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.
VIKING lookalike Paul Clark made a lasting impression on plenty of players with robust tackling which earned him ‘legend’ status among fans of Brighton and Southend United.
Described in one programme article as “the big bustling blond with the biting tackle”, Clark was given the nickname ‘Tank’ for his no-nonsense approach. A Southend fan lauded “his crunching tackles and never say die attitude”.
Clark himself reflected: “Wherever you go the supporters tend to like someone who is wholehearted and when it came to 50-50 challenges, or even sometimes 60-40, I didn’t shy away from too many, and the supporters just took to it.”
In Albion yellow against Palace
Giving further insight to his approach, he said: “You can go right up to the line – as long as you don’t step over it, then you’re OK.
“I used to pick up a booking during the first five or 10 minutes, then I knew I had to behave myself for the rest of the game. Despite the reputation I had, I was never sent off in over 500 games.”
A trademark strike at home to West Ham
Former teammate Mark Lawrenson said of him: “You would hate to have to play against him because quite often he would cut you in two. With him and ‘Nobby’ (Brian Horton) in the side, we definitely didn’t take any prisoners. One to rely on.”
A former England schoolboy international, it was said of the player in a matchday programme:
“Paul is the first to admit that skill is not his prime asset but there is no doubt as to the strength of his tackle. He is a real competitor and is also deceptively fast, being one of the best sprinters on the Goldstone staff.”
Born in south Benfleet, Essex, on 14 September 1958, Clark went to Wickford Junior School where he played for the school football team and the district primary schools’ side. When he moved on to Beauchamp Comprehensive, selection for his school team led to him playing for the Basildon Schools’ FA XI.
Clark as an England schoolboy
This in turn led to him being selected to play for England Schools at under 15 level, featuring against Scotland, Ireland, Wales, West Germany and France before going on a tour of Australia with the same age group. Contemporaries included future full time professionals Mark Higgins, Ray Deakin, Kevin Mabbutt and Kenny Sansom.
Clark left school at 16 before taking his O levels when Fourth Division Southend offered him an apprenticeship. He made his first team debut shortly before his 18th birthday in a 2-1 win over Watford.
Two months later, he won the first of six England Youth caps. He made his debut in the November 1976 mini ‘World Cup’ tournament in Monaco against Spain and West Germany alongside future full England internationals Chris Woods, Ricky Hill and Sammy Lee.
The following March, he played in England’s UEFA Youth tournament preliminary match against Wales when they won 1-0 at The Hawthorns. Sansom was also in that side. And he featured in all three group matches at the tournament that May (England beat Belgium 1-0, drew 0-0 with Iceland and 1-1 with Greece). Teammates included Russell Osman and Vince Hilaire.
Clark was only a third of the way into his second season at Southend when Alan Mullery sought to beef up his newly-promoted Brighton side in the autumn of 1977, and, in a part exchange deal involving Gerry Fell moving to Roots Hall, Clark arrived at the Goldstone. He made his debut for the Seagulls in a goalless draw at White Hart Lane on 19 November 1977 in front of a crowd of 48,613. And he came close to crowning it with a goal but for an outstanding save by Spurs ‘keeper Barry Daines.
In full flight, as captured by photographer George Erringshaw
When Spurs visited the Goldstone later that season, Clark put in a man of the match performance and scored a memorable opener, following a solo run. A subsequent matchday programme article was suitably poetic about it.
“It showed all the qualities looked for in a player: determination, speed, skill and most of all the ability to finish….if any goal was singled out, Paul’s was certainly one to treasure.”
Albion went on to beat Spurs 3-1, although the game was remembered more because it was interrupted twice when the crowd spilled onto the pitch.
After only 12 minutes, referee Alan Turvey took the players off for 13 minutes while the pitch was cleared of Albion fans who’d sought safety on the pitch from fighting Spurs’ hooligan fans.
In the 74th minute, with Spurs 3-1 down and defender Don McAllister sent-off, their fans rushed the pitch to try to get the game abandoned. But police stopped the invasion getting out of hand and the game continued after another four-minute delay.
Clark’s goal on 16 minutes had been cancelled out six minutes later when Chris Jones seized on a bad goal kick by Eric Steele but defender Graham Winstanley made it 2-1 just before half-time.
Albion’s third goal was surrounded in controversy. Sub Eric Potts claimed the final touch but Spurs argued bitterly that Malcolm Poskett was offside.
Clark remembered the game vividly when interviewed many years later by Spencer Vignes for the matchday programme. The tenacious midfielder put in an early crunching tackle on Glenn Hoddle and after the game the watching ex-Spurs’ manager Bill Nicholson told him: “Well done. You won that game in the first five minutes when you nailed Hoddle.”
Said Clark: “I was 19 at the time so to get a pat on the back from him was much appreciated.”
It was one of three goals Clark scored in his 26 appearances that season (nine in 93 overall for Albion) but he wasn’t always guaranteed a starting berth and in five years at the club had a number of long spells stuck in the reserves.
Midfield enforcer or emergency defender were his primary roles but Clark was capable of unleashing unstoppable shots from distance and among those nine goals he scored were some memorable strikes.
For instance, as Albion closed in on promotion in the spring of 1979, at home to Charlton Athletic, Clark opened the scoring with a scorching 25-yard left foot volley in the 11th minute. Albion went on to win 2-0.
The following month, Clark demonstrated his versatility at St James’ Park on 3 May 1979 when Albion beat Newcastle 3-1 to win promotion to football’s elite level for the first time. Clark played in the back four alongside Andy Rollings because Mark Lawrenson was out injured with a broken arm.
Celebrating promotion with Peter O’Sullivan and Malcolm Poskett
“Not many people can say they played in a side that got Brighton up to the top flight,” said Clark. “It’s something I’m still immensely proud of.”
Once they were there, Clark missed the opening two matches (defeats at home to Arsenal and away to Aston Villa) and had an ignominious start to life at the higher level when he conceded a penalty within three minutes of going on as a sub for Rollings away to Manchester City on 25 August 1979.
Some observers thought Clark had played the ball rather than foul Ray Ranson but referee Pat Partridge thought otherwise and Michael Robinson stepped up to score his first goal for City from the resultant penalty. It put the home side 3-1 up: Teddy Maybank had equalised Paul Power’s opener but Mike Channon added a second before half-time.
Partridge subsequently evened up the penalty awards but Brian Horton blazed his spot kick wide of the post with Joe Corrigan not needing to make a save. Peter Ward did net a second for the Seagulls but they left Maine Road pointless.
Ahead of Albion’s fourth attempt to get league points on the board, Clark played his part in beating his future employer Cambridge United 2-0 in a second round League Cup match.
Three days later, he was on the scoresheet together with Ward and Horton as Albion celebrated their first win at the higher level, beating Bolton Wanderers 3-1 at the Goldstone.
It was Clark’s neat one-two with Ward that produced the opening goal and on 22 minutes, Maybank teed the ball up for Clark, who “belting in from the edge of the box, gave it everything and his shot kept low and sped very fast past (‘Jim’) McDonagh’s right hand,” said Evening Argus reporter John Vinicombe.
Gerry Ryan replaced Clark late in the game and after 12 starts, when he was subbed off three times, and four appearances off the bench, his season was over, and it wasn’t even Christmas.
A colour photo of a typical Clark tackle (on QPR’s Dave Clement) adorned the front cover of that season’s matchday programmes throughout but he didn’t start another game after a 4-0 League Cup defeat at Arsenal on 13 November.
Programme cover shot
He was sub for the following two games; the memorable 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest and a 1-1 draw at Middlesbrough, but Mullery had signed the experienced Peter Suddaby to play alongside Steve Foster, releasing Lawrenson to demonstrate his considerable repertoire of skills in midfield alongside skipper Horton and Peter O’Sullivan.
Young Giles Stille also began to press for a place and later in the season, Neil McNab was added to the midfield options, leaving Clark well down the pecking order in the reserves. Portsmouth wanted him but he rejected a move along the coast, although he had a brief loan spell at Reading, where he played a couple of games.
But Clark wasn’t finished yet in Albion’s colours and, remarkably, just over a year after his last first team appearance, with the Seagulls struggling in 20th spot in the division, he made a comeback in a 1-0 home win over Aston Villa on 20 December 1980.
Albion had succumbed 4-3 to Everton at Goodison Park in the previous match and Mullery told the Argus: “We badly needed some steel in the side and I think Clark can do that sort of job.”
Under the headline ‘The forgotten man returns’ Argus reporter Vinicombe said Mullery hadn’t changed his opinion that Clark was not a First Division class player, but nevertheless reckoned: “Paul’s attitude is right and I know he’ll go out and do a good job for me.”
For his part, Vinicombe opined: “The strength of Clark’s game is a daunting physical presence. His tackling is second to none in the club and Mullery believes he will respond to the challenge.”
Clark kept the shirt for another nine matches (plus one as a sub), deputising for Horton towards the end of his run, but his last first team game was in a 3-1 defeat at Norwich at the end of February.
Clark remained on the books throughout Mike Bailey’s first season in charge (1981-82) but, with Jimmy Case, Tony Grealish and McNab ahead of him, didn’t make a first team appearance and left on a free transfer at the end of it.
Back to Southend
He returned to Southend where he stayed for nine years and was player-manager on two occasions. Fans website shrimperzone.com moderator ‘Yorkshire Blue’ summed up his contribution to their cause thus: “In the top five all-time list for appearances, an inspiration in four promotions, one of the toughest tacklers of all-time and a man whose commitment for his home-town club could never be doubted.”
Clark was still only 27 when he had his first spell as manager, in caretaker charge after Dave Webb had quit following a bust-up with the club chairman, and he managed to steer United to promotion back to the third tier.
When Webb’s successor Dick Bate lasted only eight games of the new season, Clark was back at the helm, in turn becoming the youngest manager in the league.
His first hurdle ended in a League Cup giant killing over top flight Derby County (who included his old teammate John Gregory) when the Us had another former Albion teammate, Eric Steele, in goal.
