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.”
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.
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.
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.
“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.
In parallel lines 