A GOALSCORING scourge of Newcastle United once pulled on the famous black and white stripes – and was booked in three of the five games he played for them!
Baird, who notoriously got himself sent off in the crucial last ever game Brighton played at the Goldstone Ground, led the line in an infamously fiery New Year’s Day derby between Newcastle and Sunderland when the Toon won 3-1 courtesy of a hat-trick by Peter Beardsley.
Jeff Clarke, who’d previously spent seven years at Sunderland and had five games on loan at Brighton at the start of that season, was at the back for Newcastle and future Albion veteran Clive Walker was in attack for the visitors.
A crowd of 36,529 watched the First Division fixture on 1 January 1985 when Sunderland were reduced to nine men through the sendings off of Howard Gayle and Gary Bennett. Baird was one of five bookings made by ref David Scott.
It was Baird’s fourth match for Newcastle after England World Cup winner Jack Charlton signed him on loan from Southampton. He made his debut three days before Christmas 1984 in a 4-0 defeat away to Aston Villa when his former England Schoolboys strike partner Paul Rideout scored a hat-trick. Baird’s only goal for United came in a Boxing Day 2-1 defeat at West Brom.
Three days later, as United lost 3-1 at home to Arsenal, Baird’s involvement was from the bench as a sub for David McCreery. His last game, on 12 January, was another tonking, 4-0 away to champions-in-waiting Everton.
Five years after his Toon cameo, Baird twice stymied Newcastle’s hopes of promotion from the second tier, scoring against them for Leeds in a 1-0 win in December 1989 (it turned out to be his last goal for them) and, after he’d fallen out with manager Howard Wilkinson and been transferred to Middlesbrough in January 1990, netted twice for Boro as they beat Newcastle 4-1 in the last game of the season.
Baird nets for Boro against the Toon
Leeds finished that campaign as second tier champions (Newcastle, who by then had Mark McGhee up front, were five points behind in third place) and Baird’s goals in Boro’s win put paid to the Magpies’ hopes of automatic promotion. To add salt to the wound, Newcastle lost to Sunderland in the semi-final of the play-offs.
Six years later Baird was Brighton’s captain in the penultimate must-win game of the season, when Doncaster Rovers were the visitors.
Albion needed all three points to give themselves a chance of avoiding relegation out of the league when they travelled to Hereford the following week for the final fixture of that tumultuous season.
What they really didn’t need was for the captain to get himself sent off after just 18 minutes of the match!
Talking to The Athletic about it in a 2022 interview, Baird recalled: “I was fired up for it. Darren (Moore) had come right through me, literally in the first minute. The referee didn’t give anything.
“Then he came through me again, and the referee gave a foul. The third time, I lost it. I just turned around and tried to wallop him. There was a big melee. Everyone knew what was at stake.”
Both players were dismissed (it was one of 11 sendings off in Baird’s career) and thankfully Stuart Storer’s memorably-scrambled goal in the 67th minute settled the game in Albion’s favour, although Baird admitted: “It was nerve-racking. I felt guilty that I’d let my team-mates down, let everybody down by getting sent off. It was a massive relief when we won.”
Thankfully, disciplinary rules were different back then (bans were only applied 14 days after the offence) and Baird was able to play his part in the match at Hereford when a 1-1 draw ensured Albion stayed up and The Bulls went down.
Baird’s exploits for the Albion highlighted in the matchday programme
Brighton were the tenth and last league club Baird had played for and he had only ended up with the Seagulls because of a pre-season falling out with Plymouth Argyle manager Neil Warnock.
Living near Southampton, only a 15-minute drive from Brighton manager Jimmy Case, a move east along the coast made good geographical sense, and a £35,000 fee took him to the Goldstone at the start of the 1996-97 season.
“Whenever I’d played against Brighton, I seemed to score,” Baird told The Athletic. “I loved the Goldstone Ground and there was the lure of playing for Jimmy.”
Although born in Rotherham on 1 April 1964, Baird had moved to Southampton with his family, via Glasgow, when he was a young lad, his father having sailed from the port when he worked on the Queen Mary.
After surviving meningitis as a six-year-old, Baird’s footballing ability saw him turn out for Bitterne Saints, St. Mary’s College, Southampton, Southampton and Hampshire Schools. He joined Southampton on schoolboy terms after he’d been spotted in the same boys’ team, Sarisbury Sparks, as Lawrie McMenemy’s son, Sean.
Baird won two England schoolboy caps: he was in England’s Victory Shield team that beat Wales 2-1 at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground on 27 April 1979, playing alongside Rideout and winger Mark Walters, who went on to star for Aston Villa, Rangers and Liverpool.
In the same competition, he also played at St James’ Park – two days after Brighton had won 3-1 on the same pitch to win promotion to the top division for the first time in the club’s history.
On 7 May 1979, young England drew 1-1 with Scotland and 14-year-old Rideout’s goal was enough to enable England to retain the Victory Shield. The following month, Baird was an unused sub when England drew 2-2 with West Germany at Wembley.
A Saint with hair!
Baird was offered pro terms by Swindon, but he chose instead to sign for his adopted home town club. However, with McMenemy preferring the more experienced Frank Worthington and Joe Jordan, Baird was restricted to 21 starts and three sub appearances for Saints, and, after that loan spell at Newcastle, he moved to Leeds.
His two spells at Leeds (sandwiched either side of an unhappy time at Portsmouth) produced 50 goals in more than 160 appearances and he was in the Leeds side alongside Mervyn Day and Micky Adams that lost the 1986-87 Division Two play-off final to a Charlton Athletic team that included his future Brighton boss Steve Gritt and teammate John Humphrey.
Baird scored 19 goals that season for Billy Bremner’s side, four of them in the FA Cup as United reached the semi-final where they were beaten 3-2 by eventual cup winners Coventry City.
He had taken Saints’ teammate Jordan’s advice to move to Leeds and his next move was to Scotland where Jordan was in charge of Hearts. He later played under the Scottish international striker at Bristol City too.
The Pilgrim who fell out with Neil Warnock
Baird scored six in 29 appearances for Plymouth before that move to Brighton. Discipline might have been a problem but Baird scored eight goals in 10 games from January 1997 as nine wins and a draw at the Goldstone went a huge way to enabling Albion to escape the drop.
As Albion began the 1997-98 season in exile at Gillingham, Baird began the campaign with a three-match ban for that red card against Doncaster — and it wasn’t long before he was seeing red again!
It came in the 13th game of the season and it was certainly unlucky for Baird, well, unlucky in that a linesman spotted his off-the-ball headbutt on a Chester defender. Gritt publicly condemned Baird’s “out of order” behaviour and stripped him of the captaincy.
The following month, with another knee operation required, a surgeon advised him to pack in the game and he left Brighton in December that year having scored 14 goals in 41 appearances in 16 months.
“At least we kept Brighton up,” he told The Athletic. “There were a multitude of problems, it was a weird period, but it was a big thing.”
Post-Brighton, Baird ended up coaching in Hong Kong and was put in charge of the national side for three Asian Cup qualifiers, playing in Jakarta in front of 75,000 people, and then in Cambodia in front of 1,200 people. “It was certainly an experience, that is for sure,” he said.
Baird eventually returned to Hampshire, developed business interests in the vehicle sales and leasing and sports gear industries, while keeping his football links going in non-league circles: at Eastleigh, Sutton United and Havant & Waterlooville.
BEING LET GO by the Albion as an apprentice didn’t stop Kevin Russell from going on to enjoy a multi-club league career as a player and a coach involved in no fewer than eight play-off finals and promotions.
A talented teenager good enough to earn selection for the England Youth team, Russell didn’t progress beyond Brighton’s youth and reserve sides between 1982 and 1984.
Although he was a regular goalscorer in the junior sides, a falling out with manager Chris Cattlin saw him depart the club without earning a competitive first team call-up.
Hailing from Paulsgrove in north Portsmouth, Russell returned home and linked up with his hometown club to complete his scholarship under World Cup winner Alan Ball.
Ball also gave him his first team debut but he only had eight first team outings for Pompey. It wasn’t until he joined Fourth Division Wrexham for £10,000 that his career began to take off and he was in the Wrexham side that reached the 1989 play-off final where they lost 2-1 to Frank Clark’s Leyton Orient. In the first of two spells in north Wales, playing at centre forward, Russell scored an impressive 47 goals in 102 games.
Prolific goalscorer for Wrexham
An ever-present in the 1988-89 season, his 25 goals in a total of 60 league and cup matches was recognised by his peers when he was selected in the PFA divisional team of the year.
That caught the eye of David Pleat at Leicester City, then playing in the ‘old’ Second Division, and a fee of £175,000 took him to Filbert Street.
At Leicester he played wide right rather than in the centre but he still had a knack for scoring goals and he eventually became something of a cult hero with Foxes supporters for the goals he scored in City’s escape from second tier relegation in 1991 and in their run up to the 1992 play-off final.
However, only a month after joining Leicester he had to undergo a hernia operation that put him out of action for eight weeks. When fit, he was sent out on a month’s loan to Peterborough …and suffered a broken leg!
When ready to play again, his effort to resume match fitness saw him go on another month’s loan, to Fourth Division Cardiff City. In the meantime, Pleat was sacked and Gordon Lee took over. Russell returned as the Foxes fought to avoid relegation to the third tier.
Perhaps inevitably one of the vital goals he scored (on 6 April 1991) was against promotion-seeking Albion in a 3-0 win that helped the Foxes in the hunt to stave off the dreaded drop.
Two years later, after he had moved on to Burnley via Stoke City, Russell’s first goals for the Clarets (above) were also scored in a 3-0 win over the Seagulls.
Born in Portsmouth on 6 December 1966, the nickname Rooster was coined at an early age because his hair formed something of a quiff when he was a boy – ironically, he went prematurely bald but the name stuck.
Russell’s first appearances in Albion’s colours came in the early autumn of 1982 playing in the junior division of the South East Counties League. He was still a 15-year-old schoolboy at the time.
By the spring of 1983, while the Albion first team were edging towards the FA Cup final at Wembley, Russell had stepped up to the reserves, as the matchday programme reported after he’d been involved in a close game against an experienced West Ham second string.
“Kevin Russell is just sixteen and he doesn’t leave school until he has taken his examinations next month,” it said. “But at Upton Park he found himself playing against such experienced men as Trevor Brooking and Jimmy Neighbour.
“Many schoolboys would have given their right arm to play on the same field as Brooking and there was Kevin playing on equal terms.
“Although we lost 2-1, it should be remembered that in Kieran O’Regan, Mark Fleet, Matthew Wiltshire, Gerry McTeague, Gary Howlett, Chris Rodon and Kevin Russell we had seven players under 20, while the Hammers had Paul Allen, Paul Brush and Pat Holland, all of whom have played in European competition, as well as Neighbour and Brooking in their line-up.”
John Shepherd was in charge of the side, aided by John Jackson, who had been signed as goalkeeping cover and was helping out with coaching too.
Russell’s official arrival as an apprentice at Brighton earned a mention in the matchday programme for the home game with Chelsea on 3 September 1983 and he was one of five apprentices on the staff that autumn, together with Dave Ellis, Darron Gearing, Gary Mitchell and Mark Wakefield. Martin Lambert had stepped up to sign as a full professional that summer.
In those days, the youth team played home matches at Lancing College and were looked after by Shepherd and Mick Fogden before experienced George Petchey was brought in to oversee youth development and run the reserves.
