KEITH LOWE is one of those curious cases of a player who joined the Albion on loan but didn’t kick a ball in anger!
He played one game for the reserves and sat on the first team bench for five matches without getting on.
Lowe was just 20 and well down the centre half pecking order at Wolves when Mick McCarthy had just taken charge.
At the beginning of the 2006-07 season, Albion’s first choice centre backs, Adam Hinshelwood and Guy Butters, were both out injured, and Joel Lynch was a doubt after picking up a niggle in a pre-season game. So, manager Mark McGhee took the opportunity to get Lowe on loan for a month.
Candid former Wolves manager McGhee told the Albion matchday programme how the club had done its homework on the youngster, who he described as a “no frills central defender who gets in where it hurts to head it and boot it. Obviously, that’s something we need – a big lad in our box to head it away. With the absence of Guy Butters, we’ve missed that sort of height in pre-season so I hope he will do well for us.
“Obviously I know people well at Wolves, so we don’t think for a minute that we are signing Rio Ferdinand, but we’ve signed a steady young player who’s determined to make a career for himself and wants to do well.”
For his part, Lowe told the Argus: “I’ve found out that there are a few injuries in the defence here so hopefully I’ll get into the team as soon as possible and play as much football as I can.”
Born in Wolverhampton on 13 September 1985, Lowe had progressed through the Wolves academy and was given a first team debut by Dave Jones in the League Cup at the beginning of the 2004-05 season, three weeks before his 19th birthday. Two months later Lowe was awarded a three-and-a-half-year contract and he said:“My family are all Wolves supporters so it’s a bit of a dream come true.”
Although he made 13 appearances at either right-back or centre-back that season, he only played three matches for them under Glenn Hoddle the following season although he gained experience out on loan, at Burnley (under Steve Cotterill), and QPR in the Championship, and Swansea in League One.
“A lot of people have left Wolves but the one thing they have got is a lot of defenders and they have scrapped their reserve team now so it was best to go and play somewhere else,” Lowe told Andy Naylor of the Argus. “I’m looking to play as many games as I can. I wasn’t getting the opportunity I would have liked at Wolves so I jumped at the chance to come and play some football.”
Lowe said that even though McCarthy had not long been in charge, he had already got his starting eleven in mind. “I hadn’t asked to go out on loan yet, but from what I can gather the manager here ‘phoned up our manager and it seemed like the ideal place to come,” he said. “I’ve not been down to Brighton before but my first impressions, even from the drive in, were it seems really nice and I’m really looking forward to it.”
He added: “My aim is to get noticed at Wolves but I’m open to anything that happens. If it’s not going to happen for me at Wolves then I’ll stay here as long as the management staff want me.”
Unfortunately for Lowe, Lynch recovered from a pre-season thigh injury in time to make the starting line-up for the season opener at Rotherham, and he never did manage to force his way into the side.
By mid-August, he confessed in another Argus interview: “I’m very disappointed. I came down here to play football but it hasn’t happened. You’ve got to be professional about it, keep working hard and hopefully it will come.
“We kept clean sheets in our first two games and, when things like that happen, you can’t really go knocking on the gaffer’s door and say: ‘Why am I not in the team?’ The lads have done really well but I’ll just keep working hard in training and hopefully he’ll take note.”
Lowe pressed his claims for a place by scoring on his debut for the Reserves, heading an equaliser from a Tommy Fraser corner on 54 minutes, in front of McGhee, in a 2-1 win away to QPR. He said: “It was nice to get 90 minutes under my belt and it was a good performance and result, so I was pretty pleased.
“Hopefully I’ve caught the gaffer’s attention. I thought I did well enough and I’m just trying to push to get into the team.”
It didn’t happen, though, and McGhee was at pains to point out the circumstances. “We brought him here to play but then Joel got fit and suddenly looked absolutely fine.
“By the time we got Keith down here we weren’t sure he had trained with us enough and done enough work with us. Joel was there and we decided not to gamble with Keith but to play Joel, who has then played so well, so things have conspired against him a wee bit.”
McGhee added: “He did fine at QPR. In the second half, particularly, when we pushed them up the park and asked them to defend in behind, he did it well.”