A Roy McDonough penalty past England goalkeeper Peter Shilton at Roots Hall settled the two-legged tie (the second leg was goalless at the Baseball Ground) which the writer described as “arguably their biggest ever cup shock”.
In the league, player-manager Clark guided Southend to a safe 17th place but it went pear-shaped the following season. Clark only played 16 games, Southend were relegated, and Webb returning midway through the season as general manager.
Back-to-back promotions in 1989-90 and 1990-91 proved to be a more than satisfactory swansong to his Southend career, and in the first of those he found himself forming an effective defensive partnership with on-loan Guy Butters in the second half of the season.
In 1990-91, he missed only six games all season as the Shrimpers earned promotion to the second tier for the first time in their history, and he had a testimonial game against Arsenal.
But, after a total of 358 games for Southend, he left Roots Hall to join Gillingham on a free transfer.
Over three seasons, he played 90 league games, and was caretaker manager in 1992, before retiring at the end of the 1993-94 season. Gillingham’s top goalscorer with 18 that season was a young Nicky Forster and other Albion connections in that squad included Mike Trusson, Paul Watson, Neil Smillie, Andy Arnott and Richard Carpenter.
After Gillingham, Clark played non-league for Chelmsford City but left to become assistant manager to Tommy Taylor at Cambridge United. In 1996 he followed Taylor in a similar role to Leyton Orient.
Southend fans hadn’t heard the last of him, though – quite literally. He became a co-commentator on Southend games for BBC Radio Essex.
In the 2009-10 season, Clark was temporarily assistant manager to Joe Dunne at Colchester United.
FEARLESS NORTHERN Ireland international centre forward Sammy Morgan and his former Port Vale teammate Brian Horton were bought to win promotion for the Albion.
The gamble by manager Peter Taylor didn’t quite pay off and although midfield dynamo and captain Horton went on to fulfil that promise under Alan Mullery, Morgan’s part in the club’s future success was eclipsed by the emergence of Peter Ward.
Morgan, who was in the same Northern Irish primary school year as George Best, was the first to arrive, a £35,000 signing from Aston Villa in December 1975, replacing the out-of-favour Neil Martin alongside Fred Binney. He wasn’t able to find the net in his first seven matches but when he did it was memorable and went down in the annals of Albion history.
Morgan opens his Albion account in style against Crystal Palace
He scored both goals in a 2-0 win over Crystal Palace in front of a 33,000 Goldstone Ground crowd that took Albion into second place in the table, manager Taylor saying afterwards: “I am delighted for Morgan. It must have given him a great boost to get a couple of goals like this.”
That breakthrough looked like opening the floodgates for the aggressive, angular forward who went on to score in five consecutive home games in a month.
And when Horton arrived in March 1976, with Albion still in second place and only 11 games to go, promotion looked a strong possibility.
But an Easter hiccup, losing 3-1 to rivals Millwall, followed by three 1-1 draws to end the season, saw Albion drop to fourth, three points behind the south London club, who went up behind Hereford United and Cardiff City.
Short-sighted Morgan – he wore contact lenses to play – might not have seen it coming, but it was something of a watershed moment for him too.
The man who signed him decided to quit, saying: “I signed two players gambling on them to win us promotion. We didn’t get it, and the only consolation I have in leaving is I feel I have helped build a good team which is capable of going up next time.”
Before he managed to kick a ball in anger under new boss Mullery, Morgan suffered a fractured cheekbone in a collision with Paul Futcher in a pre-season friendly with Luton in August 1976. The injury sidelined him for months.
Morgan shares a training ground joke with Peter Ward
By the time he was fit to resume towards the end of November, young Ward and midfielder-turned-striker Ian Mellor had formed such an effective goalscoring partnership that Morgan could only look on from the substitute’s bench where he sat on no fewer than 29 occasions.
He got on in 18 matches but only scored once, in a 2-1 home win over Chesterfield. Of his two starts that season, one was a New Year’s Day game at Swindon in which Albion were trailing 4-0 when it got abandoned on 67 minutes because of a waterlogged pitch (and he was back to the bench for the rescheduled game at the end of the season).
Nonetheless, Taylor’s promotion premonition was duly achieved at the completion of Mullery’s first season, and Ward had scored a record-setting 36 goals.
Morgan wasn’t involved in Albion’s first two games of the new season – consecutive 0-0 draws against Third Division Cambridge United, in home and away legs of the League Cup – and, by the time of the replay, he had signed for the opponents, who were managed by Ron Atkinson.
So, in a strange quirk of fate, £15,000 signing Morgan’s first match for the Us saw him relishing a bruising encounter up against former teammate Andy Rollings, although Albion prevailed 3-1.
Morgan spoke about the encounter and his long career in the game in a fascinating 2015 televised interview for 100 Years of Coconuts, a Cambridge United fans website.
Morgan’s easing out at Brighton followed a similar pattern to his experience at Aston Villa who replaced him with 19-year-old Andy Gray, a £110,000 signing from Dundee United. Morgan only made three top flight performances for Villa after a pelvic injury had restricted his involvement in Villa’s second tier promotion in 1975 to just 12 games (although he did score four goals – three in the same match, a 6-0 win over Hull City early in the season). He was injured during a 1-1 draw at Fulham in November and subsequently lost his place in the team to Keith Leonard.
Villa scorer
Morgan had been 26 when Vic Crowe signed him from Port Vale as a replacement for the legendary Andy Lochhead. The fee was an initial £22,222 in August 1973 with the promise of further instalments of £10,000 for every 10 goals up to 20. Vale’s chairman panicked when the goals tally dried up with the total on nine but Morgan eventually came good and Villa ended up paying the extra.
He made his Villa debut on 8 September 1973 as a sub for Trevor Hockey on the hour in a 2-0 home win over Oxford United, the first of five sub appearances and 25 starts that season, when he scored nine goals.
Villa writer Eric Woodward said of him: “Sammy was never a purist but he was a brave, lively, enterprising sort who put fear into opposing defences.”
He carved his name into Villa legend during a fourth round FA Cup tie against Arsenal at Highbury in January 1974 when he was both hero and villain.
Morgan put the Second Division visitors ahead with a diving header in the 11th minute but in the second half was booked and sent off for challenges on goalkeeper Bob Wilson. After his dismissal, Arsenal equalised through Ray Kennedy.
Esteemed football writer Brian Glanville reckoned: “Morgan had scored Villa’s goal and had played with fiery initiative but, alas, he crossed the line dividing virility from violence.
“He should have taken heed earlier, when booked for fouling Wilson. But a few minutes later, going in unreasonably hard and fractionally late as Wilson dived, he knocked the goalkeeper out and off he went.”
An incensed Morgan saw it differently, though, telling Ian Willars of the Birmingham Post:“Neither my booking nor the sending-off were justified. I never touched Wilson the first time and the second time I was going for the ball, not the man. It was a 50-50.
“I actually connected with the ball not Wilson. I went over to check if he was hurt and, in my opinion, he was play-acting.”
Morgan had sweet revenge four days later. No automatic ban meant he was able to play and score in the replay at Villa Park which Villa won 2-0 in front of a bumper crowd of 47,821.
Randall Northam of the Birmingham Mail wrote: “Providing the sort of material from which story books are written, the Northern Ireland international Sammy Morgan, who was sent off on Saturday, scored in the 12th minute.
“He had scored in the opening game in the 11th minute and to increase the feeling of déjà vu it was another diving header.” Fellow striker Alun Evans scored Villa’s second.
Northam added: “It was never a great match but the crowd’s enthusiasm lifted it to a level which often made it exciting and they had their reward for ignoring the torrential rain in a driving Villa performance which outclassed their First Division opponents.”
For his part, an unrepentant Morgan said: “It was obvious that we had to put Wilson under pressure as anyone would have done in the circumstances. My goal could not have happened at a better time.”
How heartening to hear in that 100 Years of Coconuts interview that when Morgan was struck down with cancer 40 years later, one of several well-wishing calls he received came from Bob Wilson.
Best and Morgan (back row, left) in the same Belfast school photo
Born in East Belfast on 3 December 1946, Morgan went to the same Nettlefield Primary School as George Best and the first year at Grosvenor High. But Morgan left Belfast as an 11-year-old with his family, settling in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth (his mother’s birthplace).
His Irish father, a professional musician, took over the running of the Suspension Bridge tavern in Yarmouth and Morgan’s footballing ability continued to develop under the watchful eye of his teacher, the Rev Arthur Bowles, and he went on to represent Gorleston and Norfolk Schools.
Morgan went to the same technical high school in Gorleston that also spawned his great friend Dave Stringer (a former Norwich player and manager), former Arsenal centre back Peter Simpson and ex-Wolves skipper Mike Bailey, who managed Brighton in the top flight in 1981 and 1982.
Morgan’s early hopes of a professional career were dented when he had an unsuccessful trial at Ipswich Town. Alf Ramsey was manager at the time and the future England World Cup winning boss considered him too small. He also had an unsuccessful trial with Arsenal.
Morgan continued to play as an amateur with Gorleston FC and although on leaving school he initially began working as an accountant he decided to study to become a maths and PE teacher at Nottingham University. It was Gorleston manager Roger Carter who recommended him to the then Port Vale manager Gordon Lee, who was a former Aston Villa colleague.
“I loved my time under Roger and my playing days under him were the most enjoyable years of my footballing career even though I went on to play at a higher level,” said Morgan.
He was the relatively late age of 23 when, in January 1970, he had a successful trial with Vale and signed amateur forms. But by July that year he was forced to make a decision between full-time professional football or teaching. He chose football and made a scoring Football League debut against Swansea in August 1970.
However, that summer he was spotted as a future talent by Brian Clough and Peter Taylor when he played against their Derby County side in a pre-season friendly. Clough inquired about taking him on loan but he cemented his place in the Vale side and it didn’t go any further.
nifootball.blogspot.com wrote of him: “The burly centre-forward, he weighed in at up to thirteen and a half stone during his career, proved highly effective in an unadventurous Vale side.”