It was while a Brighton player that Russell won the first of six England under-18 caps (five starts plus one as sub), and he scored in the first of them – a 2-2 draw with Austria on 6 September 1984 – and in his fourth game, six days later, which England lost 4-1 to Yugoslavia. His strike partner in that side was Manchester City’s Paul Moulden, later an Albion loanee.
With the likes of Terry Connor, Alan Young and Frank Worthington in the first team, and promising youngsters in the reserves, such as Lambert, Rodon and Michael Ring, it is perhaps not surprising that Russell couldn’t break through.
He did have one outing in first team company, though, in a testimonial match for Gary Williams: he scored (along with Young and Connor) in a 3-3 draw against an ex-Albion XI.
The same game saw defender Jim Heggarty appear: like Russell he also went on to play for Burnley without playing a competitive first team game for the Albion.
While on that theme, a frequent partner of Russell’s in the reserves was Ian Muir, another striker who slipped through Albion’s net and ended up scoring goals for Burnley.
After his departure from the Albion in October 1984, Russell made the most of the opportunity Portsmouth presented him to learn from the former Everton, Arsenal and Southampton midfield dynamo Ball.
“I had three years there under him which was fantastic,” Russell told Leicester City club historian John Hutchinson in March 2018. “He was brilliant as a coach and it was very educational. I got the rest of my (under-18) caps at Portsmouth.
“Alan Ball treated us well. I was playing men’s football at 18. I played a few games in the first team and we managed to get promoted into what is now the Premier League.”
Although disappointed to be advised to move on to get more games, Russell’s switch to north Wales was the launchpad for his career, and the beginning of an association with Wrexham that lasted many years.
“It was a gamble worth taking because it meant first team football,” said Russell. “Dixie McNeill was the manager. He used to be a famous striker for them. He was fantastic for me and was an old school kind of manager; a proper man’s manager. It was a good time.”
Mixed fortunes at Leicester City
After Russell’s part in keeping Leicester in the second tier in 1991, he found himself on the outside looking in when Brian Little replaced Gordon Lee as manager and to get some playing time went on a month’s loan to Hereford United and then spent a month at Lou Macari’s Stoke City.
But Little recalled him in February and in his first game back he once again found the net against a former club, scoring in a 2-2 draw with Portsmouth. He kept his place through to the play-off final at Wembley, where they faced Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn Rovers, and lost to a “dodgy penalty” scored by ex-Leicester player Mike Newell.
“It was a very scrappy game. Both teams were under a lot of pressure and never really got into their rhythm,” said Russell. “We had worked so hard that season to get to where we did get to. The result was a big disappointment, but it was an occasion that I’ll never forget.”
A promotion winner with Stoke City
It also turned out to be his last game for Leicester because that summer he returned to third tier Stoke on a permanent basis. He is fondly remembered for his part in Stoke winning promotion in 1992-93, scoring six goals in 39 league and cup matches (plus 11 as a sub), but he moved on again, this time to Burnley.
Third-tier Burnley signed him from Stoke for £150,000 (or was it £95,000 – I’ve seen both prices quoted) in June 1993 and, although he only stayed for eight months at Turf Moor, he scored eight goals in 35 games (plus two as sub) in Jimmy Mullen’s Clarets side.
Two of those goals – his first for Burnley – were scored against the Albion. I was at Turf Moor for a midweek game on 14 September 1993 when Russell scored with only a minute on the clock and he got a tap-in on 47 minutes in a 3-0 stroll for the home side. Steve Davis got Burnley’s third.
Brighton were a very different club to the one Russell had left in 1984, though. With a win in a League Cup match their only victory in the opening eight matches, it was the beginning of the end of Barry Lloyd’s tumultuous reign in charge, against a backdrop of financial hardship and boardroom mismanagement off the pitch.
Russell’s habit of scoring against his former clubs manifested itself again two days after Christmas, when he netted in a 2-1 home win over Wrexham. He scored again five days later in a New Year’s Day 3-1 home win over Lancashire rivals Blackpool.
But he was not around to be part of the side promoted via the play-offs, having moved back south, to Bournemouth, for £125,000 in March 1994.
• Another move, a return to north Wales and a career in coaching as Russell’s story continues.
FIERY Ian Baird was no stranger to yellow and red cards – in five games for Newcastle United he was booked three times!
And in Brighton’s last ever game at the Goldstone Ground, against Doncaster Rovers, Baird was sent off long before the game had even reached half time.
Something of a disciple of Joe Jordan, the tenacious centre forward who starred for Leeds United and Manchester United, Baird was his teammate at Southampton and played under the Scot at Hearts in Scotland and at Bristol City.
Baird didn’t fear incurring the wrath of supporters, happily playing for arch-rival clubs in his pursuit of goals. Indeed, on Teesside he earned a place in fans’ folklore by scoring two goals in an end-of-season clash that not only kept Middlesbrough up but prevented their noisy north-east neighbours Newcastle from getting automatic promotion to the elite (to make matters worse, they then lost a play-off semi-final to Sunderland).
Baird scored twice in that 4-1 win over United on the final day of the 1989-90 season at Ayresome Park, and earlier the same season he’d scored a winner for Leeds United against Newcastle at Elland Road.
Baird played on the south coast for both Southampton and Portsmouth before making the Albion his 10th and last English league club. He joined for £35,000 from Plymouth Argyle when the club was in turmoil off the field and floundering at the bottom of the basement division. But he went on to net 14 goals in 41 games.
“To be honest, as a player, all you are bothered about is making sure you get your wage, and you’re not really taking any notice of what he is saying.
“I played at Brighton on many occasions, I have been there with Leeds and Middlesbrough, and it was always a favourite place of mine to go – and as soon as I got there as a player, I knew the importance of survival.”
Baird continued: “Brighton are a big club, and I could not believe what was happening. It took a strain on Jimmy, that’s for sure, and he was not the man he was normally with all the pressure.
“Then he was sacked and we were 12 points adrift at Christmas – they brought in Steve Gritt, and he brought a different kind of management.
“It got to February and March time, then all of a sudden Doncaster Rovers and Hereford were sucked into it – we had to beat Doncaster in the final (home) game.”
Sent off 11 times in his career, it was his dismissal just 18 minutes into that game in 1997 that threatened the very existence of the club – and he was captain that day!
Baird later told portsmouth.co.uk: “It was just a natural thing really. Sometimes my enthusiasm got the better of me. There were plenty of times I chinned someone or got into trouble.
“The most stupid one was when me and Darren Moore had a fight. He was playing for Doncaster and I was playing for Brighton in the last game at their old Goldstone Ground.
“He came through the back of me, there was a bit of afters and I ended up trying to give him a right hook, and there was a bit of a ruck.
“We had a bit of rough and tumble and I was just lucky he didn’t chase me up the tunnel because he’s huge!”
Thankfully, Albion famously still won that match courtesy of Stuart Storer’s memorable winner. Because red card bans were delayed for 14 days back then, Baird was able to play in what has since been recognised as the most important game in the club’s history: away to Hereford United.
As the history books record, it was Robbie Reinelt, on as a sub, who stepped into the breach to rescue a point for the Albion, enough to preserve their league status and to send the Bulls down.
In November of the following season, Baird still had six months left on his Brighton contract, but a surgeon told him he should not play pro football any more because of a troublesome knee, so he decided to retire.
But, when he had turned 35, he said: “I had a phone call from Mick Leonard (former Notts County and Chesterfield player) who played in Hong Kong, and he said they were desperate for a striker.
“I went for a month’s trial and ended up signing an 18-month deal. My knee flared up again and they offered me a coaching role, and it ended up with me managing the side.”
He added: “Then I was put in charge of the national side for the Asian Cup qualifiers and we played in Jakarta in front of 75,000 people, and then in Cambodia in front of 1,200 people – it was certainly an experience that is for sure.”
Over the 17 years of his league career, Baird commanded a total of £1.7m in transfer fees; £500,000 Boro paid Leeds being the highest.
Although born in Rotherham on 1 April 1964, the family moved first to Glasgow and then Southampton when Baird was small, his father having sailed from the south coast port when working on the Queen Mary.
The always comprehensive saintsplayers.co.uknotes the young Baird survived meningitis as a six-year-old and later came to the attention of Southampton when appearing in the same boys team, Sarisbury Sparks, as their manager Lawrie McMenemy’s son, Sean.
The excellent ozwhitelufc.net.au details how Baird’s footballing ability saw him play for Bitterne Saints, St. Mary’s College, Southampton, Southampton and Hampshire Schools, before earning England Schoolboy caps in 1978-79 alongside the likes of Trevor Steven and Mark Walters.
He was offered terms by Swindon Town but he chose to stay closer to home and Southampton took him on as an apprentice in July 1980. He turned professional in April 1982 but McMenemy’s preference for old stagers Frank Worthington and the aforementioned Jordan limited his opportunities and he made just 21 appearances for Saints, plus three as a sub, scoring five times.
He was sent out on loan a couple of times: to Cardiff City in November 1983, where he scored six goals in twelve League games, and that spell at Jack Charlton’s Newcastle in December 1984 where aside from a booking in each of his four starts and one appearance from the bench, he scored once – in a 2-1 defeat at West Brom on Boxing Day.
Taking the advice of former teammate Jordan, Baird signed for Eddie Gray at Second Division Leeds in March 1985 and undoubtedly his most successful playing years were there, in two separate spells.
He played more than 160 matches and scored 50 goals. In the 1986-87 season, Gray’s successor, Billy Bremner, made him captain. The Yorkshire Evening Post spoke of “the powerhouse striker’s fearless commitment, no-holds-barred approach and goalscoring ability”.
In the blurb introducing his autobiography Bairdy’s Gonna Get Ya! (written by Leeds fan Marc Bracha) it says “he’s best remembered for his spells at Leeds, where goals, endless running, will to win and fearless approach ensured he was adored by the fans”.
In the 1987-88 season, though, he was wooed by the prospect of playing at the higher level he had just missed out on with Leeds (they’d lost in end-of-season play-offs) and signed for Alan Ball at Portsmouth for £250,000; he later described it as “the worse move I ever made”.
The season was disrupted by injury and disciplinary problems, and he returned to Leeds the following season, being named their Player of the Year in 1989.
But when ex-Albion winger Howard Wilkinson, then manager of Leeds, signed Lee Chapman, Baird sought the move to Boro. He told Stuart Whittingham in 2013 for borobrickroad.co.uk:
“I felt a little aggrieved and basically I spat the dummy out and asked for a move.
“He (Wilkinson) said that he didn’t want me to go but I insisted and within 24 hours I was speaking to Bruce Rioch and Colin Todd and I was on my way to Middlesbrough.”
Curiously, though, when Leeds won promotion at the end of the season, Baird picked up a medal because he had played his part in the achievement.
At the end of the 1990-91 season, Baird spent two years playing for Hearts under Jordan, although a torn thigh muscle restricted the number of appearances he’d hoped to make and at the end of his deal he moved back to England and signed for Bristol City, initially under Russell Osman and then Jordan once again.
After his experience in Hong Kong, Baird returned to Hampshire to put down roots back in Southampton, and pursued business interests in vehicle sales/leasing and the sports gear industry. He also spent five years managing Eastleigh before becoming Paul Doswell’s assistant at Sutton United. He then followed him to Havant & Waterlooville in May 2019.
EXPENSIVE FLOP Jason Peake was a victim of the problems clouding Brighton’s very existence in the mid-1990s.
The blond-haired midfielder heralded elsewhere for his “excellent left foot” and “one of the best passers of the ball in the lower leagues” failed to live up to expectations at the Goldstone and was dubbed Jimmy Case’s “biggest blunder”.