Lowe might have got a chance in the Carling Cup against Boston United but Wolves were only prepared to allow him to be cup-tied if Albion intended keeping him longer – and McGhee had decided to add to his defensive options by signing veteran Georges Santos.
Lowe headed back to the Black Country, but the following month he went on loan to Cheltenham Town, where he finally saw some league action, playing in 18 matches. It sowed the seed for a later period in his career: he played 133 games for League Two Cheltenham between 2010 and 2014 in a career that ultimately embraced 617 appearances for 13 different clubs.
Lowe spent the final season of his Wolves contract on loan at League One Port Vale. Signed by Martin Foyle, Lowe also featured under his successors Dean Glover and Lee Sinnott, playing in 31 matches. But Vale were relegated in 23rd spot and the defender finally bade farewell to his boyhood club in May 2008.
He dropped out of the league for the 2008-09 season, appearing in 52 games for Conference Premier League side Kidderminster Harriers.
Budget issues meant he was released at the end of the season and the following campaign he was back in the league with Hereford United, playing 26 games for the League Two Bulls under John Trewick and former Wolves boss Graham Turner. That spell at Cheltenham came next.
During two years at York City, Lowe collected no fewer than four Player of the Year awards in 2014-15 – three from supporters’ groups and one from local newspaper The Press.“Keith deserves the awards for his consistency,” City boss Russ Wilcox told the newspaper. “To play every league game is always an achievement. It shows you are doing things right on and off the pitch. It means you look after yourself, train properly and are a good professional.”
Released by new York boss Jackie McNamara, Lowe returned to Kidderminster, by then in the National League, where he spent another 18 months, much of it as club captain.
National League Macclesfield Town was his next port of call and he played in all of their matches as they won promotion back into the league in 2017. However, it ended on a sour note in 2019 when he was one of six players to issue the club with a winding up order for unpaid wages.
The 2019-20 season saw him turn out for three different clubs: Southern League Nuneaton Borough, National League North side Bradford Park Avenue and latterly (until the Covid pandemic called a halt to the league) Kidderminster for a third spell.
At the end of the 2021-22 season, he announced his intention to concentrate on developing a career as a teaching assistant. He told the Kidderminster club website: “I’m not ready to stop yet and am very much planning to play part-time next year, but it feels like now is the time to move away from the full-time game and think about the future and the career I’ve been building in schools.”
THE YOUNGEST goalkeeper to appear in a FA Cup final spent 20 months picking out future players for Brighton.
It was one of several different post-playing roles Mervyn Day filled for various clubs.
Day, who at 19 won a winners’ medal with West Ham in 1975, was Albion’s head of scouting and recruitment between November 2012 and the end of the 2013-2014 season under head of football operations David Burke.
At the time, his appointment was another indicator of the gear change taking place at the club as it built on the move to the Amex Stadium and sought to gain promotion from the Championship.
Day said in a matchday programme interview: “This club has come such a long way in such a short space of time.
“When you think of the debacle of the Goldstone, the wilderness of Gillingham, then Withdean, you only have to get a player through the front door at this wonderful stadium to have a chance of signing them.
“Hopefully, within the next year or so, the new training ground will be up and running and, when you’ve got that as well, you’ve got the perfect opportunity not only to encourage kids to sign but top quality players as well.
“If we are fortunate enough to get ourselves into the Premier League at some point, we’ll be able to attract top, top players.”
It was a case of ‘the goalkeepers union’ that led to him joining the Albion. Day explained he’d been chatting to Andy Beasley, Albion’s goalkeeping coach at the time, who had been a colleague when Day was chief scout at Elland Road. Beasley wondered if he’d like to help coach Albion’s academy goalkeepers but Burke, who he also knew, stepped in and offered something more substantial: the job of scouting and talent identification manager.
He certainly brought a wealth of experience to the task. He had previously been assistant manager to former Albion midfielder Alan Curbishley at Charlton and West Ham; manager and assistant manager at Carlisle United, a scout for Fulham and the FA (when Steve McClaren was England manager) and chief scout at Leeds until Neil Warnock took charge.