His strength and aggression in Third Division football caught the attention of Northern Ireland boss Terry Neill and he scored on his debut for his country in a February 1972 1-1 draw with Spain, played at Hull because of the troubles in the province, when he teamed up with old school chum Best.
Morgan remembered turning up at the team hotel, the Grand in Scarborough, and encountering a press camera posse awaiting Best’s arrival – and he didn’t show! The mercurial talent did make it in time for the game though, when another debutant was Best’s 17-year-old Manchester United teammate Sammy McIlroy, who earned the first of 88 caps.
In the home international tournament that followed, Morgan was overlooked in favour of Derek Dougan and Albion’s Willie Irvine who, having helped Brighton win promotion from Division Three (and scored what was selected as Match of the Day’s third best goal of the season against Aston Villa) earned a recall three years after his previous appearance.
In October of 1972, though, Morgan was selected again and took his cap total to seven while at Vale Park, for many years a club record.
While at Brighton, he earned two caps during the 1976 home international tournament, starting in the 3-0 defeat to Scotland and going on as a sub in a 1-0 defeat to Wales.
He earned his 18th and final cap two years later during his time at Sparta Rotterdam in a 2-1 win over Denmark in Belfast. The legendary Danny Blanchflower was briefly the Irish manager and he selected Morgan up front alongside Gerry Armstrong but he reflected that he didn’t play well, was struggling with a hamstring injury at the time, and was deservedly subbed off on the hour mark.
Morgan’s knack for helping sides win promotion had worked at Cambridge too, where he partnered Alan Biley and Tom Finney (no, not that one!) in attack, but after Atkinson left to manage West Brom, he fell out with his successor, John Docherty, and in August 1978 made the switch to Rotterdam.
After one season there, he moved on to Groningen in the Eeste Divisie (level two) and although he helped them win the title, he suffered a knee injury and called time on his professional playing days.
He returned to Norfolk to teach maths and PE in Gorleston, at Cliff Park High School and then Lynn Grove High School, and carried on playing with his first club, Gorleston, where, in 1981, he was appointed manager.
As well as coaching Great Yarmouth schoolboys, he also got involved in coaching Norwich City’s schoolboys in 1990 and in January 1998 he left teaching to work full-time as the club’s youth development manager. As the holder of a UEFA Class A licence, he went on to become the club’s first football academy director, a position he held until May 2004.
In October that year, Morgan was unveiled as Ipswich Town’s education officer, a role that involved ensuring Town’s young players received tuition on more than just football as they went through the academy system. In 2009, he became academy manager and during his three years notable youngsters who made it as professionals included strikers Connor Wickham and Jordan Rhodes.
He admitted in an interview with independent fan website TWTD: “If I’ve contributed to anybody in particular it probably would be the big number nine [Wickham] and Jordan because I was a number nine, and I kick the ball through them – I play the game through the number nines.”
He went on: “I’m very proud to have played a part in the development of a lot of young players. I’m equally proud of those lads who haven’t quite got there in the professional ranks but have maybe gone on to university and have forged other careers and are still playing football at non-league level, still enjoying their football. That means a lot to me as well.”
Morgan continued: “I finished playing in 1980 and I’ve been in youth development since then. I did the Norfolk schools, Great Yarmouth schools, representative sides and the Bobby Robson Soccer Schools. That’s 32 years, I’ve given it a fair crack and I love my football as much now as I ever did.
“I’ve been privileged to work with young people, very privileged. It’s kept me young, kept my passion and kept my enthusiasm going. One thing you could never accuse me of is not having any enthusiasm or passion for the game, and that will remain.”
In 2014, Morgan was diagnosed with stomach cancer and underwent chemo to tackle it. Through that association, in September 2017 he gave his backing to Norfolk and Suffolk Youth Football League’s choice of the oesophago-gastric cancer department at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) as its charity of the year.
Even when he could have had his feet up, he was helping to coach youngsters at independent Langley School in Norwich.
Morgan was on good form in this interview for 100 Years of Coconuts TV
WHEN ANDY RITCHIE scored at the Goldstone Ground on 7 September 1996, it was a very different place to the stadium he’d graced as Player of the Year 14 years previously.
Ritchie was in his 20th season as a professional when he scored his 200th career goal for Scarborough against his former Albion teammate Jimmy Case’s Seagulls in a Nationwide Division 3 match.
Just 4,008 hardy souls dotted around the crumbling old stadium supported the Albion that afternoon compared to the sell-out 28,800 crowd who packed in to see Ritchie’s last home match in Albion’s attack when they beat Norwich City 1-0, courtesy of a Case goal, in a quarter-final of the 1983 FA Cup.
Ritchie’s last endeavours in Albion’s colours came a week later and, ironically, were in front of 36,700 at Old Trafford on 19 March 1983 when he had a goal disallowed against the club who sold him to the Seagulls for what at the time was a record £500,000.
The curiosity of that deal was covered in my 2017 blog post about Ritchie and I’ve since discovered how a number of observers were dumbfounded by Dave Sexton’s decision to let him leave United.
That Sexton more often preferred the strike pairing of Joe Jordan and Jimmy Greenhoff baffled football writer Mike Anderson who, after Ritchie’s switch to the Albion, detailed how the departed forward’s numbers were more favourable.
“Since making his debut for United against Everton three seasons ago he has proved himself to be a more consistent marksman than the Scottish international,” wrote Anderson.
“By the end of the 1978-9 season Ritchie had scored 10 goals in only 20 full League appearances, compared with Jordan’s nine goals in 44 games. And when last season finished he had hit 13 goals in 23 full games (plus six substitute appearances), whereas Jordan had taken his tally to only 22 goals in 76 games.”
Anderson’s opinion was shared by Tony Kinsella, writing in When Saturday Comes in November 1997, he described Ritchie as “a muscular whippet of a striker with two scorching feet, a delicious first touch, and a bonce of solid granite”.
Kinsella wrote: “In four frustrating campaigns, Ritchie notched an admirable average of a goal every two games, a somewhat superior rate to his cohorts. In retrospect, I guess Ritchie was in the right place at the wrong time. He possessed more skill than Jordan and cut a more daunting physical presence than Greenhoff, but fell short of both when it came to vice versa.
“Sexton, notorious for fielding sides greyer than a Mancunian sky, had the courage to blood a teenage goalkeeper, Gary Bailey, but got cold feet when dealing with the loose cannon that was Andy Ritchie.”
A young Ritchie at Manchester United
In a lengthy chat for the Fore Four 2 podcast, Ritchie revealed how it was Steve Coppell who took him under his wing as a newcomer to the United first team and ensured he got fixed up with a pension; something Ritchie hadn’t even considered.
And his roommate at United was wandering winger Mickey Thomas, who ended up following him to Brighton and also to Leeds!
While Sexton may have had reservations about Ritchie, plenty of other managers were keen to take him from United. Tommy Docherty, who had first signed Ritchie for the Red Devils, had wanted to take him to Queen’s Park Rangers but he was sacked as Rangers’ manager before a bid was in the offing. Chelsea and Newcastle made inquiries too.
Aston Villa offered United £350,000 for him but, after attending with his dad a face-to-face meeting with the glum-faced manager Ron Saunders, they turned down the move feeling he hadn’t conveyed that he really wanted him.
Ritchie also declared: “United were my home town team and I loved it at Old Trafford.
“It had been my aim since joining the United staff to be a success in their first team. I would have got a large amount of money had I gone to Villa, but I put self-satisfaction before money. I had received a lot of encouragement from the training staff at Old Trafford and I wanted to justify their faith in me by doing well at United.
“I knew that a transfer would mean adjusting to a side playing a different style of football. I felt that I might just as well spend that time proving I was worthy of a place at United where I was part of possibly the best club in the country. Unfortunately, I found myself playing reserve team football again until Brighton came in for me.”
In a 2019 interview with the Albion website, Ritchie remembered: “We always had a good team spirit and we all used to go out together. Everyone played golf and we’d be out in the nightclubs, Bonsoir and others where you had to wipe your feet on the way out.
“Great times, absolutely fantastic. And the spirit transferred itself onto the pitch. I used to joke at Q&As that we had so many great individuals but put us together and we were crap because the social life got in the way of our football. But no, it was a fantastic club to be involved in.”
Ritchie attended a rugby-playing grammar school and played cricket and hockey for Cheshire, only turning to football at 13 or 14. He played for Manchester and Stockport Boys and scored six goals in nine games for England schoolboys under skipper Brendan Ormsby, who went on to play for Aston Villa.
In the 1983 Shoot! album, Ritchie explained: “It was while I was playing for Stockport Boys that I first realised I had a chance of a career as a professional footballer.
“I was selected for the England Under-15 side and played at Wembley Stadium. The first was against Wales. We won 4-2 and I scored a couple of goals. I then scored another when England beat France 6-1. They were great moments for me and my family.
“Appearing for England was definitely the highlight of my young career but I also enjoyed playing for Stockport and in local Sunday football.
“I played for a team called Whitehill, who were sponsored by Manchester City. It was then that I realised I could play for the Maine Road club.
“I had trials with Leeds United, Burnley and Aston Villa, but I only wanted to play for City.”
It was while playing for Stockport Boys v Manchester Boys that former United captain Johnny Carey, scouting for his old club, spotted Ritchie and made an approach.
“I went down to The Cliff (United’s training ground) and never looked back,” he said. “It didn’t take me very long to soak in the atmosphere and appreciate the tradition and name of Manchester United and, in the end, I was quite happy to sign for the Old Trafford club.”
Ritchie was 15 when he put pen to paper, and he turned professional on 5th December 1977.
Handed his first start in United’s first team shortly after his 17th birthday, he played four matches without scoring but had caught the eye of the England Youth selectors. He made four appearances under joint managers Brian Clough and Ken Burton, making his debut in a 3-1 win over France on 8 February 1978. England drew the return leg of that UEFA Youth tournament preliminary match 0-0.