Leicester-born Peake had played alongside Case for Halifax Town, where he’d moved after making only a handful of appearances with his hometown club.
Former Albion loanee centre half John McGrath, assisted by Frank Worthington, failed to halt the Shaymen dropping out of the league in 1993, and Peake spent a season in the Conference before reviving his league career with Rochdale. Nine goals in 103 appearances attracted suitors and it was Albion who bought him for a fee set by tribunal of £80,000 – a huge sum for a cash-strapped club.
A further £15,000 was to be paid after 20 games and another £25,000 if he got to 40 appearances. He made 35 appearances before being frozen out by Case’s successor, Steve Gritt. It was to be a familiar pattern: changes of manager often led to him moving on.
Apart from the bigger picture shenanigans going on at the Albion under the hated Archer-Bellotti regime, Peake’s personal issues centred around relocation expenses he said he was entitled to – but Bellotti refused to pay up.
According to fansnetwork.co.uk: “Peake was being forced to commute from Leicester following several broken promises by the Brighton board. Peake’s dream move turned into nothing short of a nightmare for him.”
The midfielder had trials at Northampton and Cambridge before he finally managed to get away, in October 1997, signing for First Division Bury. He rather diplomatically said: “The situation at Brighton has been well documented over the past year and just let’s say when I got there the situation was not as I’d been led to believe it would be.
“I have not been happy there for some time and the new consortium have been great in letting me get away.”
The official version in the matchday programme said: “Jason had problems in settling in the South after his move from Rochdale and the move has suited him and his family. Should Bury sell him for a fee at any time, Albion are assured of a share in any such deal.”
As ever, the season had begun with great expectations and in his matchday programme notes welcoming new signings Peake and Ian Baird, Case said: “They are both quality players and I am sure that they will be great acquisitions for the club this coming season.
“I firmly believe we now have a skilful blend of experienced and young players that can mount a serious challenge for promotion at the first attempt and I believe we will surprise many teams this season.”
Peake went straight into the side in the no.8 shirt but after he’d played 19 games on the trot Albion were anchored at the foot of the table.
After Case was sacked, Peake found himself on the bench more than in the starting line-up; local lad Kerry Mayo taking over from him.
Supporters were certainly not impressed by Peake, perhaps summed up by ‘Lenny Rider’ on North Stand Chat who said: “Huge outlay for where the club was at the time. His kinder critics would say he was disappointing, the more cynical amongst us would argue he was actually nicking a living at the Goldstone.”
New Albion chairman Dick Knight cut Albion’s losses by giving Peake a free transfer to Bury in exchange for the relocation cash dispute being dropped.
Bury boss Stan Ternent was lauded for pulling off something of a coup, and Peake told the Lancashire Telegraph: “It is a fantastic chance for me to prove myself. It has taken me a long time to get into the First Division and I don’t want to blow the opportunity.”
Sadly, those words came back to haunt him because he ended up playing just six times for the Shakers, three as a left-back and three as a sub.
To quote fansnetwork.co.uk again: “Peake’s silky skills didn’t really fit in with the kick and rush tactics of Ternent’s Bury team, and Peake found himself stranded back in the reserves.”
The following summer, a return to Rochdale, where he had first made a name for himself, looked like an ideal solution but things didn’t go well under the management team of Graham Barrow and Joe Hinnigan, who left the club at the end of the 1998-99 season.
In something of a twist of Peake’s usual fortunes when there had been a managerial change, his career began to blossom again under new boss Steve Parkin.
“The free flowing style of football on offer was much more suited to Peake’s natural style,” according to fansnetwork.co.uk. “Peake was awesome in the opening months of the 1999-2000 season and was at the heart of a side which led the table early on.”
He got amongst the goals including “a superb overhead kick from the edge of the area against old team Halifax Town, which saw him win the club’s goal of the season competition and awarded ‘Better than Pele’ status on Sky’s Soccer AM”.
Nevertheless, the season ended on a sour note, as the clarkechroniclersfootballers blog explained: “We lost two re-arranged home games against Peterborough and Northampton in April which would have secured us a play-off place. Jason featured in both games and Steve Parkin singled him out as the scapegoat accusing him of ‘going missing’. It’s always easier for a manager to castigate a player he didn’t sign but we knew there was some truth in it.”
With his contract up at the end of the season, Peake chose to move on, this time to Plymouth Argyle, at the time managed by Argyle legend Kevin Hodges.
Argyle move didn’t work out
It began well enough for him personally and, of Argyle’s 2-0 home win over Carlisle on 16 September, BBC Sport said: “Plymouth doubled their lead in the 17th minute when man of the match Jason Peake scored a superb opportunist goal.
“Peake’s initial attempt came back off visiting central defender Julian Darby and the Plymouth midfielder reacted with a brilliant dipping volley which gave keeper Luke Weaver no chance.
“Weaver denied Peake a second goal in the 80th minute, making a tremendous backward save to keep out the home player’s far post header.”
It followed him scoring four days earlier in a 4-1 defeat at Shrewsbury and was only the second win out of eight. When the next three games were lost, Hodges was replaced by Paul Sturrock, who didn’t take long to decide Peake’s future.
Before Christmas, the midfielder was dispatched to Nuneaton Borough on loan and the move was made permanent in February 2001. Although his league career was over, Peake played 54 games for Borough but was sidelined for periods with a troublesome Achilles tendon injury and he eventually retired in 2003 and became a full-time chiropodist in Leicester.
Born in Leicester on 29 September 1971, Peake played for England schoolboys and was taken on as a trainee by the Foxes.
Manager David Pleat gave him his first team debut in a 2-1 defeat at Charlton Athletic in a Full Members Cup game on 14 November 1989.
It was another year before he made his league debut in the old Division Two, as a sub in a 2-2 draw away to Oxford United.
The same month he also went on as a sub in a 1-0 home defeat to Wolves in the Full Members Cup, played in front of a paltry 4,705 crowd. Four days later he started but was subbed off against Newcastle in a game that remarkably finished 5-4 to the Foxes.
His involvement straddled the end of the Pleat regime and the caretaker manager spell of former Everton boss Gordon Lee, who, in the season Albion reached the play-off final v Notts County, managed to keep Leicester up by only two points while West Brom were relegated along with bottom club Hull City. (Lee died aged 87 in March 2022).
Across three months, Peake had three more starts (and was subbed off in two of them) plus three more games off the bench. Three days after City lost 3-0 at Brighton (goals from Mike Small, Dean Wilkins and Bryan Wade), Peake made a rare start and scored his only goal for the club in a 2-1 home win over Barnsley on 23 February 1991.
Earlier that month (on 6 February 1991), he earned an England under-19 cap when he was sent on as a sub for Aidan Newhouse as England lost 5-1 to Denmark at the Manor Ground, Oxford.
Peake’s last game for Leicester was against Newcastle United on 2 March 1991. He didn’t get a look-in under Pleat’s successor Brian Little and, in February 1992, he joined Hartlepool on loan, playing six matches and scoring once.
IN ALBION’S bleak midwinter of 1972-73, manager Pat Saward was desperate to try to reverse a worrying run of defeats.
The handful of additions he’d made to the squad promoted from the old Third Division in May 1972 had not made the sort of improvements in quality he had hoped for.
An injury to Norman Gall’s central defensive partner Ian Goodwin didn’t help matters and Saward chopped and changed the line-up from week to week to try to find the right formula.
Previously frozen out former captain John Napier was restored for a handful of games (before being sold to Bradford City for £10,000). The loan ranger’ (as Saward was dubbed for the number of temporary signings he brought in) then tried Luton Town’s John Moore in Goodwin’s absence.
Youngster Steve Piper was given his debut at home to high-flying Burnley, but Albion lost that 1-0. Then Saward tried left-back George Ley in the middle away to Preston, but that didn’t work either. North End ran out comfortable 4-0 winners with Albion’s rookie ‘keeper Alan Dovey between the sticks after regular no.1 Brian Powney went down with ‘flu.
As December loomed, and with Goodwin still a couple of weeks away from full fitness after a cartilage operation, Saward turned to John McGrath, a no-nonsense, rugged centre-half who had played close on 200 games for Southampton over five years.
“With his rolled-up sleeves, shorts hitched high to emphasise implausibly bulging thigh-muscles, an old-fashioned haircut and a body dripping with baby oil, ‘Big Jake’ cut an imposing figure,” to quote the immensely readable saintsplayers.co.uk.
In Ivan Ponting’s obituary in the Independent following McGrath’s death at 60 on Christmas Day 1998, he reckoned his “lurid public persona was something between Desperate Dan and Attila the Hun”.
Although McGrath had begun the 1972-73 season in the Saints side, the emerging Paul Bennett had taken his place, so a temporary switch to the Albion offered a return to first team football.
Albion had conceded eight goals in three straight defeats and hadn’t registered a goal of their own, so, even though the imposing centre-half was approaching the end of a playing career that had begun with Bury in 1955, it was hoped his know-how defending against some of the best strikers in the country might add steel in the heart of the defence, and stem the flow of goals.
In short, it didn’t work. McGrath played in three matches and all three ended in defeats, with another eight goals conceded.
In his first match (above left), Middlesbrough won 2-0 at the Goldstone. At least the deficit was slimmer in his second game: a 1-0 loss away to George Petchey’s Orient in which Lewes-born midfielder Stan Brown played the last of nine games on loan from Fulham.
McGrath’s third match saw Albion succumb to a thrashing at Carlisle United. By then, Brighton had lost five in a row and still hadn’t managed to score a single goal. Stalwart Norman Gall was dropped to substitute to allow the returning Goodwin to line up alongside McGrath, and Bert Murray led the side out resplendent in the second strip of red and black striped shirts and black shorts.
Carlisle hadn’t read the script, though, and promptly went 5-0 up. To compound Albion’s agony, with 20 minutes still to play, goalkeeper Powney was carried off concussed and with a broken nose.
In those days before substitute goalkeepers, Murray (who’d swapped to right-back that day with Graham Howell moving into his midfield berth) took over the gloves. Miraculously, Albion won a penalty and because usual spot kick taker Murray was between the sticks, utility man Eddie Spearritt took responsibility having relinquished the job after a crucial miss in a game in 1970.
Thankfully, he buried it, finally to make a much-awaited addition to that season’s ‘goals for’ column.
No more was seen of McGrath, however. Gall was restored to the no.5 shirt and was variously partnered by Goodwin, Piper and, towards the end of the season, Spearritt.
After another heavy defeat, 4-0 at Sunderland, which had seen another rare appearance by Dovey in goal, he was transfer-listed along with Gall and Bertie Lutton, as Saward pointed the finger. Lutton got a surprise move to West Ham but Gall stayed put and Dovey was released at the end of the season without playing another game.
The run of defeats eventually extended to a total of 13 and was only alleviated after a big shake-up for the home game versus Luton Town on 10 February.
Powney, who’d conceded five at Fulham in the previous game, was replaced by Aston Villa goalkeeper Tommy Hughes on loan; out went experienced striker Barry Bridges in favour of rookie Pat Hilton and exciting teenage winger Tony Towner made his debut. Albion won 2-0 with both goals from Ken Beamish, and the monkey was finally off their backs.
Although the following two games (away to Bristol City and Hull) were lost, results did pick up, but it was all too little too late and Albion exited the division only 12 months after their promotion.
Born in Manchester on 23 August 1938, McGrath sought unsuccessfully to get into the game as an amateur with Bolton Wanderers but at 17 he joined Bury who were in the old Division Two at the time.