In addition to that background, in the days before full-time goalkeeper coaches, Day had worked at Southampton under David Jones, Chris Kamara at Bradford City and John Aldridge at Tranmere Rovers. Then in 1997 Everton came along and he joined Howard Kendall’s backroom team alongside Adrian Heath and Viv Busby. “I was living in Leeds at that time, so distance wasn’t an issue, but it was an interesting trip across the M62 in the winter months,” Day recalled in an October 2021 interview with efcheritagesociety.com.
Brighton made Day redundant at the end of the 2013-14 season following a reshuffle of the recruitment department amid criticism of the quality of signings brought in.
That assessment might have been rather harsh because during his time at the club there was a change in manager (Oscar Garcia taking over from Gus Poyet) and, although the season ended in play-off disappointment, the likes of former Hammer Matthew Upson (who’d played under Day when he was at West Ham) had signed permanently on a free transfer (having been on loan from Stoke City for half the previous season).
The experienced Keith Andrews and Stephen Ward also joined on season-long loan deals and played prominent roles in Garcia’s play-off reaching side.
It was under Day’s watch that the promising young goalkeeper Christian Walton was signed after a tip-off from Warren Aspinall. Aspinall told the Argus in 2015: “I went to Plymouth to do a match report. I set off early and took in a youth team game off my own back. He was outstanding, commanding his box. I reported straight back to Gus (Poyet). He told Mervyn Day. He went to see him, Mervyn liked him.”
It wasn’t the first time Day had played a role in securing a goalkeeper for the Albion. As far back as 2003 he had an influence on Ben Roberts’ arrival at the Albion. Manager Steve Coppell revealed: “He is one of three goalkeepers at Charlton and at the moment nearly all the Premiership clubs are very protective about their goalkeepers.
“I have seen him play a number of times, although I certainly haven’t seen him play recently. I spoke with Mervyn Day (Charlton coach) and he says Ben is in good form. It’s a little bit of a chance and it will certainly be a testing start for him, but he is looking forward to the challenge.”
Day was also sniffing around another future Albion ‘keeper when he was chief scout for Bristol City (between 2017 and 2019). According to Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler, Mat Ryan was on their radar in the summer of 2017 when he swapped Belgium for England. In an interview with Socceroos.com, Tyler reveals he was asked by City’s ‘head of recruitment’ (thought to be Day) to glean the opinions of Gary and Phil Neville (manager and coach of Valencia at the time) on Ryan and whether he’d be suitable for the English game.
“I got a text saying, ‘Can you find out from the Nevilles whether they rate Mat Ryan’,” Tyler said. “It wasn’t my opinion they were looking for – quite rightly – it was Gary and Phil’s. I was able to do that and both Gary and Phil gave Mat the thumbs up.”
After leaving Brighton, Day moved straight into a similar role with West Brom, where he worked under technical director Terry Burton and first team manager Alan Irvine, but he was only there a year before linking up with the Robins. He has since been first team domestic scout for Glasgow Rangers, although based in his home town of Chelmsford.
Day was born in Chelmsford on 26 June 1955 and educated at Kings Road Primary School, the same school that England and West Ham World Cup hero Geoff Hurst attended. He moved on to the town’s King Edward VI Grammar School and represented Essex Schools at all levels. He joined the Hammers under Ron Greenwood on a youth contract in 1971.
“On my first day as an associate schoolboy I got taken by goalkeeping coach Ernie Gregory into the little gym behind the Upton Park dressing room and he had Martin Peters, an England World Cup winner, firing shots at me,” Day later recounted. “As a 15-year-old that was incredible.
“The bond got even closer when my father died when I was 17. I was an apprentice but Ron signed me as a full pro within a very short space of time to enable me to earn a little more money to help out at home. A short while later he gave me another increase. He was almost a surrogate father to me.”
In the early part of 1971, Day played in the same England Youth side as Alan Boorn, a Coventry City apprentice Pat Saward took from his old club to the Albion in August 1971.
The goalkeeper was just 18 when he made his West Ham United debut, on 27 August 1973, in a 3-3 home draw with Ipswich Town.
He went on to play 33 matches in his first season and only missed one game in the following three.
Tony Hanna, for West Ham Till I Die, wrote: “In only his eleventh game for the Hammers he received a standing ovation from the Liverpool Kop in a 0-1 defeat that could have been a cricket score but for his fine display and, in his next visit to Anfield, he saved a penalty in a 2-2 draw.”