He went with the England squad to Poland for the 31st UEFA Youth tournament in May 1978, played in a 1-1 draw v Turkey and a 1-0 defeat v Spain but a trapped nerve in his hip meant he sat out the 2-0 defeat to Poland that meant England didn’t qualify from their group. That squad included Terry Fenwick and Vince Hilaire, Tony Gale and Ray Ranson.
“The following year I was selected for England Youth again for the Mini World Cup in Austria. Unfortunately, I went over on my ankle in training and could not make the trip,” Ritchie recalled.
Ritchie hoped his move to Brighton might boost his chances of gaining a full England cap, but he ended up winning a solitary England under-21 cap when he was called up by the same Dave Sexton who’d sold him from United! “That really was a bit bizarre,” Ritchie later recalled.
He featured in a 2-2 draw with Poland at West Ham’s Boleyn Ground on 7 April 1982. Fellow striker Mark Hateley scored both England’s goals.
Ritchie in action for Leeds against Brighton
Ritchie’s time with Leeds was something of a mixed bag. The record books show he scored 44 times in 159 matches after he was signed by player-manager Eddie Gray. Playing in the second tier at the time, Leeds still had Gray, Peter Lorimer and David Harvey from the Revie era but Ritchie joined a mainly young side where the likes of John Sheridan, Tommy Wright and Scott Sellars were developing.
As Tony Hill observed on motforum.com: “Much of his time at Leeds was spent in dispute over his contract and for over a year he was on a weekly contract before moving to Oldham Athletic for £50,000 in August 1987.”
It was at Oldham where Ritchie really made his mark, scoring 82 goals in 217 league games (including 30 as a substitute) and helping them reach the League Cup Final and the FA Cup semi-final in 1990 and to win the old Second Division in 1991.
In 2020 the club’s official website declared: “Andy Ritchie is regarded as a club legend at Oldham Athletic and one of the greatest players to play for the club, having served Latics as a player as well as having a spell as manager.”
That goalscoring return to the Goldstone with Scarborough in early September 1996 came a year after he had joined the Seadogs as player coach on a free transfer. It was one of 17 he netted in the league from 59 starts and nine appearances from the bench.
By then a couple of months short of his 36th birthday, thankfully the Seagulls prevailed 3-2 courtesy of goals from Stuart Storer and two from Craig Maskell (the 99th and 100th of his career).
It certainly wasn’t the first time Ritchie had netted against the Seagulls. Twenty months after departing the Goldstone he scored the only goal of the game, tapping in from eight yards out, when Leeds beat the Seagulls at Elland Road.
He also scored for Oldham to knock Albion out of the FA Cup when the Latics won 2-1 in the fourth round on 27 January 1990. In a 1-1 draw at the Goldstone two months later, Ritchie missed a penalty but he made amends the following season scoring home and away against the Albion, netting twice in their 1 December 1990 6-1 thumping of the Seagulls on Oldham’s plastic pitch and scoring both when the Latics left the Goldstone 2-1 winners on 2 March.
He returned to Oldham on 21 February 1997 after Neil Warnock took him to Boundary Park as his player-assistant manager. He scored three times in 32 appearances, many of which were as a sub.
But when Warnock left to join Bury at the end of the following season, Ritchie was appointed as his successor. He managed 179 games, winning 59, drawing 45 and losing 75 with a win percentage of 32.96%.
After being sacked in 2001, he was out of work for three months before being appointed academy director at Leeds at a time when fellow ex-Man Utd player and coach Brian Kidd was head coach under Terry Venables and David O’Leary.
He found himself out of work again in 2003 when Peter Reid took charge but six months later he joined Barnsley, initially as academy manager before becoming first team coach under Paul Hart.
When Hart left Barnsley in March 2005, Ritchie was appointed caretaker manager and then landed the position permanently in two months later.
At the end of the following season, he led the club to a penalty shoot-out win over Swansea City in the League One play-off final at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff.
But the Championship season was only four months old when Ritchie was relieved of his duties with the Tykes struggling in the relegation zone.
Four months later, he was appointed manager of League One Huddersfield Town and told the club’s website: “There’s such massive potential here.
“There is no doubt that the club is geared up for promotion to the Championship and that has to be the aim now. It’s now a case of getting the players re-motivated and once we get into the Championship, we can reassess the situation.
“I tasted promotion last season and it was a great feeling – now I want to do it again as soon as possible.”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to steer the Terriers to that goal and, after a 4-1 defeat against his former employers Oldham, he parted company in April 2008.
They won only 22 of his 51 games in charge although they did enjoy their best FA Cup run for 10 years which only came to an end in the fifth round when they were beaten 3-1 by a Chelsea side under Avram Grant that included Wayne Bridge and Steve Sidwell.
After all that, Ritchie returned in a watching brief to where it all began: at Old Trafford.
On matchdays, he worked as an ambassador in a hospitality lounge, and contributed to MUTV and Radio Manchester.
FOR 40 YEARS, Mike Bailey was the manager who had led Brighton & Hove Albion to their highest-ever finish in football.
A promotion winner and League Cup-winning captain of Wolverhampton Wanderers, he took the Seagulls to even greater heights than his predecessor, Alan Mullery.
But the fickle nature of football following has remembered Bailey a lot less romantically than the former Spurs, Fulham and England midfielder.
The pragmatic way Brighton played under Bailey turned fans off in their thousands and, because gates dipped significantly, he paid the price.
Finishing 13th in the top tier in 1982 playing a safety-first style of football counted for nothing, even though it represented a marked improvement on relegation near-misses in the previous two seasons under Mullery, delivering along the way away wins against Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and then-high-flying Southampton as well as a first-ever victory over Arsenal.
Bailey’s achievement with the Albion was only overtaken in 2022 with a ninth place finish under Graham Potter; since surpassed again with a heady sixth and European qualification under Roberto De Zerbi.
Fascinatingly, though, Bailey had his eyes on Europe as far back as the autumn of 1981 and laid his cards on the table in a forthright article in Shoot! magazine.
Bailey’s ambition laid bare
“I am an ambitious man,” he said. “I am not content with ensuring that Brighton survive another season at this level. I want people to be surprised when we lose and to omit us from their predictions of which clubs will have a bad season.
“I am an enthusiast about this game. I loved playing, loved the atmosphere of a dressing room, the team spirit, the sense of achievement.
“As a manager I have come to realise there are so many other factors involved. Once they’re on that pitch the players are out of my reach; I am left to gain satisfaction from seeing the things we have worked on together during the week become a reality during a match.
“I like everything to be neat – passing, ball-control, appearance, style. Only when we have become consistent in these areas will Brighton lose, once and for all, the tag of the gutsy little Third Division outfit from the South Coast that did so well to reach the First Division.”
Clearly revelling in finding a manager happy to speak his mind, the magazine declared: “As a player with Charlton, Wolves and England, Bailey gave his all, never hid when things went wrong, accepted responsibility and somehow managed to squeeze that little bit extra from the players around him when his own game was out of tune.
“As a manager he is adopting the same principles of honesty, hard work and high standards of professionalism.
“So, when Bailey sets his jaw and says he wants people to expect Brighton to win trophies, he means that everyone connected with Albion must forget all about feeling delighted with simply being in the First Division.”
Warming to his theme, Bailey told Shoot!: “This club has come a long way in a short time. But now is the time to make another big step…or risk sliding backwards. Too many clubs have done just that – wasted time basking in recent achievements and crashed back to harsh reality.
“I do not intend for us to spend this season simply consolidating. That has been done in the last few seasons.”
Mike Bailey had high hopes for the Albion
If that sounds a bit like Roberto De Zerbi, unfortunately many long-time watchers of the Albion like me would more likely compare the style under Bailey to the pragmatism of the Chris Hughton era: almost a complete opposite to De Zerbi’s free-flowing attacking play.
It was ultimately his downfall because the court of public opinion – namely paying spectators who had rejoiced in a goals galore diet during Albion’s rise from Third to First under Mullery – found the new man’s approach too boring to watch and stopped filing through the turnstiles.
Back in 2013, the superb The Goldstone Wrap blog noted: “Only Liverpool attracted over 20,000 to the Goldstone before Christmas. The return fixture against the Reds in March 1982 was the high noon of Bailey’s spell as Brighton manager.
“A backs-to-the-wall display led to a famous 1-0 win at Anfield against the European Cup holders, with Andy Ritchie getting the decisive goal and Ian Rush’s goalbound shot getting stuck in the mud!”
At that stage, Albion were eighth but a fans forum at the Brighton Centre – and quite possibly a directive from the boardroom – seemed to get to him.
Supporters wanted the team to play a more open, attacking game. The result? Albion recorded ten defeats in the last 14 matches.
At odds with what he had heard, he very pointedly said in his programme notes: “It is my job to select the team and to try to win matches.
“People are quite entitled to their opinion, but I am paid to get results for Brighton and that is my first priority.
“Building a successful team is a long-term business and I have recently spoken to many top people in the professional game who admire what we are doing here at Brighton and just how far we have come in a short space of time.
“We know we still have a long way to go, but we are all working towards a successful future.”
Dropping down to finish 13th of 22 clubs, Albion never regained a spot in the top half of the division and The Goldstone Wrap observed: “If Bailey had stuck to his guns, and not listened to the fans, would the club have enjoyed a UEFA Cup place at the end of 1981-82?”
Bailey certainly wasn’t afraid to share his opinions and, as well as in the Shoot! article, he often vented his feelings quite overtly in his matchday programme notes; hitting out at referees, the football authorities and the media, as well as trying to explain his decisions to supporters, urging them to get behind the team rather than criticise.
It certainly didn’t help that the mercurial Mark Lawrenson was sold at the start of his regime as well as former captain Brian Horton and right-back-cum-midfielder John Gregory, but Bailey addressed the doubters head on.
“I believe it was necessary because while I agree that a player of Lawrenson’s ability, for example, is an exceptional talent, it is not enough to have a handful of assets.
“We must have a strong First Division squad, one where very good players can come in when injuries deplete the side.
Forthright views were a feature of Bailey’s programme notes
“We brought in Tony Grealish from Luton, Don Shanks from QPR, Jimmy Case from Liverpool and Steve Gatting and Sammy Nelson from Arsenal. Now the squad is better balanced. It allows for a permutation of positions and gives adequate cover in most areas.”