Although they were subsequently relegated, McGrath was part of the 1961 side that went on to win the Third Division Championship. By the time they lifted the trophy, though, he had moved on to Newcastle United for a fee of £24,000, with Bob Stokoe (later renowned for steering Second Division Sunderland to a famous FA Cup win over Leeds United in 1973) a makeweight in the transfer.
It was a busy time for the young defender. On 15 March 1961, he made his one and only England Under-23 appearance against West Germany at White Hart Lane, Tottenham, playing alongside future World Cup winners George Cohen at right-back and the imperious Bobby Moore.
Also in the young England side for that 4-1 win was Terry Paine, who would later become a teammate at Southampton.
Newcastle had hoped the defender would prevent their relegation from the top flight, but it didn’t happen as they went down having conceded 109 goals; their worst ever goals against tally.
Joe Harvey eventually succeeded Charlie Mitten as manager as Newcastle adapted to life back in the Second Division, and McGrath (below left and, in team picture, back row, far left) played 16 matches in a side in which full-back George Dalton (below, back row, far right) had started to emerge.
Future Brighton captain Dave Turner was one of the successful FA Youth Cup-winning side Harvey inherited, but his first team outings were rare and he was sold to the Albion in December 1963.
Meanwhile, McGrath really established himself, featuring in 41 games in 1963-64 (Dalton played in 40) as Newcastle finished in a respectable eighth place.
The 1964-65 season saw McGrath ever-present as Toon were promoted back to the First Division, pipping Northampton Town to the Second Division championship title by one point. McGrath – “a monster of a centre-half, who was as tough as he was effective” was “the cornerstone” of the promotion side, according to newcastleunited-mad.co.uk.
McGrath retained his place in Toon’s first season back amongst the elite but the arrival of John McNamee and the emergence of Bobby Moncur started to restrict his involvement.
That pairing became Harvey’s first choice, and young Graham Winstanley was in reserve too, so, after playing only 11 games in the first half of the 1967-68 season, McGrath, by then 29, was sold to Southampton for £30,000. He’d played 181 games for United.
In Ted Bates’ Saints side, McGrath was a rock at the back alongside Jimmy Gabriel, although, as saintsplayers.co.uk records, he wasn’t too popular with opposing managers: Liverpool’s Bill Shankly accusing Southampton of playing “alehouse football”.
He went on to make 194 appearances (plus one as a sub) for Saints, before becoming youth coach at the club, part of the first team coaching staff when Southampton won the FA Cup in 1976, and then reserve team manager.
Not content with a backroom role, McGrath took the plunge into management and made his mark with two clubs in particular: managing Port Vale on 203 occasions and Preston North End in 205 matches.
According to Rob Fielding he became a cult hero at Vale Park with his unorthodox ways, once putting FIFTEEN players on the transfer list…which resulted in a six-match unbeaten run!
Winger Mark Chamberlain, who went on to play for Stoke and England, and later Brighton, was one of the young players McGrath introduced.
Long-serving Vale defender Phil Sproson, who was originally signed by former Albion midfielder Bobby Smith, rose to prominence under McGrath and said: “I’ll always be grateful because he taught me how to play centre-half.”
Fielding reckoned McGrath’s finest hour was steering Vale to promotion from the old Fourth Division in 1982-1983, even though by then he had sold Chamberlain to Stoke.
Against a backdrop of player unrest and what were perceived to be ill-judged moves in the transfer market, McGrath was sacked in December 1983 and replaced by his assistant, John Rudge.
He wasn’t out of work for long, though, and took the reins at basement side Chester City where he was in charge for just under a year. Most notably in that time, he gave future Arsenal and England defender Lee Dixon his first taste of regular football.
While success eluded him at Chester, his arrival at Preston in 1986 proved fruitful, North End striker Gary Brazil recalling: “It needed a catalyst and it needed a change and very fortunately for the club and for the players, John McGrath came walking through the door who was like a Tasmanian devil. He came in and the world changed really, really quickly for the better.”
McGrath led Preston to promotion from the bottom tier in 1987 with a squad built around Sam Allardyce and veteran Frank Worthington.
Manager McGrath and Frank Worthington celebrate promotion
“Frank Worthington was a delight to have around and set a real high standard for a lot of us in terms of how we train,” said Brazil. “He just stunned me how he was always first out training.”
The turnround McGrath oversaw, with Deepdale crowds rising from below 3,000 to more than 16,000, rejuvenated the club and the city.
Brazil reminisced: “It was the best year of my football life that year that we got promoted. It wasn’t just an experience playing but an experience of a group of players and how well they could bond and John was integral to that. He was a very, very clever man.”
Indeed McGrath was viewed as having saved North End from the ignominy of losing their league status, the club having had to apply for re-election the season before he arrived at Deepdale.
Edward Skingsley’s book, Back From The Brink, features a black and white photograph of McGrath on its cover and tells the story of North End’s transformation under his direction.
Describing his appointment as “a masterstroke” he reckoned the club owed him a massive debt for masterminding their resurgence and subsequent stability.
“Without him, it is debatable whether Preston North End would even exist today, never mind play in the latest fantastic incarnation of Deepdale,” said Skingsley. “Thank goodness he caught Preston North End before it died.”
McGrath left Preston in February 1990 and had one last stab at management, this time with Halifax Town. He succeeded Saints’ FA Cup winner Jim McCalliog and was in charge at The Shay for 14 months but left in December 1992. Five months later they lost their league status, finishing bottom of pile.
The silver-tongued McGrath was subsequently a popular choice on the after-dinner speaking circuit and a pundit on local radio in Lancashire but died suddenly on Christmas Day 1998.
JUSTIN FASHANU, renowned for an iconic televised Goal of the Season for Norwich City against Liverpool in 1979, played 20 games for Brighton in the 1985-86 season.
Those bald facts tell only a fraction of the story of the short and complex life of a bustling centre forward who burst onto the football scene as a teenager, scoring 40 goals in 103 games for the Canaries.
Several books have been written about him, acres of newspaper column inches filled covering colourful tales of what happened to the first £1m black footballer, and there is no shortage of articles across the internet. There’s even been a theatre play about his life: Justin Fashanu in Extra Time.
Here I will focus mainly on the football, and, in particular, that time at Brighton, although some context is needed to explain how a player who only three years earlier had helped England win the UEFA Under 21 Championship ended up with the then second tier Seagulls.
Fashanu’s signing for Brighton in June 1985 seemed like a major coup for manager Chris Cattlin as the Seagulls sought to return to the elite level they’d been relegated from two years previously.
Why was he so convinced Fashanu would be a hit at Brighton? In an interview with Spencer Vignes for the matchday programme, he said: “We’d put a good side together with a tight defence, an exciting midfield and a forward line that included Dean Saunders and Terry Connor.
“I knew all about Justin and I went to see him play for Notts County against Manchester City and he was simply amazing. He battered the best defender in the league at that time – Mick McCarthy – and I mean he really battered him. I thought: ‘That’s our fella!’ With those three up front, we were going to have one hell of a chance of winning promotion.”
In his programme notes for the opening game of the season, Cattlin wrote: “With the right service I expect Justin to be the best centre-forward this club has had in a very long time.”
At the end of a season when Albion missed out on promotion by finishing sixth, Frank Worthington at 36 had demanded a signing-on fee to stay a second season with the Albion – money Cattlin said wasn’t available. There was no such demand from Fashanu, who at only 24 was trying to rebuild a career that had gone off the rails.
To make his own personal assessment of a player who had already attracted plenty of negative attention, Cattlin even had the player to stay at his house for four days before signing him.
Only the previous season, Fashanu’s aggression on the pitch for Notts County had put both Albion centre backs Eric Young and Jeff Clarke in hospital. He’d previously had an altercation with Albion’s former Canaries defender Andy Rollings while playing for Norwich at the Goldstone, resulting in Rollings’ dismissal for throwing a punch at the striker.
Nottingham Forest boss Brian Clough, who’d persuaded the board of the two-times European Cup winners to part with £1m to sign the 20-year-old from Norwich in 1981, had numerous clashes with the player when he was unable to replicate his previous goalscoring form (more of which later), and, after just 15 months, he cut the club’s losses and sold him to neighbours County for only £150,000.
More crucially, though, Fashanu had sustained an injury to his left knee on New Year’s Eve 1983 inflicted courtesy of the studs of Ipswich, and later Brighton, defender Russell Osman. The wound had become infected and the medics at the time were clearly concerned. It meant insurers inserted an exclusion clause into their cover. Any claim for subsequent injury would only be covered if he’d previously played 12 consecutive League games.
After his stay chez Cattlin, a fee of £115,000 was paid to Notts County, who’d just been relegated to the old Third Division, and the manager said: “Justin had a reputation of being a bit of a problem player with his other clubs but that is all in the past.
“In my dealings with him I’ve found him to be a smashing person and the sort of player our supporters will take to.”
He told the Evening Argus that Justin was “a dedicated player who has been asleep for a couple of years”, adding “I’m sure, with us, he will bring his talents to fruition”.
Meanwhile, Fashanu told The Times: “I only took this step after a good deal of thought and prayer. I am convinced Chris Cattlin can get the very best out of me.”
He got off to a great start when scoring twice as Albion thrashed Aldershot 5-0 in a pre-season friendly at the Recreation Ground on 29 July 1985.
Stiffer competition was promised in the shape of three Goldstone friendlies in a week against First Division sides Arsenal, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Arsenal won 2-1 on 2 August and Liverpool 4-1 on 5 August. Two days later, Fashanu netted one of Brighton’s successful spot kicks in a 5-4 penalty shoot-out against Oxford United at the Manor Ground which saw them win the Oxfordshire Benevolent Cup.
Fashanu (front row, third from left) all smiles after Albion won a trophy in Oxfordshire
The pre-season fixtures were rounded off on 9 August when second tier Albion walloped Forest 5-2, and the matchday programme captured the mood with some delight.
“The match was a real thriller for the fans, and no-one except perhaps for Brian Clough and his team, went home unhappy,” the programme crowed. “Justin Fashanu had an outstanding game against his former teammates.”
Fashanu was involved in setting up three of Albion’s goals and of the fifth the programme recorded: “The final goal came after just about the most powerful shot seen at the Goldstone for years. Fashanu connected from 15 yards out. Segers could only parry the ball, and (Gary) O’Reilly tapped it over the line.” Tellingly, Clough declined to be interviewed after the game.
Fashanu started in the no.9 shirt and was sent off in only his third game, a 2-1 home win over Bradford City. Cattlin was quick to leap to his defence, using his programme notes to tell supporters: “I understand that the referee sent him off for dissent after committing a cautionable offence. All Justin said was ‘Surely you’re not booking me for that ref’…and if that either brings the game into disrepute or deserves any punishment at all, surely there’s something wrong in the game.
“Justin has joined us this season and is a great professional. One hundred per cent effort is appreciated by the fans and our supporters know they are getting just that. There was nothing malicious in anything he did on Saturday.
“Justin is a ‘gentle giant’. He never swears and he tries all the time…that is just the sort of player we need in the game. I would like to go firmly on record as saying his sending off was a complete injustice.”
Disciplinary action took a little longer to come into effect back then and Fashanu didn’t have to serve his suspension until the sixth game of the season.
However, it turned out he would have missed the game anyway because he’d undergone surgery.
It emerged that during pre-season training, Fashanu had taken a whack on his knee and it was six weeks and several matches later before he underwent a procedure at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. Cattlin admitted: “Mr Fearn, the club surgeon, had to work on the bone.”
