
Wembley wasn’t to be a happy hunting ground for Byrne, though. That 1986 defeat was the first of three occasions he made it onto the iconic turf, each time ending up on the losing side.
Byrne’s career had begun with basement side York City at 16 after Mike Walker, a taxi driver pal of York’s boss, the former Manchester United manager Wilf McGuinness, spotted him playing local football in Manchester (he was born on 1 February 1961 and raised in Wythenshawe).
Charlie Wright, the former Bolton and Charlton goalkeeper took over as manager and gave Byrne his first pro contract but it was his successor, Denis Smith, the ex Stoke City stopper, who arrived in 1982, together with his coach, former striker Viv Busby, who set Byrne on the road to success.
He scored an impressive 55 goals in 175 appearances for York between 1979 and 1984 and his signing by Mullery for QPR came after he did well in a two-legged Milk Cup tie against the Hoops.
In an odd symmetry, his later move from QPR to Le Havre came after the sides had met in a friendly, and the pattern continued when his eventual move to Brighton came after they too had played Le Havre pre-season.
But back to London where, in his four years at Loftus Road, he scored 30 times in 126 appearances.
QPR fans recall fondly a game when Byrne scored twice in a 6-0 thrashing of Chelsea and, some years later, in an interview with QPRnet, he explained how the drubbing riled the Chelsea, and later Brighton, defender Doug Rougvie to the extent that Byrne and fellow striker Gary Bannister finished the game playing out wide to avoid getting a kicking!
He also scored a winner against Manchester United, the team he’d followed as a boy, and in an interview with Sussex Life in 2010, he said: “I felt a bit like a traitor!”
It was in the year following his move to QPR that he made his international debut for the Republic of Ireland – he qualified to play for them because his dad, Jim, was from County Carlow.
He was an international teammate of Chris Hughton and Mark Lawrenson and between 1985 and 1993 collected a total of 23 caps, scoring four goals, two of which came in a 3-1 win over Turkey.
Although part of Eire’s Euro 88 and 1990 World Cup squads, he didn’t play a game.
Byrne had three spells with Brighton but undoubtedly the most memorable was in the season that ended in heartbreak in the Wembley play-off final against Neil Warnock’s Notts County.
Manager Barry Lloyd had brought him back to the UK from Le Havre for £125,000, shortly after he had been to the World Cup in Italy with the Republic, and successfully partnered him up front with the prolific Mike Small.
Byrne admitted in a 2010 matchday programme interview how he thought he was joining Sunderland that summer but his agent Paul Stretford’s demands put off the Wearsiders and the striker ended up writing to all the English First and Second Division clubs looking for an alternative club.
Surprisingly, he didn’t get many replies, but Brighton did. “Barry Lloyd got in touch and the rest is history,” said Byrne.
It turned out Lloyd had long been an admirer. He wrote in the matchday programme: “I first tried to sign him two years ago, before he went to Le Havre. He was at QPR then and I was vying with Sunderland for his signature when he finally decided to broaden his footballing experience by moving to France.”
Lloyd revealed how he had consulted with Republic of Ireland boss Jack Charlton to check Byrne had lost none of his old skills and ambition. “He is an intelligent player who moves well across the line and I am sure he is looking on his move to us as an ideal opportunity to regain his place in the Republic’s squad for the European Championships in two years’ time,” said Lloyd.
Albion have had some decent striking partnerships over the years but not since Ward and Mellor in the Seventies had a pair captured the imagination in quite the same way as Byrne and Small. Between them they spearheaded Albion’s push for promotion to the elite.
The climax to the season was a classic case of ‘if onlys’ where ‘Budgie’ was concerned: if only he hadn’t been injured in that final game against Ipswich, he would have been fit to play from the start in the final.
There again, if he hadn’t been fouled on the edge of the box, Albion wouldn’t have won the free kick from which Dean Wilkins scored to earn Albion the play-off spot!
With his right leg heavily strapped, Byrne appeared as a substitute in the final. When the Albion story came to an unhappy ending, and the expected financial boost of playing in the top division didn’t materialise, Lloyd had to cash in his prize assets: Small went to West Ham for £400,000 and Byrne was sold to Sunderland for twice what Brighton had paid for him.
Reflecting on Byrne’s impact, Lloyd told Albion’s matchday programme: “He was outstanding for us, he really was. His workrate was excellent.
“He could pass a ball, cross a ball and he knew where the back of the net was. We didn’t have a lot of money to spend but we got something special with him which very nearly got us into what is now the Premier League.”
Byrne famously scored in every round of the FA Cup as Sunderland marched to the final in 1992, and, almost as famously, missed a great chance from six yards as the Wearsiders lost to Liverpool.
After a season at Sunderland, Byrne moved to Millwall, where things didn’t work out for him, and in 1993 he returned to Brighton on loan for a brief seven-game spell in which he scored twice.
He then had two seasons at Oxford, when he scored 18 times in 55 appearances, before returning once more to the Albion to play 39 games in the 1995-96 season. He scored six times, but, it would be fair to say, he was a shadow of the player who graced that 1990-91 season.
Byrne didn’t let the grass grow under his feet when he packed up playing – he learned how to take care of other people’s by becoming a podiatrist.
Followers of the Albion also got to hear his dulcet Mancunian tones on the radio as a summariser on the local radio station’s coverage of Brighton games.
Although initially a midfielder, coach Ken Shellito turned him into a defender and Chivers’ versatility in defence meant he could play centrally or in either full-back berth. Among his early contemporaries were John Bumstead, 
He returned to former club Chelsea to secure the signing of centre back 
The climax to the season was a classic case of ‘if onlys’ where ‘Budgie’ was concerned: if only he hadn’t been injured in that final game against Ipswich, he would have been fit to play from the start in the final.
In parallel lines 