One signing Bailey had tried to make that he had to wait a few months to make was one he would come to regret big time. Long-serving Peter O’Sullivan had left the club at the same time as Lawrenson, Horton and Gregory so there was a vacancy to fill on the left side of midfield.
Bailey had his eyes on Manchester United’s Mickey Thomas but the Welsh wideman joined Everton instead. When, after only three months, the player fell out with Goodison boss Howard Kendall, Bailey was finally able to land his man for £350,000 on a four-year contract.
Talented though Thomas undoubtedly was, what the manager didn’t bargain for was the player’s unhappy 20-year-old wife, Debbie.
She was unable to settle in Sussex – the word was that she gave it only five days, living in a property at Telscombe Cliffs – and went back to Colwyn Bay with their baby son.
Thomas meanwhile stayed at the Courtlands Hotel in Hove and the club bent over backwards to give him extra time off so he could travel to and from north Wales. But he began to return late or go missing from training.
After the third occasion he went missing, Bailey was incandescent with rage and declared: ”Thomas has s*** on us….the sooner the boy leaves, the better.”
At one point in March, it was hoped a swap deal could be worked out that would have brought England winger Peter Barnes to the Goldstone from Leeds, but they weren’t interested and so the saga dragged out to the end of the season.
After yet another absence and fine of a fortnight’s wages, Bailey once again went on the front foot and told Argus Albion reporter John Vinicombe: “He came in and trained which allowed him to play for Wales.
“He is just using us, and yet I might have played him against Wolves (third to last game of the season). Thomas is his own worst enemy and I stand by what I’ve said before – the sooner he goes the better.”
Thomas was ‘shop windowed’ in the final two games and during the close season was sold to Stoke City for £200,000.
In his own assessment of his first season, Bailey said: “Many good things have come out of our season. Our early results were encouraging and we quickly became an organised and efficient side. The lads got into their rhythm quickly and it was a nice ‘plus’ to get into a high league position so early on.”
He had special words of praise for Gary Stevens and said: “Although the youngest member of our first team squad, Gary is a perfect example to his fellow professionals. Whatever we ask of him he will always do his best, he is completely dedicated and sets a fine example to his fellow players.”
The biggest bugbear for the people running the club was that the average home gate for 1981-82 was 18,241, fully 6,500 fewer than had supported the side during their first season at the top level.
“The Goldstone regulars grew restless at a series of frustrating home draws, and finally turned on their own players,” wrote Vinicombe in his end of season summary for the Argus.
He also said: “It is Bailey’s chief regret that he changed his playing policy in response to public, and possibly private, pressure with the result that Albion finished the latter part of the season in most disappointing fashion.
“Accusations that Albion were the principal bores of the First Division at home were heaped on Bailey’s head, and, while he is a man not given to altering his mind for no good reason, certain instructions were issued to placate the rising tide of criticisms.”
If Bailey wasn’t exactly Mr Popular with the fans, at the beginning of the following season, off-field matters brought disruption to the playing side.
Steve Foster thought he deserved more money having been to the World Cup with England and he, Michael Robinson and Neil McNab questioned the club’s ambition after chairman Bamber refused to sanction the acquisition of Charlie George, the former Arsenal, Derby and Southampton maverick, who had been on trial pre-season.
Robinson went so far as to accuse the club of “settling for mediocrity” and couldn’t believe Bailey was working without a contract.
Bamber voiced his disgust at Robinson, claiming it was really all about money, and tried to sell him to Sunderland, with Stan Cummins coming in the opposite direction, but it fell through. Efforts were also made to send McNab out on loan which didn’t happen immediately although it did eventually.
All three were left out of the side temporarily although Albion managed to beat Arsenal and Sunderland at home without them. In what was an erratic start to the season, Albion couldn’t buy a win away from home and suffered two 5-0 defeats (against Luton and West Brom) and a 4-0 spanking at Nottingham Forest – all in September.
Other than 20,000 gates for a West Ham league game and a Spurs Milk Cup match, the crowd numbers had slumped to around 10,000. Former favourite Peter Ward was brought back to the club on loan from Nottingham Forest and scored the only goal of the game as Manchester United were beaten at the Goldstone.
But four straight defeats followed and led to the axe for Bailey, with Bamber declaring: “He’s a smashing bloke, I’m sorry to see him go, but it had to be done.”
Perhaps the writing was on the wall when, in his final programme contribution, he blamed the run of poor results simply on bad luck and admitted: “I feel we are somehow in a rut.”
It didn’t help the narrative of his reign that his successor, Jimmy Melia, surfed on a wave of euphoria when taking Albion to their one and only FA Cup Final – even though he also oversaw the side’s fall from the elite.
“It seems that my team has been relegated from the First Division while Melia’s team has reached the Cup Final,” an irked Bailey said in an interview he gave to the News of the World’s Reg Drury in the run-up to the final.
Hurt by some of the media coverage he’d seen since his departure, Bailey resented accusations that his style had been dull and boring football, pointing out: “Nobody said that midway through last season when we were sixth and there was talk of Europe.
“We were organised and disciplined and getting results. John Collins, a great coach, was on the same wavelength as me. We wanted to lay the foundations of lasting success, just like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley did at Liverpool.
“The only problem was that winning 1-0 and 2-0 didn’t satisfy everybody. I tried to change things too soon – that was a mistake.
“When I left (in December 1982), we were 18th with more than a point a game. I’ve never known a team go down when fifth from bottom.”
Bailey later expanded on the circumstances, lifting the lid on his less than cordial relationship with Bamber, when speaking on a Wolves’ fans forum in 2010. “We had a good side at Brighton and did really well,” he said. “The difficulty I had was with the chairman. He was not satisfied with anything.
“I made Brighton a difficult team to beat. I knew the standard of the players we had and knew how to win matches. We used to work on clean sheets.
“With the previous manager, they hadn’t won away from home very often but we went to Anfield and won. But the chairman kept saying: ‘Why can’t we score a few more goals?’ He didn’t understand it.”
Foster, the player Bailey made Albion captain, was also critical of the ‘boring’ jibe and in Spencer Vignes’ A Few Good Men said: “We sacked Mike Bailey because we weren’t playing attractive football, allegedly. Things were changing. Brighton had never been so high.
“We were doing well, but we weren’t seen as a flamboyant side. I was never happy with the press because they were creating this boring talk. Some of the stuff they used to write really annoyed me.”
Striker Andy Ritchie was also supportive of the management. He told journalist Nick Szczepanik: “Mike got everyone playing together. Everybody liked Mike and John Collins, who was brilliant. When a group of players like the management, it takes you a long way. When you are having things explained to you and training is good and it’s a bit of fun, you get a lot more out of it.”
Born on 27 February 1942 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, he went to the same school in Gorleston, Norfolk, as the former Arsenal centre back Peter Simpson. His career began with non-league Gorleston before Charlton Athletic snapped him up in 1958 and he spent eight years at The Valley.
During his time there, he was capped twice by England as manager Alf Ramsey explored options for his 1966 World Cup squad. Just a week after making his fifth appearance for England under 23s, Bailey, aged 22, was called up to make his full debut in a friendly against the USA on 27 May 1964.
He had broken into the under 23s only three months earlier, making his debut in a 3-2 win over Scotland at St James’ Park, Newcastle, on 5 February 1964.He retained his place against France, Hungary, Israel and Turkey, games in which his teammates included Graham Cross, Mullery and Martin Chivers.
England ran out 10-0 winners in New York with Roger Hunt scoring four, Fred Pickering three, Terry Paine two, and Bobby Charlton the other.
Eight of that England side made it to the 1966 World Cup squad two years later but a broken leg put paid to Bailey’s chances of joining them.
“I was worried that may have been it,” Bailey recalled in his autobiography, The Valley Wanderer: The Mike Bailey Story (published in November 2015). “In the end, I was out for six months. My leg got stronger and I never had problems with it again, so it was a blessing in disguise in that respect.
“Charlton had these (steep) terraces. I’d go up to them every day, I was getting fitter and fitter.”
In fact, Ramsey did give him one more chance to impress. Six months after the win in New York, he was in the England team who beat Wales 2-1 at Wembley in the Home Championship. Frank Wignall, who would later spend a season with Bailey at Wolves, scored both England’s goals.
“But it was too late to get in the 1966 World Cup side,” said Bailey. “Alf Ramsey had got his team in place.”
During his time with the England under 23s, Bailey had become friends with Wolves’ Ernie Hunt (the striker who later played for Coventry City) and Hunt persuaded him to move to the Black Country club for a £40,000 fee.
Thus began an association which saw him play a total of 436 games for Wolves over 11 seasons.
In his first season, 1966-67, he captained the side to promotion from the second tier and he was also named as Midlands Footballer of the Year.
Wolves finished fourth in the top division in 1970-71 and European adventures followed, including winning the Texaco Cup of 1971 – the club’s first silverware in 11 years – and reaching the UEFA Cup final against Tottenham a year later, although injury meant Bailey was only involved from the 55th minute of the second leg and Spurs won 3-2 on aggregate.
Two years later, Bailey, by then 32, lifted the League Cup after Bill McGarry’s side beat Ron Saunders’ Manchester City 2-1 at Wembley with goals by Kenny Hibbitt and John Richards. It was Bailey’s pass to Alan Sunderland that began the winning move, Richards sweeping in Sunderland’s deflected cross.
Bailey lifts the League Cup after Wolves beat Manchester City at Wembley
This was a side with solid defenders like John McAlle, Frank Munro and Derek Parkin, combined with exciting players such as Irish maverick centre forward Derek Dougan and winger Dave Wagstaffe.
Richards had become Dougan’s regular partner up front after Peter Knowles quit football to turn to religion. Discussing Bailey with wolvesheroes.com, Richards said: “He really was a leader you responded to and wanted to play for. If you let your standards slip, he wasn’t slow to let you know. I have very fond memories of playing alongside him.”