Day recalled: “As a kid, I had no fear, I took to playing in the first team really, really well. At West Ham, the ‘keeper always had lots to do as we were an entertaining team. We had forward-thinking centre-backs in Bobby Moore and Tommy Taylor, and then after Bobby came Kevin Lock.”
Mervyn Day in action for West Ham against Brighton at the Goldstone Ground, Hove.
In 1974, Day progressed to England’s Under-23 side. He won four caps that year and a fifth in 1975 but it was a golden era for England goalkeepers at the time and he didn’t progress to the full international side, despite being touted for a call-up.
By the time Day won that last cap, he had been voted PFA Young Player of the Year and, at 19, had become the youngest goalkeeper to appear in a FA Cup Final, keeping a clean sheet as West Ham beat Fulham 2-0 at Wembley.
Hanna continued: “At times he was performing heroics in the West Ham goal and he was fast becoming a fans favourite. Tall and agile, he was a brilliant shot stopper and he was playing like a ‘keeper well beyond his years.”
However, by the 1977-78 season Day’s form had tapered off as the Hammers were relegated. “His confidence was so bad he was eventually dropped and he only played 23 games that season,” said Hanna. “There are several theories to what triggered the loss of form, but one thing that did not help the lad was the stick he was getting from the Hammers supporters.
“In hindsight Mervyn said that he was ill prepared for such a tough run of form. The early seasons had gone so well that he had only known the good times and when the bad ones came he struggled to come to terms with the pressure.”
In 1979, West Ham smashed the world record transfer fee for a goalkeeper to bring in Phil Parkes from QPR and Day was sold to Leyton Orient, where he replaced long-standing stopper John Jackson, who later became a goalkeeper coach and youth team coach at Brighton.
Day spent four years at Brisbane Road before moving to Aston Villa as back-up ‘keeper to Nigel Spink. After a falling-out with Villa boss Graham Turner, he switched to Leeds under Eddie Gray and then Billy Bremner. During Bremner’s reign, he had the humiliation of conceding six at Stoke City at the start of the 1985-86 season and, in spite of vowing it wouldn’t happen again, let in seven in the repeat fixture the following season. Amongst his Leeds teammates that day were Andy Ritchie and Ian Baird.
Nevertheless, he ended up playing more games (268) for Leeds than any of his other clubs. He rarely missed a game up to the end of 1989-90, the season when was he was named Player of the Year and collected a Second Division championship medal.
Howard Wilkinson offered him a post as goalkeeping coach for United’s first season back in the elite, having lined up a £1m move for John Lukic from Arsenal. Day had a couple of loans spells – at Luton Town and Sheffield United in 1992 – but was otherwise back-up for Lukic, alongside his coaching duties, until Wilkinson saved Brighton’s future by signing Mark Beeney from the Seagulls.
After eight years at Elland Road, Day moved to the Cumbrian outpost of Carlisle in 1993. When he moved into the manager’s chair at Brunton Park, he not only led them to promotion from the Second Division in 1997, but they also won the (Auto Windscreens Shield) Football League Trophy. United beat Colchester 4-3 on penalties at Wembley after a goalless draw; one of the scorers being the aforementioned Warren Aspinall, later of Brighton and Radio Sussex.
Day worked under Curbishley at Charlton for eight years between 1998 and 2006, helping the club stabilise in the Premier League.
And, in December 2006, he followed Curbishley as his No.2 to West Ham, where the duo spent almost two years.
It was in 2010 that he returned to Leeds as chief scout, working under technical director Gwyn Williams. United manager Simon Grayson said at the time: “We’re restructuring the scouting department under Gwyn and Mervyn will be both producing match reports and watching our opposition and working on the recruitment of players.
“Merv’s knowledge and experience will prove important to the football club as we look to progress and develop what we are doing.”
CONNOR GOLDSON’S dad Winston must have had mixed emotions when his son scored the only goal of the game at the Amex on New Year’s Day 2016.
The avid Wolverhampton Wanderers fan in him would have been delighted to see his side leave the south coast with three valuable Championship points.