In hindsight, Cattlin’s programme notes about the injury could be viewed, at best, as insensitive. “I would like to explain the problem of Justin Fashanu,” he wrote. “He jarred his knee pre-season, there is apparently a floating body there somewhere….probably a piece of black pudding or something!”
Cattlin already had Gerry Ryan out long term injured and he also lost Fashanu’s strike partner Connor to injury in those opening weeks. That absence presented an opportunity for Mick Ferguson to stake a claim and he responded with three goals in three games – until he too got injured, as did Alan Biley. In the emergency, loanee Arsenal defender Martin Keown was put up front to play alongside Saunders.
Gerry Ryan, Chris Hutchings, Fashanu and Terry Connor were all out injured
In the programme for the 19 October home game against Charlton, Cattlin was pleased to report Fashanu had resumed training and was busy building up his thigh muscles after his period of inactivity.
He finally made his comeback in an away League Cup match at Liverpool and, as Albion were sent packing 4-0, Fashanu was booked after clashing with Craig Johnston.
However, at least he was back in the no.9 shirt and, after leading the line in a home 1-1 draw against his old club Norwich, he scored his first goal for the Seagulls the following week when Brighton lost 2-1 at Shrewsbury Town.
Defending Fashanu after yet another booking in a 2-1 defeat away to Sunderland, Cattlin said: “Justin is anything but a dirty player. He is certainly strong, but if he was dirty I can assure everyone he would not be wearing the blue shirt of Brighton. I can see all sorts of trouble in the game if referees cannot differentiate between dirty play and wholehearted endeavour.”
Later the same month, Fashanu scored his second and only other league goal for Brighton, at home to Hull City on 30 November, when the Albion won 3-1 (Danny Wilson and Connor also on the scoresheet).
That match came during an 11-game unbroken run at centre forward, including an influential display in a 2-1 Boxing Day win over Portsmouth (below) which gave Albion their first league victory at Fratton Park in 62 years.
Fashanu set up Saunders for Albion’s first and, 18 minutes from time, Fashanu’s close-range shot was parried by Alan Knight only to Connor, who buried the winner.
Although the shortage of goals was bad news for him personally, it was good news for Shoreham butcher Roy Parsons who promised the striker 2lb of steak for every goal he scored for the Albion!
After missing two matches at the start of February, Fashanu returned to the side for the memorable FA Cup fifth round tie against Peterborough on a snow-covered pitch at London Road. Substitute Steve Jacobs went on for him for the second half and scored Albion’s second equaliser to take the tie to a replay, Saunders having got Albion back in the game to cancel out the home side’s lead. But it proved to be Fashanu’s last game in an Albion shirt.
The striker had to undergo further surgery on his knee although, at the time, it wasn’t made to sound career-ending. The matchday programme for the game against his brother John’s Millwall side on 22 March 1986 said merely: “Our popular striker had a minor operation this week and we hope this will finally clear up his knee problem.”
Subsequent reports had it that Fashanu’s right knee had been nearly shattered and the prognosis from the medical people was that he would have to give up the game. The player got an insurance payout but he was reluctant to give up the game and spent money in the UK and America trying to get the knee fixed.
“I had been told by doctors and surgeons in England that I’d never walk again properly – let alone play,” Fashanu told the Los Angeles Times in July 1988. “They were proposing an operation to remove the lining from the inside of my knee.”
Fashanu was born in Hackney, London, on 19 February 1961, the son of a Nigerian barrister and a Guyanese nurse. The parents split up when Fashanu and brother John were five and four. Unable to support them, their mother, Pearl, sent them to a Barnardo’s children’s home.
The boys were eventually fostered and raised by Alf and Betty Jackson in the small rural Norfolk village of Shropham, near Attleborough.
Norwich City’s youth scout Ronnie Brooks identified 14-year-old Fashanu as a prospect while visiting Norfolk schools looking for talent. He was invited to train with the club during his holidays and then signed as an apprentice.
In a 2011 article, writer Juliet Jacques recounted: “Having persuaded Fashanu to play football rather than box (he was twice an ABA junior heavyweight finalist, aged 14 and 15), Brooks spent time with him in the gym at Norwich’s training ground at Trowse, wanting him to become less one-footed and learn how to strike the ball in the air.
“Endlessly, Brooks would throw a ball over Fashanu’s shoulder, demanding that he turn, volley it against the wall with one foot and then hit it back with the other.”
That practice would pay off big time, Jacques capturing in words the moment the 18-year-old Fashanu connected so sweetly from distance to draw Norwich level, 3-3, with Liverpool at Carrow Road on 9 February 1980, and, in the days of limited football coverage on TV, featured on BBC’s Match of the Day.
“With the impudence of youth, he flicked the ball up with his right foot, turned, and volleyed it into the tiny space between Ray Clemence’s head and the post. The strike was perfect – and so was the celebration. There was a split second while the crowd, and the commentator, processed its brilliance: as the fans roared, Fashanu stood alone, one finger raised to the skies as if to announce his genius,” she wrote.
“Norwich eventually lost 5-3, but the goal overshadowed the result: it made the perfect televisual image, coming as a generation of black footballers were breaking through at England’s top level, leaving Fashanu poised to become their leading light.”
One of his teammates back then, Greg Downs, recently told The Athletic: “We took the mickey out of Justin at the time because we maintained he miscontrolled it. We swore it bounced up and hit him on the ankle, which is why he then hit it.
“With all due respect to Justin, his greatest attribute wasn’t his feet. His strength was in the air. He was a magnificent header of the ball. I think that was why it surprised everybody.
“It was a magnificent strike. You couldn’t have hit a better shot. Ray Clemence had no chance. I don’t think any other keeper anywhere would have had any chance with it. Justin just caught it sweet.
“I got on great with Justin. I remember going to his 18th birthday in Attleborough with his family. He was a nice fella.
“He was so popular at Norwich. He was also probably the first local black footballer we had. He was famous, this lad from Norfolk, he had a personality, he was eloquent. I knew his parents and they raised him with very high morals, and he was a lovely lad.”
England under 21 cap
Two months after that Liverpool game, Fashanu scored England’s only goal in a 2-1 defeat to East Germany in a 1980 UEFA under 21 championship semi-final at Bramall Lane, playing alongside future full internationals Gary Bailey, Kenny Sansom, Bryan Robson, Russell Osman, Terry Butcher, Glenn Hoddle, Garry Birtles and Gordon Cowans.
In September the same year, he went on as a substitute for Paul Goddard as England beat Norway in a friendly at The Dell, Southampton. The following month he was a starter as England were thrashed 4-0 away to Romania in a 1982 UEFA under 21 championship preliminary match but on 18 November at Portman Road he was on the scoresheet as England swept aside Switzerland 5-0 in the same competition.
He featured as a sub in a 1-0 friendly win over the Republic of Ireland at Anfield in February 1981, then was on the scoresheet as England beat Hungary 2-1 in a friendly in Keszthely.
His seventh cap came as a starter in the 0-0 draw away to Norway in September and two months later he opened the scoring for England in another 1982 UEFA under 21 championship preliminary match when England beat Hungary 2-0.
The following March he started again as England won a quarter final away leg in Poland 2-1 and was in the semi-final second leg line-up that drew 1-1 with Scotland at Maine Road, Manchester.
In the first leg of the final of that competition, played at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, on 21 September,1982, Fashanu went on for David Hodgson and scored as England beat West Germany 3-1, although he didn’t feature in the second leg away when England lost 3-2 but ran out 5-4 aggregate winners.
At that time, Fashanu was on loan at Southampton having endured a nightmare time at the City Ground under Clough. The stories of what happened are legendary and varied.
Unfortunately for Fashanu, he joined Forest as the European Cup-winning side was being broken up and there were rumours of disagreements between Clough and his sidekick Peter Taylor, who eventually quit the City Ground. Clough had some health issues at the time too.
Peter Ward, who had moved to Forest from Brighton for £500,000, sometimes played alongside Fashanu and witnessed first hand the difficulties the manager had with him. He described various incidents in some detail in Matthew Horner’s He Shot, He Scored biography.
“It must have been very hard for Fashanu; he had signed for a lot of money and he really struggled to score goals,” said Ward. “In a way, it was similar to my situation but he had the added complication of his social life and constant rumours about his sexuality.
“Cloughie found it difficult to live with Fashanu’s lifestyle and he later admitted he wished that he had treated him differently.”
Forest were £1m in debt; three directors quit because they didn’t like the terms of a guarantee for the bank overdraft, and the Nottingham public weren’t turning up in sufficient numbers to help the club break even.
“At the heart of it was Fashanu, who was effectively the physical embodiment of that £1m overdraft,” wrote Jonathan Wilson in his Brian Clough biography, Nobody Ever Says Thank You.
“Goal statistics often don’t tell the full story, but in this case his record of three league goals in 31 appearances did. He was offering little to the team and, had he not been signed, Forest’s bank balance would have been a comforting nil. By the end of his unhappy 15 months at the club his confidence was so shot he almost scored an own goal from the halfway line in a reserve team game.”
Clough blamed Fashanu’s arrival for the breakdown in his relationship with Taylor. According to Wilson: “Clough said: ‘He used to burst into tears if I said hello to him’ and ‘He had so many personal problems a platoon of agony aunts couldn’t have sorted him out.’
Wilson details incidents such as Fashanu insisting on using his own towels rather than ones provided by the club amongst a number of issues that irritated the manager.
Clough maintained that the player’s homosexuality didn’t bother him (although the manager’s use of the word ‘poof’ might suggest otherwise), instead he said: “It was just that his shiftiness, combined with an articulate image that impressed the impressionable, made it difficult for me to accept Fashanu as genuine and one of us.”
Accusations of ill discipline prompted Clough to ban the player from training. When he turned up anyway there was more trouble and the manager called in the police to remove him from the training ground.
Those circumstances led to Fashanu being loaned to Southampton where he scored three goals in nine games under Lawrie McMenemy, but they couldn’t afford to make it a permanent deal.
Eventually in December 1982, Forest cut their losses and Fashanu was transferred across the Trent to Notts County for £150,000, being signed by former Brighton winger Howard Wilkinson, who had taken over as manager at Meadow Lane that August.
At least Fashanu got his goal touch back, netting 20 in 64 matches, but they weren’t enough to prevent back-to-back relegations. It probably didn’t help his reputation that he was sent off in a derby game against Forest for retaliating to a Paul Hart tackle just 11 minutes into the second half.
After heading to America in his battle to overcome his knee problem, Fashanu failed to recapture the spark that had made him such a huge talent in his teens and early 20s.
The record books show he played for 22 clubs in seven different countries. A brief attempt to recover past glory under Lou Macari at West Ham is remembered by Dan Coker on West Ham Till I Die.
He was playing at Leyton Orient when he went public about his sexuality and he later scored 15 goals in 41 games for Torquay United. He also played in Scotland for Airdrieonians and Hearts (below).
What led to him taking his own life in a deserted lock-up garage in Shoreditch in May 1998 is well documented, such as in this footballpink.net piece written by Paul Breen.
Fashanu’s memory certainly lives on in many ways. In February 2020, a tribute to his outstanding goal against Liverpool was unveiled in the form of a 20-metre long banner produced by supporters groups Along Come Norwich and Barclay End Norwich, led by Proud Canaries: the first club-affiliated LGBT+ fan group in the country.
“Two years ago I drew a massive artwork for Norwich Pride of LGBT+ icons nominated by the community,” said banner designer David Shenton. “The most voted-for person was Justin: a man so treasured in this city, especially by the football club for his artistry as a player, and by the LGBT+ community for his courage in not hiding who he was.”
• Pictures from Albion’s matchday programmes, the Argus, and various online sources.