“He gave me – just as he did with all the young players coming into the team – so much help and guidance in training and matches on and off the pitch,” said Richards.
“There were so many little tips and pieces of advice and I remember how he first taught me how to come off defenders. He would say ‘when I get the ball John, just push the defender away, come towards me, lay the ball off and then go again’.
“There was so much advice that he would give to us all, and it had a massive influence.”
Midfielder Hibbitt, another Wolves legend who made 544 appearances for the club, said: “He was the greatest captain I ever played with.”
Steve Daley added: “Mike is my idol, he was an absolute inspiration to me when I was playing.”
Winger Terry Wharton added: “He was a great player…a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character as well. On the pitch he was a great captain, a winner, he was tenacious and he was loud.
“He got people moving and he got people going and you just knew he was a captain. And then off the pitch? He could have been a vicar.”
When coach Sammy Chung stepped up to take over as manager, Bailey found himself on the outside looking in and chose to end his playing days in America, with the Minnesota Kicks, who were managed by the former Brighton boss Freddie Goodwin.
He returned to England and spent the 1978-79 season as player-manager of Fourth Division Hereford United and in March 1980 replaced Andy Nelson as boss at Charlton Athletic. He had just got the Addicks promoted from the Third Division when he replaced Mullery at Brighton.
In a curious symmetry, Bailey’s management career in England (courtesy of managerstats.co.uk) saw him manage each of those three clubs for just 65 games. At Hereford, his record was W 32, D 11, L 22; at Charlton W 21, D 17, L 27; at Brighton, W 20 D 17, L 28.
In 1984, he moved to Greece to manage OFI Crete, he briefly took charge of non-league Leatherhead and he later worked as reserve team coach at Portsmouth. Later still, he did some scouting work for Wolves (during the Dave Jones era) and he was inducted into the Wolves Hall of Fame in 2010.
In November 2020, Bailey’s family made public the news that he had been diagnosed with dementia hoping that it would help to highlight the ongoing issues around the number of ex-footballers suffering from it.
Perhaps the last words should go to Bailey himself, harking back to that 1981 article when his words were so prescient bearing in mind what would follow his time in charge.
“We don’t have a training ground. We train in a local park. The club have tried to remedy this and I’m sure they will. But such things hold you back in terms of generating the feeling of the big time,” he said.
“I must compliment the people who are responsible for getting the club where it is. They built a team, won promotion twice and the fans flocked in. Now is the time to concentrate on developing the Goldstone Ground. When we build our ground, we will have the supporters eager to fill it.”
Pictures from various sources: Goal and Shoot! magazines; the Evening Argus, the News of the World, and the Albion matchday programme.
THE STORY of Matthew Edwards scoring for Brighton against Manchester United in the same cup match in which David Beckham made his debut has been told many times, and who wouldn’t be proud of that memory.
The history books can’t take it away from him, nor should they. “Scoring that goal against Manchester United was certainly the highspot of my career. Everyone wanted to talk about it and I was mentioned in all the papers and (I was) interviewed on television,” he said.
While that second round League Cup game on 23 September 1992 stands out, Edwards actually played 78 matches for the Albion after being released by Tottenham Hotspur, where his only first team outings were in testimonials or friendlies.
Albion were a very different proposition in September 1992, just beginning to reacquaint themselves to life back in the third tier of English football barely 16 months after having come close to returning to the top flight.
Big name players had been sold to try to balance the books and manager Barry Lloyd had to turn to free transfers, loanees and young hopefuls to put out a side.
Edwards was in that category and he probably only played in that United match because the respective parent clubs didn’t want loan forwards Steve Cotterill and Paul Moulden to be cup tied. He played alongside Scot Andy Kennedy, a recent arrival from Watford.
The youngster seized his chance and made a name for himself by heading home an Ian Chapman cross to cancel out Danny Wallace’s 35th-minute opener for the illustrious visitors.
Beckham had been sent on for his United bow in place of Andrei Kanchelskis (serenaded by a familiar North Stand chant of ‘Who the f****** h*** are you?’) but the game finished 1-1 at the Goldstone Ground, setting things up nicely for the second leg at Old Trafford (which United won 1-0).
Edwards once again earned a place in the headlines four months later when he scored the only goal of the game in a FA Cup third round win over south coast rivals Portsmouth, a side playing in the division above the Seagulls, and who had reached the previous season’s semi-finals.
Born in Hammersmith on 15 June 1971, the family lived in Brighton for a time and the young Edwards, who first started kicking a football around the age of six, played for local side Saltdean Tigers. At 13, he was on the Albion’s books under the guidance of Colin Woffinden, a former player who became youth coach.
But the family relocated to Surrey and it was while playing schoolboy football for Elmbridge Borough that he was spotted by Tottenham. In an extended interview with Lennon Branagan, Edwards explained how he got his big break courtesy of Fred Callaghan, Fulham’s left-back for 10 years who managed Brentford in the 1980s.
His son was playing in the same side as Edwards and Callaghan recommended Edwards to his friend Ted Buxton, a renowned coach and scout, who was working for Spurs at the time.
“I didn’t know that Ted had come along to watch me and then after one of the games they said: ‘Do you want to come to Spurs?’” Edwards recounted.
Young Spur Matthew Edwards
He signed associate schoolboy forms and while at Hinchley Wood Secondary School, Esher, travelled up to White Hart Lane on a Tuesday and Thursday night for training on an indoor pitch next to the main reception area.
On leaving school, he was taken on as an apprentice at Spurs and worked through his YTS under the auspices of youth team manager Keith Blunt and coach (and Blunt’s successor) Keith Waldon.
At 17, he signed on as a professional and he was on the books for three and a half years.
“We were quite successful in the reserves and I think that we used to win the league pretty much every season,” Edwards recalled.
It was tours abroad that he remembered most fondly from his time at Spurs, playing in Hawaii and Japan, and he also joined up with the first team squad for tours to Norway, Ireland and Italy.
A rare first team opportunity came in Billy Bonds’ testimonial at West Ham on 12 November 1990.
“I was young and had long blond hair and I can remember getting absolutely slaughtered by the West Ham fans that day,” he said.
In his final year, he went on loan to Reading, where he played eight games before returning to Spurs, and later the same season went to Peterborough on a similar arrangement, although he only played in one cup match for Posh.
He sensed his days at Spurs were drawing to a close, telling an Albion matchday programme: “I knew it was time for me to go when (manager) Peter Shreeves forgot my name!”
He said: “I had three months on loan at Peterborough but didn’t get a league game. Martin Hinshelwood rang me up in May and asked if I would be interested in coming to Brighton.”
Edwards marked by ex-teammate Justin Edinburgh
One of the first matches he played for the Seagulls was in a pre-season friendly against his former club, a 1-1 draw at the Goldstone on 29 July 1992. In a shocking excuse for a programme for the visit of Croatian side FC Inker Zapresic, a barely recognisable picture of the new signing was included. Thankfully a more professional programme appeared for the opening home league game, against Bolton Wanderers, and Edwards was pictured (left) in action up against his former teammate Justin Edinburgh
After Cotterill and Moulden had returned to their parent clubs because Albion couldn’t afford to make their moves permanent, Edwards started to forge a fledgling forward partnership with Kennedy. But Kurt Nogan took over and his prolific goalscoring saw Edwards have more of a peripheral role, although he ended the season taking over from soon-to-depart Clive Walker on the left wing.
Edwards was in the starting line-up for the first half of the 1993-94 season, won a man-of-the-match award for his performance against Gillingham in the League Cup and scored in a 2-2 draw at home to Huddersfield.
He was the programme cover boy for the Exeter City home game on 2 October (0-0) but, with Albion dangerously close to the drop zone, Liam Brady took over from Lloyd and it soon became quite a different picture for the former Spurs youngster.
He played in the first seven games under the new boss, and scored in a 3-3 FA Cup tie v Bournemouth, but Brady had his own ideas and started looking elsewhere for solutions.
“Me and him didn’t really see eye to eye, or he didn’t particularly fancy me as a player,” Edwards told Branagan.
Although Edwards was a sub three times in March, his appearance off the bench in a home 1-1 draw with Burnley was his last involvement with the first team.
A regular in the reserves in the latter part of the season, at the end of it he was released and joined Conference side Kettering where he had barely got his shorts dirty before suffering a cruciate ligament injury.
“That that was the start of the end of my career as such,” he confessed. “I had a year out of the game.”
On his return to fitness, he had two good seasons for Walton & Hersham, and then Enfield. “My knees just kept on going for me,” he recounted. Over the course of another couple of years, he appeared for Carshalton Athletic, Sutton United, Molesey, Yeading, Bognor and Egham.
But he said: “My knees just weren’t up to playing football, so I had to call it a day and that was the end of the career.”
Interviewed for an Albion matchday programme article in 2019, he told journalist Spencer Vignes he had developed a career in computer software sales and had been a visitor to the Amex on behalf of a ticketing company that worked with the club.
He had subsequently moved on to providing similar expertise for visitor attractions such as zoos, museums, aquaria and cathedrals.
Reflecting on his all too brief career, he said: “I suppose I’m lucky in that I was in the right place at the right time to play for the Albion at the Goldstone, rather than Withdean. Saltdean Tigers to Spurs to Brighton; there can’t have been many people who have done that!”
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.
GARY BULL had good family connections to offer hope to Liam Brady’s Brighton at the start of the 1995-96 season.
Unfortunately, the Nottingham Forest loanee was often in the shadow of his cousin Steve, a Wolves goalscoring legend who went on to play for England.
Gary arrived at the Goldstone in August 1995 against the backdrop of off-the-pitch disquiet caused by the underhand machinations of the despised directors of the club at that time.
Bull scored three times in 11 appearances for the Seagulls but the cash-strapped club couldn’t afford to keep him on.
Although Bull had made a name for himself as a goalscorer lower down the football pyramid, he had made only four starts plus eight appearances as a sub for Forest over the previous two seasons, scoring just the once.
However, that goal did put him amongst an elite group of players: he was the second of only four players to score on their single Premier League appearance.
Perhaps it was all the sweeter because it secured Forest a 1-0 home win over Crystal Palace that took them up to fourth place in the table.
“It was an inswinging corner. A couple of people missed it and I was about three yards out. It was unmissable really, although I tell my kids it was a screamer.”
Bull had his brief moment in the limelight because first choice striker Stan Collymore pulled out of the match on 2 January 1995 due to illness.
The striker had spent three months on loan at Birmingham City the previous autumn, scoring an impressive six goals in 10 matches (he was in the City side who won 1-0 at the Goldstone in October 1994).
Bull only had one more sniff of first team action for Forest that season, once again against Palace, when he went on as a substitute for Scot Gemmill in a 2-1 fourth round FA Cup defeat on 28 January.
With Collymore in fine scoring form (24 in 43 matches that season), and Dutchman Bryan Roy also a regular up front, manager Frank Clark didn’t turn to Bull again, and Forest finished in an impressive third place in the Premier League.
Bull had to be content with a cameo role in an end-of-season fixture, netting Forest’s third goal in a 3-1 win over Singapore’s national team in an exhibition match in Singapore in May 1995.
Even though Collymore was sold to Liverpool for £8.5m that summer, Bull had to look elsewhere for first team chances and Brady was happy to bring him in to boost Albion’s attacking options.
He got off the mark in his third game, although Albion lost 2-1 at home to Wycombe Wanderers in front of just 5,360 fans.
Bull later scored twice away at Cambridge United in a 4-1 win in the Auto-Windscreens Shield trophy (it was the game in which former Ipswich and England centre back Russell Osman made his debut for the Albion).
But a 1-0 defeat at Rotherham on 7 October was his last game in the stripes and, not long after his return to the City Ground, he was given a free transfer and joined Birmingham on a permanent basis.
Born in West Bromwich on 12 June 1966, his first club was Paget Rangers in the Midlands League but in 1986 he joined Southampton as a trainee under youth team boss Dave Merrington. Jimmy Case and Craig Maskell were in the Saints first team at the time; Kevan Brown in the reserves.
It wasn’t until Bull moved on to Chris Turner’s Cambridge United in March 1988 that he made his professional breakthrough, scoring four in 19 games.
His prowess in front of goal really began to flourish when he dropped out of the league to help Barnet FC win the Conference. Tony Hammond – a Barnet FC devotee known as ‘Reckless’ – reckoned the £2,200 fee manager Barry Fry paid for him was “one of the bargains of the century”.
In four seasons at Barnet, Bull netted an impressive 121 goals in 219 appearances, becoming an Underhill icon. In his blog, Hammond quoted Fry as saying: “He was bloody good that Bully, I never had to worry about him being in the right place at the right time in front of goal it was always just pure instinct.”
Bull was buzzing for Bees
When Bees finally won promotion to the Football League in 1990-91, Bull scored 35 goals – including two four-goal hauls and a hat-trick – and was voted Player of the Year.
Bull’s scoring form continued during Barnet’s first season in the Fourth Division. He bagged 33 as the Bees reached the play-offs where they only narrowly lost a two-legged tie against Blackpool.
In 1992-93, Bull and strike partner Mark Carter were prominent again, as Barnet finished third in the table, clinching promotion to what was then a reorganised Division Two.
Sadly, Barnet were in deep financial trouble and were forced to shed players. Bull was signed by Premier League Forest’s newly appointed manager Frank Clark in July 1993.
“I would have stayed at Barnet but I had a family to look after and had no choice but to move on,” Bull told Hammond. “It was a memorable four years and certainly a period that I look back on with pride,” he added.
The subsequent move to Birmingham reunited Bull with his old boss Barry Fry, although a somewhat cynical view of the move was espoused by writer John Tandy in When Saturday Comes.
“It took Fry 18 months of sustained and public pressure to talk the board into signing Gary Bull. Eventually, in November 1995, we landed the Tipton Tyke. Six games and some time on the bench later he was on his way to York,” he wrote.
Bull spent two seasons at York. The highlight of his stay came in a second round League Cup tie at home to Everton. Bull put the Minstermen 2-1 ahead in the 57th minute, tapping in a rebound off the post and York went on to win it 3-2.
It was one of 11 goals Bull scored in 84 games for City before spending time in Lincolnshire. While he only scored once in 31 games for Scunthorpe, his scoring boots were well and truly back on at Grantham Town: 68 goals in 125 games.
He then moved on to Lincoln United for two years before finishing his career with a flourish at United Counties League Boston Town. During the 2006–07 season, he scored a club record 57 goals! He later went on to become their all-time top scorer with over 200 goals,
Bull only retired from playing aged 45 in 2012.
He then became a postman and told premierleague.com: “I’m one of those people who gets up and actually enjoys going to work and getting the physical aspect of it.
“We probably do between 10 and 12 miles a day. Some would say I do more now than I did on the pitch.”
ALEX DAWSON was even younger than Evan Ferguson when he scored a FA Cup semi-final hat-trick.
The bull-like centre forward who broke through at Manchester United in the wake of the Munich air crash wrote his name in football record books on 26 March 1958.
Dawson was just 18 years and 33 days old when he netted three goals in United’s 5-3 win over Fulham in front of 38,000 fans at Highbury, north London. No-one that young has ever repeated the feat.
Eleven years later, Dawson scored twice for Brighton in a Third Division match against Walsall. It was my first ever Albion game. He followed up the two he got in that game with six more in four other games I saw that 1968-69 season. They were enough to sow the seeds of a lifetime supporting the Albion and the burly Dawson, wearing number 9, became an instant hero to an impressionable 10-year-old.
Dawson scored twice v Walsall in 1969
Dawson is no longer with us but the memory of his goalscoring exploits live on amongst those fans of a certain vintage who had the pleasure of seeing him in action.
A man who played alongside him at Wembley in 1958 – Freddie Goodwin – made Dawson his first signing for Brighton, for £9,000, not long after he had taken over as manager in the winter of 1968.
By then, he was plying his trade with Bury. He had left United in 1961 after scoring a remarkable 54 goals in 93 games, including one on his debut aged just 17 (in a 2-0 win over Burnley).
After losing 2-0 to Bolton Wanderers in 1958, another losing Wembley appearance followed six years later. He scored a goal for Preston North End but the Lancastrian side lost 3-2 to West Ham United.
United pair Freddie Goodwin and Alex Dawson were reunited at Brighton
Nevertheless, Dawson was prolific for Preston scoring 132 goals in 237 league and cup games over six years. The purple patch I saw him have for Brighton saw him find the net no fewer than 17 times in just 23 games, including three braces and four in an away game at Hartlepool. That was only one behind top scorer Kit Napier whose 18 came in 49 matches.
Alex Dawson in snow action at the Goldstone Ground
In a curtain-raiser to the 1969-70 season, Dawson scored four times as Albion trounced a Gibraltar XI 6-0 at the Goldstone. But the signing of Allan Gilliver and, in the New Year, young Alan Duffy, began to reduce his playing time. He got 12 more goals in 28 appearances (plus three as sub) but, when Goodwin left the club, successor Pat Saward edged him out.
Even in a loan spell at Brentford he scored seven in 11 games. Greville Waterman, on bfctalk.wordpress.com in July 2014, recalled: “He was a gnarled veteran of thirty with a prominent broken nose and a face that surely only a mother could love, but he had an inspirational loan spell at Griffin Park in 1970.”
Still smiling and scoring goals at Corby
Released by the Albion at the end of the 1970-71 season, Dawson’s final footballing action was with non-league Corby Town, where he didn’t disappoint either.
In his first season at Occupation Road, he finished top scorer with 25 goals in 60 appearances and by the time he retired from playing on 4 May 1974, his tally for the Steelmen was 44 in 123 appearances.
When the curtain came down on his career, Dawson had scored 212 goals in 394 matches – more than one every two games. A true goalscorer.
It was in the wake of the decimating effect of the Munich air disaster that Dawson found himself thrust into the limelight at a tender age.
The crash claimed the lives of eight of United’s first choice team – Dawson’s pals. Youngsters and fringe players had to be drafted into the side to fulfil the remaining fixtures that season. One was Dawson, another was Goodwin.
Thirteen days after the accident, Dawson took his place beside survivors Bill Foulkes and Harry Gregg and scored one of United’s goals as they beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the fifth round of the Cup.
He scored again as United drew 2-2 with West Brom in the sixth round, before winning through 1-0 in a replay to go up against Fulham in the semi-final.
Dawson told manutd.com: “In our first game with Fulham (played at Villa Park), Bobby Charlton scored twice in a 2-2 draw, and I was put on the right wing. I was a centre-forward really and, when we played the replay at Highbury four days later, I was back in my normal position.
“Jimmy (Murphy) said before the game: ‘I fancy you this afternoon, big man. I fancy you to put about three in.’ I just said: ‘You know me Jim, I’ll do my best,’ but I couldn’t believe it when it happened.
“The first was a diving header, I think the second was a left-footer and the third was with my right foot.
“It was a long time ago, of course, and it’s still a club record for the youngest scorer of a hat-trick in United’s history. Records are there to be broken and I’m surprised that it’s gone on for over half a century.
“I’m a proud man to still hold this record. Even when it goes, nobody can ever take the achievement away from me.”
While Dawson was my first Albion hero, when he died in a Kettering care home at the age of 80 on 17 July 2020 the esteem in which he was held by others also came to the fore in the tributes paid by each of the clubs he played for.
Born in Aberdeen on 21 February 1940, Dawson went to the same school as United legend Denis Law, but his parents moved down to Hull and Dawson joined United straight from Hull Schoolboys.
Dawson and future Preston and Brighton teammate Nobby Lawton were both on the scoresheet as United beat West Ham 3-2 in the first leg of the 1957 FA Youth Cup Final and Dawson scored twice in the 5-0 second leg win. West Ham’s side included John Lyall, who later went on to manage them.
On redcafe.net, Julian Denny recalled how Dawson once scored three hat-tricks in a row for a United reserve team that was regularly watched by crowds of over 10,000.