MARK LEATHER spent six years as the first team physiotherapist at Anfield having previously been Brighton’s physio in the early days of Barry Lloyd’s reign as manager.
Leather tended the injured when Albion were promoted from the old Third Division in 1987-88 and half of the 1988-89 tier two campaign before moving back to his native north west.
Roy Evans added Leather’s specialist knowledge to the backroom team at Anfield in 1994 but the physio was controversially sacked by his successor Gerard Houllier following a row over the then teenage striker Michael Owen’s fitness.
A sign of the way Leather expected to work with managers came in an interview for Albion’s matchday programme. “Barry Lloyd will respect the decision if I say a player needs more time to get back to fitness,” he told interviewer Dave Beckett. “From that point of view, he is sadly in the minority.
“If it was different, I wouldn’t hang around, but it still amazes me that some clubs don’t realise that if we all stick to what we know things will run more smoothly.”
Leather, who’d spent three years studying for a diploma, and gained experience in the National Health Service, added: “We’re getting away from the old ‘bucket-and-sponge’ image.”
Ahead of his arrival at the Goldstone, Leather had combined his studies with helping out Exeter City, Leek Town, Port Vale and Sheffield Wednesday. And during the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986, Leather provided specialist medical support for the weightlifters and wrestlers.
He revealed a funny story against himself in a matchday programme article. Asked to reveal his ‘most embarrassing moment’ he said: “During the Port Vale and Scunthorpe match in 1985, when Port Vale scored, I jumped up out of the bench hitting my head on the dugout roof and needed smelling salts and a cold sponge.”
Perhaps predictably nicknamed ‘The Fizz’, Leather sought to give an insight to his role in his matchday programme interview. “I try to be friends with all of the lads and the management too, but sometimes you really do have to sit on the fence,” he said.
“There’s pressure sometimes from both sides to say a player’s ready to return, but you have to stand back from the situation and give a professional opinion.”
The Albion gave him a regular slot in the matchday programme which he used to give readers updates on the progress of injured players, and in recent times he has become a regular source for the media seeking expert comments on football injuries.
Leather now has his own physiotherapy business and back in the day at Brighton he and his physiotherapist wife Lucy ran a sports injury clinic for the general public two evenings a week.
Born in Bolton on 24 June 1961, Leather left the Seagulls halfway through the 1988-89 season to return to more a familiar part of the country and took a job in the NHS in Chorley, Lancashire.
Leather had been an ardent Bolton Wanderers fan from an early age and his all-time favourite player was Frank Worthington, who had played for the Seagulls during the 1984-85 season.
When Evans stepped up to take charge of Liverpool, Leather was one of his first appointments (along with goalkeeping coach Joe Corrigan, whose playing career had ended with the Seagulls).
Leather and Corrigan together in Liverpool backroom team
An insight into Evans’ decision-making was given in the book Men In White Suits, by Simon Hughes. “With Mark Leather’s arrival, there was an end to the running repair jobs carried out by a succession of unqualified coaches mid game,” he wrote.
“Regularly injured players had long been treated with suspicion at Liverpool. (Bill) Shankly maintained his side were the fittest in the league, with pre-season geared towards building stamina and therefore preventing muscle tears.
“It was a difficult theory to argue against. Liverpool won the 1965-66 title using just 14 players all season. Anyone who suffered an injury was almost bullied into feeling better. ‘Otherwise you really were persona non grata,’ Alan Hansen said.
“Leather’s recruitment meant that (Ronnie) Moran could focus on drilling the first team in the Liverpool way rather than writing what Evans describes as ‘little scribbles’ on an old ledger, charting training patterns.”
Endorsements to Leather’s attributes appear on his website from the likes of Robbie Fowler and Jamie Redknapp, who is quoted as saying: “Mark Leather has been brilliant with me. He has kept me going and it’s because of him really that I’m back to full fitness as soon as I am.”
In 1999 media reports said Houllier was facing “a furious players’ backlash after his escalating row with Liverpool physio Mark Leather took a dramatic twist”.
Leather was left in the UK when Liverpool went to Oslo for pre-season games, a move which was said to be causing disquiet in the dressing room.
Leather clashed with Houllier over the condition of injured Michael Owen
“Leather is one of the game’s top physios and he was publicly praised by Robbie Fowler after helping the striker make a miraculous recovery from a cruciate knee ligament injury last season,” said one report in the Scottish Daily Record. “Other stars, including Michael Owen and skipper Jamie Redknapp, are known to have a close bond with the medic.”
Houllier was angry at the length of time it was taking for Owen to return to full training after a hamstring injury and sent him to a specialist in Germany for a course of treatment.
In 2013, when Owen’s many injuries finally forced him to his retire from the game, he recalled bad decisions in the past that ultimately affected his career.
“I was compromised because I played too much too soon as a youngster at Liverpool. In my opinion, had I been managed differently I would have been at my best for longer as opposed to being a better player,” he said in The Mirror.
“I basically run on two hamstrings on my right leg and three on the other. I lost a third of the power.
“If I hadn’t, 90 per cent of the other injuries wouldn’t have happened and I would have been the all-time leading scorer for England.”
The Mirror article continued: “If there was a defining moment in his career, then it was a snapped hamstring when his then-manager Houllier ignored the advice of his physio and insisted Owen be brought back from injury quickly because he needed his goal threat so desperately.
“The French coach fell out so badly with the physio, Mark Leather, he forced him out, but Houllier later admitted to the mistake, which Owen believes led to the moment that changed his career – on a cold March evening at Elland Road, Leeds, in 1999. ‘My hamstring snapped in two and it was at that point that my ability to perform unimpeded was finished,’ said Owen.
Leather wasn’t finished with football, however, and he moved to his beloved Bolton Wanderers as Sam Allardyce’s physio for a year, before joining former Trotter Peter Reid at the Stadium of Light.
“From a personal point of view, I’ve had the privilege of working with two guys I used to support from the terraces at Burnden,” Leather told the Bolton News ahead of a match between Bolton and the Black Cats in September 2001. “There’s only one team I’ve ever supported and leaving them last year was purely a professional decision,” he said. “Financially and from a facility point of view, it was the right move for me, but I’ll never stop supporting the Wanderers.”
Leather spent four years (2000-2004) as the head physio at Sunderland straddling the managerial reigns of Reid, Howard Wilkinson and Mick McCarthy.
It certainly wasn’t all plain sailing for Leather on Wearside, as the Republic of Ireland winger Kevin Kilbane, now a TV pundit on the BBC, mentioned in his autobiography (Killa: The Autobiography of Kevin Kilbane; Aurum Press Ltd, 2014).
The player was determined to play for his country but the physio obviously didn’t feel he should because he was still trying to recover from an ankle injury.
Leather had already put him through some tough routines to test the strength of his ankle and when they were then on opposing sides in a two-a-side hockey match, Leather caught Kilbane on the tender joint with his hockey stick.
“After a few times and much pain, I finally snapped, and I gave him a left hook and decked him, leaving him with a fat lip and a very surprised look on his face,” Kilbane admitted.
Although he told the assistant manager Bobby Saxton what had happened, nothing more was done about it. Kilbane said: “I later apologised to Mark Leather but was disappointed he didn’t reciprocate. Things were never right between us after that, although we didn’t let it interfere with our professional relationship.”
After Sunderland, Leather switched sports and took on a similar position with Wigan Warriors rugby league side before moving into the world of academia. He spent seven years at Edge Hill University as a senior lecturer in sports therapy and programme leader for the Football Rehabilitation MSc course.
In October 2006,Leather joined Chester City as club physio, with City chairman Stephen Vaughan declaring: “He is a fully qualified physio and has a wealth of experience at Premier League level, so it’s something of a coup to bring him to the Deva Stadium.”
In 2013, he returned to Bolton, spending three years as Head of Sports Performance.
He had also set up his own physiotherapy business in 2008 and, since 2016, has been a senior lecturer and course leader for the Football Science and Rehabilitation MSc course at the University of Central Lancashire.
• Pictures from the Albion matchday programme and various online sources.
ONES that got away always make for fascinating stories and a striker who went on to become a goalscoring legend slipped through the net at both Brighton and Burnley.
Ian Muir is hailed an all-time hero by fans of Tranmere Rovers for whom he scored 180 goals in all competitions during what many regard as the best period in Rovers’ history. If it hadn’t been for injury, he could have played in the Premier League and Europe for Leeds United.
But he’s barely remembered for the struggles he had to get games at Brighton, let alone in a month with the Clarets.
Success could have eluded himf it hadn’t been for the time he spent at Brighton alongside the legendary Frank Worthington. He was considering a move to non-league Maidstone United, but, when Worthington quit Brighton in the summer of 1985 to take his first step into management on the Wirral, he made Muir his first signing.
“Ian Muir was a fantastic forward with great touch,” Worthington told Spencer Vignes in an Albion matchday programme interview. “He did things in training you just wouldn’t believe, yet he wasn’t even making the side at Brighton under Chris (Cattlin).”
Cattlin had taken the youngster on after he had been given a free transfer by Birmingham City where he’d made just one League Cup appearance in the 1983-84 season under Ron Saunders. But competition for forward places was intense with the likes of initially Alan Young and Terry Connor, then Worthington, Mick Ferguson and later Alan Biley.
Muir’s first involvement with the Albion first team was as a non-playing substitute for the home 3-0 win over Leeds on 24 March 1984. He made his debut the following Saturday at Fratton Park in place of the injured Young and was brought down in the penalty area only 20 minutes into the game to earn Brighton a spot kick, which Danny Wilson successfully buried to put the Seagulls ahead.
Muir in his Brighton days
Connor had a chance to put Albion further ahead and, as the matchday programme reported, “Muir sliced wide as Connor made the opening” before Pompey began a devastating fight back.
Albion had been hoping to complete a fourth win in a row for the first time in six years, but it wasn’t to be, and, into the bargain, Muir couldn’t cap his debut with a goal, instead firing wide when set up by winger Steve Penney.
Unfortunately, this was the game when former Spurs and Arsenal centre back Willie Young, on loan from Norwich City, was given the runaround by Pompey centre forward Mark Hateley, and, courtesy of a second half blitz, the home side ran out 5-1 winners.
Alan Young was restored to the no.9 shirt in the next match and scored twice as Albion beat Grimsby Town 2-0 at the Goldstone, but Muir was drafted in to take Connor’s place in the away game at Shrewsbury Town.
That match ended in a 2-1 defeat, but the News of the World angled its report on an unlucky afternoon for the young forward.
“It just wasn’t Ian Muir’s day,” wrote reporter Brian Russell. “The Brighton teenager (actually he was 20) playing only his second league game could so easily have taken the limelight from Shrewsbury two-goal hero, 17-year-old Gerry Nardiello.
“Young Muir headed the ball home in the eighth minute from Jimmy Case’s corner, but it was ruled out (for a foul by centre-half Eric Young).”
Alan Young produced a powerful header from a Muir cross that Steve Ogrizovic (later of Liverpool and Coventry City fame, of course) saved brilliantly.
Russell continued: “With Brighton battling to cancel out Nardiello’s 23rd-minute opportunist goal, striker Muir suffered. His delicate chip left the ‘keeper clutching thin air, but Shrewsbury skipper Ross McLaren headed out.
“Brighton levelled it with 15 minutes to go (through Eric Young). But, five minutes later, Nardiello pounced on Chick Bates’s chested pass to beat Joe Corrigan.”
Muir was on the scoresheet when Albion’s reserve side began the 1984-85 season with a 1-0 win over reserve team boss George Petchey’s old club, Millwall. It was a very experienced team featuring Corrigan in goal, full-backs Chris Ramsey and Graham Pearce – who had both played for the Seagulls in the FA Cup Final the year before – along with Steve Gatting and Neil Smillie. Giles Stille and Alan Young were also in the line-up.
Muir had to wait until 13 October for his next first team opportunity when he was a non-playing sub as Albion went down 2-1 at Oxford United. He then got on as a sub for Connor in a 0-0 home draw with Barnsley, but the game was so dire that Cattlin very publicly forfeited a week’s wages.
After three goalless games straddling October and November 1984, Cattlin paired Muir with Worthington away to Blackburn on 10 November but still the drought couldn’t be breached, and Albion went down 2-0. The next game, Cattlin tried Ferguson and Connor as his front pair – same outcome: a 1-0 defeat at Leeds.
Muir didn’t get another chance with the Albion but in the spring of 1985 was sent out on loan to Lou Macari’s Swindon Town, where he played in three matches (and his teammates included Ramsey, who’d been released by Cattlin, and Garry Nelson, who would later become a promotion winner with the Seagulls).
Somewhat curiously, when commenting on Muir’s departure from the club that summer, Cattlin said in the matchday programme: “I am sure Ian will get goals at whatever level he plays.”
Sure enough, Prenton Park eventually became his spiritual home and, although Tranmere struggled to stay in the fourth tier initially, Muir’s goalscoring exploits were synonymous with four years in which Rovers were promoted twice and appeared at Wembley five times. Highlights saw Muir score in the FA’s centenary celebrations in 1988 and an acrobatic and precise volley in Tranmere’s Leyland DAF Trophy victory over Bristol Rovers in 1990.
Muir and strike partner Jim Steel
He particularly began to prosper after Worthington’s successor, Johnny King, brought in tall target man Jim Steel alongside him in 1987.
Steel, who later became a police officer on Merseyside, said King, a Bill Shankly devotee, would compare him and Muir to John Toshack and Kevin Keegan. “That’s the way football was at the time,” he told the Liverpool Echo. “You looked for a little mobile player to feed off a tall striker.
“Muiry was one of the best finishers in the game at the time. If I’m honest, the intelligence of the partnership was down to Muiry, who was very good at reacting to things off me,” he said.
“I wasn’t the most technically gifted of players compared to the likes of Johnny Morrissey and Jim Harvey. But things happened around me and Muiry was very good at picking up the crumbs.”
Muir was Tranmere’s leading scorer from 1986 to 1990 and, in the 1989-90 season, he scored 35 goals in 65 games.
Born in Coventry on 5 May 1963, Muir played for the City’s schools side and Bedworth Juniors and won four England Schoolboy caps (against Wales, Scotland and two v West Germany) featuring alongside the likes of Tommy Caton, Ian Dawes, Terry Gibson and Kevin Brock.
He joined QPR as an apprentice aged 17 in 1980 and was a Hoops player for four years in total during Terry Venables’ reign as manager. In October 1982, he went on a one-month loan to Burnley. The respected all-things-Burnley writer, Tony Scholes, takes up the story.
“When Burnley played on QPR’s plastic pitch at Loftus Road in 1982 we came home with more than we’d bargained for. Two Trevor Steven goals in front at half time, we’d suffered a 3-2 defeat in the end although we managed to acquire a striker.”
Scholes pointed out how Muir had progressed into the first team squad at Loftus Road, but after a goalscoring start had fallen out of favour.
“He made a dramatic start to his first team career, scoring twice on his debut in a 5-0 thrashing of Cambridge United in April 1981,” said Scholes. “He kept his place for the one remaining game of the 1980-81 season but by the time he arrived at Turf Moor, well over a year later, he was still looking for his third game.”
It eventually came with Burnley, when he went on as a substitute in a 2-1 defeat at Charlton, replacing skipper Martin Dobson. He then started and scored Burnley’s goal in a 3-1 defeat at Leeds.
“He impressed, but the home fans never saw him and. at the end of the month, he was dispatched back to West London, his Burnley career over,” said Scholes.
Ian Muir alongside Terry Fenwick when Terry Venables managed QPR
Unable to get back into Terry Venables’ side at Loftus Road, Muir joined Birmingham and subsequently Brighton.
Finally given a platform to shine, the striker scored the majority of his 180 Tranmere goals between 1985 and 1991 and spearheaded the side that vaulted two divisions in three seasons between 1988 and 1991, before eventually being edged out by the arrival of John Aldridge.
The Liverpool Echo remembered: “It was inevitable his subtle skills and clinical finishing would make him a target for a larger club. Muir knew of Leeds’s interest as Tranmere campaigned to secure a place in the Third Division playoffs in 1990-91.
Muir told the newspaper: “Howard Wilkinson was sending scouts to watch me and coming along himself. When I went along to the ticket office before games, the Leeds scout was sometimes at the kiosk and I’d chat to him. He told me what was happening.
“Mark Proctor, who joined us from Middlesbrough the following season and worked under Wilkinson, knew about the deal and told me.”
Muir was arguably in his prime at the age of 27, but he suffered what would be a fateful knee ligament injury in a game against Chester City on 23 March 1991.
When Tranmere visited Leeds in a League Cup tie early in the following season, Muir hobbled into Elland Road on crutches. Muir recalled: “Before the game Gordon Strachan asked our midfielder, Neil McNab, where I was. Neil pointed to me standing there on crutches.
“Then Strachan said: ‘Ian is the unluckiest man in the world because we were going to sign him’. Leeds went on to win the league that season and I could have been with them, playing at the highest level playing in Europe the following season.
“I was gutted. I was so close and the injury changed everything. But that’s football. You get your ups and downs.
“I could never complain about the fantastic career I had at Tranmere and I wouldn’t swap my memories of the years at Prenton Park for anything.”
He wasn’t granted a testimonial after a decade with Rovers, but in 2020 there were moves afoot amongst their supporters to help him publish his autobiography.
Adulation has not waned and a young writer who didn’t even get to see him play wrote warmly about the striker’s achievements in this tribute.
In 1995, Muir returned to Birmingham City for a £125,000 feebut he played only twice before he suffered a groin injury. In an effort to get fit, he spent a month on loan at Darlington, and scored a goal, but his league career was over.
He went to play in Hong Kong, scoring a hat-trick on his debut for Sing Tao, and later played for Happy Valley. In June 2011, he recalled in an interview with the Liverpool Post: “The warm climate was a big help. Then the medical people found the cause of the groin problem was my spine. The pelvis wasn’t lined up properly. It could get out of joint just by lying in bed.
“One of the lads on the medical side was able to click me back into place. I have to say I have not had many problems with it since.”
Muir returned to the UK, and his native West Midlands and joined Nuneaton Borough.
“We won the league by 20 points and got into the Conference,” Muir told the Post. “We were top of the league after three months of the following season then it all went pear-shaped.”
The newspaper reported that Muir stepped down a level to Stratford Town, where his football days finished.
He did some voluntary coaching in schools and took a job in a factory for a year, and subsequently joined a friend in a business fitting out pubs and shops.
CONTACTS made as a youngster at Arsenal stood versatile Mike Everitt in good stead for the rest of his career.
He went on to play under his former Gunners teammate Dave Bowen at Northampton Town as part of one of football’s most remarkable stories and earned a place in the Cobblers’ ‘team of the century’.
Later, he joined a small enclave of former Arsenal players at Brighton. Everitt swapped Devon for Sussex in March 1968 when he moved from Plymouth Argyle for a £2,500 fee.
The man who signed him, Archie Macaulay, was a former Arsenal man himself who’d already brought three other ex-Gunners to Hove in goalkeeper Tony Burns, Irish international full-back Jimmy Magill and winger Brian Tawse.
Everitt started the new season as first choice left-back in Macaulay’s side and an uninterrupted 14-game run in the team as autumn turned to winter straddled Macaulay’s departure and the arrival of new boss Freddie Goodwin.
Everitt slotted home a penalty as Albion drew 1-1 away to Bristol Rovers on 18 January 1969 but the 3-1 home win over Crewe Alexandra the following Saturday was his last outing of the season.
Everitt, Howard Wilkinson and Dave Turner from this Albion line-up all went on to become coaches
He picked up an injury and, with Goodwin having signed his former Leeds teammate Barrie Wright from New York Generals, local lad John Templeman able to fill either full-back slot, not to mention the addition of Eddie Spearritt from Ipswich Town, Everitt couldn’t win back his place in the starting line-up.
Competition for a starting place only intensified in the summer of 1969 when Goodwin’s former Leeds teammate, Willie Bell, arrived from Leicester and was installed as the regular choice at left-back, while Stewart Henderson cemented the right-back slot to the extent he was named Player of the Season.
While Everitt deputised for Bell on a couple of occasions and filled Bobby Smith’s midfield spot for four matches, his only other involvement was as sub on a handful of occasions. He was a non-playing sub in the final game of the season (a 2-1 home defeat to Mansfield Town) and then left the club during the close season.
Born in Clacton on 16 January 1941, Everitt represented Essex Schoolboys and London Schoolboys before being taken on as an apprentice by Arsenal in 1956. He turned professional in February 1958 and, thanks to the excellent records of thearsenalhistory.com, we know that he first played in the first team in the Harry Bamford Memorial match at Eastville against a Bristol XI on 8 May 1959.
He then went on Arsenal’s end-of-season tour to Italy and Switzerland. He was an unused sub for friendlies against Juventus and Fiorentina but came on as a substitute in a 4-1 win over Lugano of Switzerland on 24 May 1959.
Everitt (circled back row) lines up for Arsenal – with (left to right trio in centre of front row), David Herd, Tommy Docherty and Jimmy Bloomfield
It wasn’t until Easter 1960 that he made his competitive first team breakthrough, but when he did it was a baptism of fire in George Swindin’s side.
He made his first team debut in front of 37,873 fans packed into Highbury on Good Friday (15 April 1960) as the Gunners beat a Johnny Haynes-led Fulham side 2-0.
Modern day players might not be able to comprehend it but Everitt also played the following day when Arsenal travelled to Birmingham City, and lost 3-0. Two days later, away to Fulham this time, Everitt was again in the starting line-up as Arsenal lost 3-0.
He kept his place for the following Saturday’s match – at home to Manchester United – and in front of 41,057 he was part of the side that beat United 5-2. Future Albion teammate Alex Dawson led the line for a United team that included Bobby Charlton and Johnny Giles.
That was the penultimate game of the season and Everitt retained his place for the final game, which ended in a 1-0 defeat to West Brom at The Hawthorns.
The 1960-61 season got off to a good start for him too as he played in the opening four matches and, into the bargain, scored Arsenal’s only goal as they beat Preston North End at home on 23 August. Unfortunately for him, a tigerish Scot called Tommy Docherty edged him out of the first team picture and in February 1961 he moved to Fourth Division Northampton Town (for a fee of £4,000) who were managed by the aforementioned Bowen.
His stay with the Cobblers spanned one of the most remarkable stories in football history as they were promoted season on season from the Fourth to the First….and then relegated all the way back down again (although Everitt had left for pastures new before they reached the basement again).
What he was part of, though, was achieving three promotions in five years. Glenn Billingham recalled that heady era in a 2017 article for thesefootballtimes.co.
In 1961-62, Everitt was a regular at wing-half and scored five goals in 41 appearances. He switched to left-back the following season and played 30 matches as Town went up as champions.