After that goalscoring first team debut against Burnley in April 1957, he also scored in each of the final two matches that season (a 3-2 win at Cardiff and a 1-1 draw at home to West Brom) to help United win the title and secure their passage into Europe’s premier club competition.
Obviously, circumstances dictated Dawson’s rapid rise but, with the benefit of hindsight, some say his United career may have panned out differently if he hadn’t been thrust into first team action at such a young age.
He was just short of his 18th birthday when the accident happened. In an interview with Chris Roberts in the Daily Record (initially published 6 Feb 2008 then updated 1 July 2012), he recalled: “I used to go on those trips and had a passport and visa all ready but the boss just told me I wasn’t going this time.
“I had already been on two or three trips just to break me in. I know now how lucky I was to be left in Manchester. The omens were on my side.”
Dawson went on to describe the disbelief and the feelings they had at losing eight of the team, including Duncan Edwards several days later.
“We were all so close and Duncan was also a good friend to me before the accident,” said Dawson. “Duncan was such a good player, there is no doubt about that. He was a wonderful fellow as well as a real gentleman.
“I will never, ever forget him because he died on my birthday, 21 February, and before that he was the one who really helped me settle in.”
Dawson gradually became an increasingly bigger part of the first-team picture at United, making 11 appearances in 1958-59 and scoring four times. The following season he scored 15 in 23 games then went five better in 1960-61, scoring 20 in 34 games.
He was at the top of his game during the last week of 1960 when he scored in a 2-1 away win at Chelsea on Christmas Eve, netted a hat-trick as Chelsea were thumped 6-0 at Old Trafford on Boxing Day, and then scored another treble as United trounced neighbours City 5-1 on New Year’s Eve.
A fortnight later he had the chance to show another less well-known string to his footballing bow…. as a goalkeeper!
It was recalled by theguardian.com in 2013. When Tottenham were on their way to the first ever double and had an air of near-invincibility about them, they arrived at Old Trafford having lost only once all season, and had scored in every single game.
Long before the days of a bench full of substitutes, when ‘keeper Harry Gregg sustained a shoulder injury, Dawson had to take over in goal.
Dawson excelled when called upon, at one point performing, according to the Guardian’s match report, “a save from Allen that Gregg himself could not have improved upon”.
The article said: “Tottenham’s attempts to get back into the game came to nought and Dawson achieved what no genuine goalkeeper had all season: keep out Tottenham’s champions-elect. In the end, there were only two games all season in which Spurs failed to score, and this was one of them.”
Scoring for Preston North End
Tottenham’s north London neighbours, Arsenal, finished a disappointing 25 points behind Spurs in 11th place, but United manager Matt Busby had been keeping tabs on the Gunners’ prolific centre forward David Herd (Arsenal’s top scorer for four seasons), and in July 1961 took him to Old Trafford for £35,000. It signalled the end of Dawson’s time with United.
When the new season kicked off, Dawson had a new apprentice looking after the cleaning of his boots….a young Irishman called George Best. In his 1994 book, The Best of Times (written with Les Scott),
Best said: “Alex Dawson was a brawny centre forward whose backside was so huge he appeared taller when he sat down. To me, Alex looked like Goliath, although he was only 5’10”. What made him such an imposing figure was his girth.
“He weighed 13st 12lbs, a stone heavier than centre half Bill Foulkes who was well over 6ft tall. What’s more, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on Alex – it was all muscle.”
Best’s responsibilities for Dawson’s boots didn’t last long, however, because in October that year, Busby sold the centre forward to Preston for £18,000.
In 1967, Dawson took the short journey to Bury FC where his goalscoring exploits continued with 21 goals in 50 appearances, before he joined Goodwin’s regime at Brighton.
What a career to look back on: Alex Dawson recalling his goalscoring exploits
A STRIKER who once scored five goals in 20 minutes for West Ham took slightly longer when playing for Brighton but still netted five in seven games.
Brian Dear (nicknamed Stag, geddit?) won the European Cup Winners’ Cup with West Ham in front of 97,974 fans at Wembley in May 1965. Only the month before, he’d netted in the 44th, 53rd, 56th, 59th and 64th minutes of West Ham’s 6-1 demolition of West Brom in front of 27,706 fans at the Boleyn Ground.
Dear scores one of his five v WBA
Two years later, 23-year-old Dear found himself travelling to Workington to make his debut for Third Division Albion. The train journey there had been made worse by a derailment that meant Albion only arrived at the Borough Park ground 45 minutes before kick-off. Although Kit Napier scored against his former club, a sparse crowd of just 2,863 saw the visitors beaten 2-1.
Quite some change in fortunes for Dear, who had joined Brighton the previous day – transfer deadline day – in March 1967 when manager Archie Macaulay, a one-time Hammers player, went back to his old club to secure the forward’s services.
“No fee was paid at the time of the transfer. This will be discussed at the end of the season, and from now until then, it is up to Brian to prove his worth as to whether there will be a place at the Goldstone Ground for him in the future,” Macaulay wrote in the matchday programme.
Albion were bumping along in the lower half of the old Third Division at the time so it was quite a step down for Dear, but Brighton were keen to make his move permanent.
It wasn’t long before he showed what he was made of; Dear scored twice in his third game, on Easter Saturday, as Scunthorpe United held the Albion to a 2-2 draw at the Goldstone. Two days later he scored the only goal of the game as Albion beat visitors Watford 1-0. He was on the scoresheet again when Albion visited Boundary Park, Oldham, but the home side rallied in the second half to end up 4-1 winners.
Back at the Goldstone the following Saturday, he scored Brighton’s opener in a 2-0 win over Oxford United (top picture), but that was the end of his scoring in Albion’s colours. He missed three matches in April and his last game for Brighton was in a goalless draw away to Shrewsbury.
His hoped-for permanent signing didn’t happen and he returned to West Ham where the following season he went on to enjoy the most consistent spell of his Hammers career, scoring 16 goals in 29 matches (plus one as sub). The East Londoners finished in mid-table: a season in which Manchester City were champions, two points ahead of second-placed Man Utd.
Dear rises to get in a header at the Goldstone Ground, with the West Stand in the background
“As a fan watching him, he was frustrating at times but he had the natural talent required for the top level and he certainly knew how to score goals,” said Tony Hanna, of the excellent fans website West Ham Till I Die.
Born in Plaistow, London, on 18 September 1943, Dear joined West Ham straight from school at the age of 15 and was an England schoolboy international who played against Scotland, Wales and Ireland in 1959.
On 29 December 1960, he scored twice for an England Youth XI when they beat an AFA Public Schools XI 8-0. Phil Beal and Bert Murray were among his teammates.
Dear made his league debut for the Hammers away to Wolves on 29 August 1962 but there were only two more first team appearances that season.
The following season, which culminated in West Ham beating a Preston North End side captained by Nobby Lawton 3-2 (Alex Dawson scored one of Preston’s goals), saw Dear struggle to get into the side and he made just three league appearances.
That five-goal haul v West Brom – when the crowd taunted the Baggies with a rendition of ‘Oh Dear what can the matter be’ – helped take his 1964-65 season stats to 14 goals in just 15 appearances but he was part of the XI who won the European Cup Winners Cup 2-0 at Wembley. He scored four goals in previous rounds but it was outside right Alan Sealey who scored both Hammers goals against TSV Munich 1860 in the final.
Dear once again spent most of the 1965-66 season in a back-up role, featuring in just 10 first team matches while Hammer of the Year Geoff Hurst scored an impressive 40 goals in all competitions before going on to cement his name in English football history with a hat-trick as England won the World Cup in July 1966.
Hurst went one better the following season, netting 41 times, while Dear ended the season exploiting an opportunity to play competitive football with the Albion.
Throughout it all, Dear became a close friend of the legendary Bobby Moore, and in April 2021 West Ham invited the former striker to talk to the club’s academy players about the man he first met when he joined the club in 1958, the year Moore made his first-team debut against Manchester United at the tender age of 17.
“After that first period, that’s when we began to become friends,” Dear told the schoolboys. “We were all mates. You are all different ages at the academy, but you all know one another, how you play, what you do – it’s the same as us.
“Bobby was a bit shy. Once he felt comfortable with you, that was it. You had everything he could give, and he’d give everything to you. He was an amazing fella.”
The West Ham website said: “Dear and Moore were also inseparable off the pitch, enjoying a close friendship for over three decades before the icon’s tragic passing on 24 February 1993, at the age of just 51.”
Dear told the schoolboys: “You would have loved him if you’d have met him. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, and you lads should be very proud that you’re involved in the club that he was a part of.”
West Ham through and through, Dear did eventually leave Upton Park in February 1969, scoring seven times in 13 appearances for Fulham but they were relegated to the Third Division. He swiftly moved on to Millwall but only managed a handful of games before returning to West Ham in 1970.
However, his short-lived second spell is best remembered for his involvement in a curfew-busting drink before a FA Cup tie at Blackpool on 2 January 1971. Having been told icy weather would most likely mean the match would be called off, Dear, Moore, Jimmy Greaves, Clyde Best and physio Rob Jenkins went out late to ex-boxer Brian London’s club in the seaside resort.
Unfortunately, the game went ahead, West Ham were surprisingly beaten 4-0 by bottom-of-the-league Blackpool, and someone dobbed in the errant Hammers group.
Dear’s appearance as a sub that day was his last involvement in professional football. Manager Ron Greenwood turfed him out, along with Greaves, while Moore and Best were fined. Best later told his version of the story to the Knees Up Mother Brown website.
Before hanging up his boots, Dear played briefly for non-league Woodford Town. Football was in his blood and he became catering manager at Southend United and later worked in its commercial department.
West Ham Till I Die writer Tony Hanna concluded: “By Brian’s own admission he ‘enjoyed life’ more than most professional footballers. His stocky build was more often likened to being overweight and he enjoyed a beer after training, and also after matches.
“Being left out of the team, especially if he had scored the previous week, only further demotivated him in a career where he never really cemented a first team place.”
In parallel lines 