A season of consolidation in 1963-64 saw Town finish 11th in Division Two, when Everitt played 45 matches. He played in 43 games in the 1964-65 season which culminated in the historic promotion to the top-flight courtesy of finishing in runners up spot, a point behind champions Newcastle United.
Necessary investment in improving the squad was slow to materialise and Bowen initially had to rely on the same squad of players who’d got them up. Everitt was one of only five Town players who had previously played at that level.
A 5-2 defeat away to Everton in the opening fixture was perhaps a portent of what was to follow for the rest of the season. They didn’t record a win until their 14th game, at home to West Ham (when they won 2-1), but the underdogs performed heroics in their first two home matches. It must have been quite an occasion when in only the second game of the season Everitt lined up in the Northampton side to face Arsenal.
The game finished 1-1, although Everitt had to be replaced at half-time. However, he also played in the return fixture at Highbury which also finished in a 1-1 draw.
Town also drew 1-1 at home to Manchester United, stifling the attacking threat of Best, Law and Charlton, although United exacted revenge at Old Trafford where they dished out a 6-2 thrashing. Charlton got a hat-trick, Law scored a couple and John Connelly was also on the scoresheet.
Everitt made 34 appearances (plus one as sub) that season and scored two goals, one in a rare win, in the penultimate game, when the Cobblers beat Sunderland 2-1 (the Wearsiders scorer was Neil Martin, who later played for the Albion). Graham Carr (father of comedian Alan Carr) played 30 times for the Cobblers that season.
Back in the second tier, Everitt featured in 17 games but as Town plummeted straight through the division, he moved on to Plymouth Argyle in March 1967, where his former Arsenal teammate Jimmy Bloomfield had moved to from West Ham. Everitt was still only 26 when he made his debut in a 1-0 home defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers. After 31 games for Argyle, he made the move to Brighton.
Everitt had already gained his preliminary coaching badge when still a player and after leaving Brighton in 1970 he initially moved to Plymouth City as player-manager. Within months, he seized the opportunity to move up a level when he landed the player-manager role at then Southern League Wimbledon.
In a January 2010 interview in The Guardian, it was revealed the two candidates he beat to land the position were David Pleat, who went on to manage Luton, Leicester and Spurs, and his former Albion teammate Howard Wilkinson, who won the league title with Leeds United.
Pleat recalled: “The director, Stanley Reed, went for Mike and Howard ended up at Boston United while I was eventually appointed by Nuneaton Borough in the Southern League.”
A few eyebrows were raised in 1973 when Everitt was appointed manager of newly-relegated Brentford just seven days before the start of the 1973-74 season, taking over from Frank Blunstone, who’d left to become youth team manager at Manchester United.
Greville Waterman, on a Bees fan blog, said Everitt polarised opinion, declaring: “He was undoubtedly a cheap option and received little support from the directors (now where have we heard that before) and did his best with a wafer thin squad.”
A classic example saw defender Stewart Houston sold to Manchester United for a club record £55,000 in December 1973, but the money wasn’t immediately reinvested in the squad.
Nevertheless, Waterman pointed out: “His approach did not go down well with some of his players and he brought in a number of tough bruisers. Under his management, Brentford declined rapidly, fell to the bottom of the Football League and barely escaped the need to apply for re-election.”
Legendary Brentford defender Alan Nelmes was particularly disparaging about Everitt. “He didn’t have the technical expertise that Frank had and you felt as if the club wasn’t going anywhere with him. Frank was very advanced in his thinking, ahead of his time, really, and it was a step backwards to have Mike.”
Everitt finally got some backing from the boardroom on transfer deadline day. Experienced forward Dave Simmons was brought in from Cambridge United and former Everton and Southampton defender Jimmy Gabriel from Bournemouth and a 10-match unbeaten run from mid-February to early April did enough to assure the Bees avoided bottom spot even though their finishing position of 19th was their lowest position for nearly 50 years. Crowds were hovering around only 5,000 too.
It didn’t get much better the following season and in spite of getting a vote of confidence in November 1974 from new chairman Dan Tana, Everitt only lasted a few more weeks in the hotseat.
Ironically, after a poor start to the campaign, he’d begun to turn results round and lifted the side to a mid-table position on the back of four wins and a draw in a seven-game spell between late November to mid-January, but he was sacked on 16 January and replaced with John Docherty, who’d only packed up playing for the Bees the previous summer.
Everitt’s next role came as a coach (pictured above) under his old Arsenal pal Bloomfield at Leicester City, and former winger Len Glover came up with an amusing reminiscence on lcfc.com.
Glover recalled when he was 17 playing against Everitt for Charlton Athletic against Northampton.
“He had massive thighs, and had his sleeves rolled up. In the first five minutes he had kicked me when the ball was nowhere near, and now he was our coach!
“He was just the same when he was our coach. When he started, he gathered us round at the training ground. His opening gambit was, ‘You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but we will soon change that!’
“Then he noticed Frank Worthington who was not with the group but was with the apprentices who were crossing the ball for him to volley like they did every morning. He went, ‘Oi, get over here!’ Frank went, ‘Yeah, in a minute’. Instead of saying, ‘Over here, now!’ Everitt just went, ‘Well, hurry up then’.
“Before Everitt left we went to Leeds and we got stuffed 3-0. After the game Birch (Alan Birchenall) was doing his hair with his hair dryer. Win or lose he would always do his hair. Mike Everitt came in and said, ‘It’s a pity you’re not as good with the ball as you are with that hair dryer!’ Birch replied, ‘If I was as good with the ball as I am with the hair dryer, I wouldn’t be playing for Leicester!’”
After leaving Leicester, Everitt managed Kuwaiti side Al-Shabab when another former Arsenal teammate, George Armstrong, was manager of the Kuwaiti national side (Armstrong’s daughter, Jill, posted a picture of them in Kuwait on Twitter in 2019).
Jill Armstrong posted this picture on Twitter of her with dad George and Everitt in Kuwait
After Kuwait, Everitt managed Cairo-based Egyptian teams Al Mokawloon and Al Ahly, the club Percy Tau joined in the summer of 2021.
According to Wikipedia, Everitt had particular success at Al Mokawloon, winning the 1982-83 Egyptian Premier League title and two African Cup Winners Cups.
• Pictures from matchday programmes and online sources.
HARD-UP Albion wanted to sign dominant centre-back Jeff Clarke in 1984 but, unable to meet Newcastle United’s modest asking price, they were forced to walk away from a deal.
Clarke, who began his career at Manchester City, had plenty of experience to bring to a young Brighton side having played more than 300 games for north-east giants Sunderland and the Magpies.
At the start of the 1984-85 season, Clarke found himself on the outside looking in at St James’ Park, following the arrival of the legendary Jack Charlton as manager.
Although Arthur Cox had led them to promotion to the old First Division, he quit during the close season because he didn’t feel the club’s owners were investing enough in the playing side (some things never change!).
Former England World Cup winner Charlton, whose uncle ‘Wor’ Jackie Milburn was a Newcastle legend, took the hot seat and his preferred centre back pairing at the start of the season was John Anderson and Glenn Roeder.
Down on the south coast, Brighton boss Chris Cattlin was keen to bring some experience to the spine of the team he was rebuilding, and he took Clarke on loan to play alongside the emerging Eric Young, as well as introducing his old Huddersfield teammate Frank Worthington up front.
Clarke and Worthington made their debuts in an opening day 3-0 win at Carlisle United on 25 August (Danny Wilson, Terry Connor and Steve Penney the goalscorers).
The on-loan defender couldn’t have had a more eventful home debut three days later, in an ill-tempered evening game at home to Larry Lloyd’s Notts County, who had Justin Fashanu playing up front.
A clash between Fashanu and Clarke saw the defender come off worse, a back injury forcing him to be substituted with only 36 minutes gone (replaced by sub Neil Smillie).
In a game which saw seven players booked, fellow central defender Young joined him in hospital having been concussed by a stray Fashanu elbow. In the days before multiple substitutes, the Seagulls were forced to play the second half with only ten men, but nevertheless ran out 2-1 winners. Steve Jacobs opened the scoring on 22 minutes, Fashanu equalised on 55 but Worthington marked his home debut with the winner in the 67th minute. (The following June, Fashanu joined the Albion for a fee of £115,000).
Clarke had sustained a fracture to a bone in his back but he was fit enought to return to the side on 22 September, in a 1-0 defeat away to Oldham Athletic, and was then on the winning side in the following two games: a 3-1 first leg Milk Cup win over Aldershot and a 2-0 home win over Fulham.
Unfortunately, that proved to be his last game for the Seagulls. Cattlin wanted to sign him permanently and Newcastle wanted just £6,500 for Clarke but the Albion board wouldn’t sanction the fee, as Cattlin explained at the Albion Roar live show in December 2018 (skip to 28 minutes in), which he believes signalled the beginning of the end of his time at the club.
In his matchday programme notes at the time, Cattlin said: “With the current cash crisis at the club, I could not finalise what I think is a very important deal in the long-term for this club. Clarke is a fine professional who, in many ways, reminds me of Peter Withe in his outstanding professionalism and leadership qualities.”
That sounds like he felt the captaincy of the side wasn’t in the right hands, and later in the same notes he explained how he had taken the job of skipper from Jimmy Case (“he needs to get his own game back to what we know he is capable of”) and given the role to Danny Wilson (“his leadership qualities on the park have become self evident”).
Born 18 January 1954 in the West Yorkshire mining town of Hemsworth, near Wakefield, Clarke was a Sheffield Wednesday fan as a boy and admired Owls central defender Vic Mobley.
However, it was on the other side of the Pennines that he made his breakthrough as a professional, with Manchester City.
Manager Tony Book handed Clarke his debut in a 4-0 home win over West Ham United on 17 August 1974 but he only played 15 games for the Maine Road outfit, his last game coming in a 2-1 home defeat to Carlisle United on 19 March 1975.
Clarke moved to Sunderland as a makeweight in the deal which saw the Sunderland and England international centre back Dave Watson move to City in the summer of 1975.
The move to Roker Park finally saw his career take off and in seven years he made 213 appearances for the Wearsiders, many as captain (as seen in team photo above), including helping them to promotion to the top flight in 1976.
The excellent MatchDayMemories.com unearthed a Shoot/Goal profile of Clarke which revealed he had earned schoolboy under 18 international honours, his favourite food was peanut butter sandwiches and Brian Kidd, then of Arsenal, had been his most difficult opponent.
In 1982, at the age of 28, he switched to north east rivals Newcastle United on a free transfer, and stayed with the Magpies for five years.
When his two-month loan on the south coast wasn’t made permanent, he had other loan spells in Turkey and at Darlington but then returned to Newcastle and was restored to the first team, and featured in a New Year’s Day win over Sunderland in which future Albion winger Clive Walker was an opponent.
When Charlton quit as boss on the eve of the 1985-86 season, it signalled better fortunes for Clarke and under Willie McFaul he became a regular alongside Roeder, racking up 45 appearances and chipping in with three goals. The following season he played only seven games and hung up his boots in 1987.
Clarke stayed at St James’ Park in a coaching capacity after his playing days were over but simultaneously he took a degree in physiotherapy at the University of Salford, graduating in 1996.
He later became physio at former club Sunderland before moving to Leeds United in 2001. Made redundant at Elland Road in 2003, he moved to Dundee United in November the same year and has been the first team physio ever since.
Clarke had sustained a fracture to a bone in his back but he was fit enought to return to the side on 22 September, in a 1-0 defeat away to Oldham Athletic, and was then on the winning side in the following two games: a 3-1 first leg Milk Cup win over Aldershot and a 2-0 home win over Fulham.
In parallel lines 