Unfortunately, Wolverhampton-born Connor was playing for Brighton that day – just his second game in the blue and white stripes.
What made it worse was that the defender had been on Wanderers’ books for five years as a young boy but was released when he was only 13.
Goldson must have been mortified when, in the 32nd-minute of that first game of 2016, he inadvertently diverted Jordan Graham’s cross past David Stockdale in the home goal.
Sure, injury-hit Albion had chances to restore parity or even win, but 11th-placed Wolves hung on to the lead and Chris Hughton’s luckless Seagulls saw a winless run extend to six games.
Albion also lost the next two matches but got back on track with a 1-0 win at Blackburn on 16 January and then pushed hard for an automatic promotion slot.
For Goldson, that fixture marked the start of a run of games alongside Lewis Dunk, and his first goal for the club came in a 2-1 away win at Birmingham City on 5 April, when he glanced in a Jiri Skalak set-piece delivery.
Goldson celebrates his goal at Birmingham with Beram Kayal and Lewis Dunk
He found the net again a fortnight later with a towering header from a corner as the Seagulls crushed QPR 4-0 at the Amex to edge closer to the top two (Burnley and Middlesbrough) with three games to go.
The centre-back partnership was only broken up when Dunk was shown a red card in the penultimate game, a 1-1 draw at Derby, and suspended for the final game of the ordinary league season.
Goldson was alongside returning skipper Gordon Greer for the crucial away game at Middlesbrough on 7 May when the 1-1 draw meant Boro, equal on 89 points, pipped the Albion to automatic promotion by virtue of having scored two more goals.
With Albion forced to endure the play-offs, Goldson’s involvement in the Seagulls’ bid to overcome Sheffield Wednesday cruelly came to a premature end when the centre-back was forced off injured before half-time in the first leg at Hillsborough, and Albion eventually succumbed 2-0.
The injury prevented Goldson being involved in the second leg when Dunk scored but Wednesday somehow managed a 1-1 draw to thwart Albion’s progress.
If that was a blow, it was the least of the troubles the defender would have to overcome the following season.
Frustrating though it was that Brighton brought in Shane Duffy to partner Dunk in the centre of defence, Goldson’s brief spell back in the side in early 2017 came to a juddering halt when a routine scan discovered a heart defect that required surgery.
Then it wasn’t just his football career that was under threat, but his life was in danger if urgent action wasn’t taken to operate on the swollen aorta the tests uncovered.
It has since emerged that Winston suffered a heart attack aged only 35 and Goldson’s grandfather had died of a heart problem.
The required “preventative surgery” took place at the Royal Brompton Hospital, Chelsea, leaving him with a scar down the middle of his chest. His best friend in football and former Shrewsbury teammate, Jon Taylor, told The Athletic: “He thought the worst about not playing again. He was struggling. When I saw him in the hospital it was horrible.”
Taylor was among several former Shrews people Scottish football writer Jordan Campbell spoke to for an extended article about Goldson published by The Athletic in March 2021.
“I made a T-shirt for him before a game which said ‘Stay Strong Con’. That gave him a little bit of a boost but he’s got a great family around him,” said Taylor, who is now at Doncaster. “When he had the op, and he knew he could play again, his mentality was, ‘How quickly can I get back?’. Even as young lads at Wolves we knew his mindset was second to none.”
Campbell reported how once Goldson had come to terms with the situation, he was determined to get back playing regularly, and just 15 weeks after the operation he took part in a pre-season friendly match in Austria. In a changed second half team, he lined up alongside Uwe Hünemeier against Fortuna Dusseldorf.
Physio Chris Skitt, who’d nurtured Goldson through physical issues when he was developing at Shrewsbury, said: “If I talk to kids and they say, ‘What does it take to be a professional footballer?’, I use Connor as the example.”
With a surname that lent itself so readily to the Spandau Ballet classic Gold, the “indestructible” line in the lyrics was a natural for Albion’s singing fans to pick up on.
But at the end of August 2017, on transfer deadline day, it looked certain Goldson would continue his rehabilitation into league football with a season-long loan move to Ipswich Town.
He was manager Mick McCarthy’s main target, but Albion pulled the plug on the deal at the last minute because of the collapse of a separate deal for centre-back cover they’d hoped to complete.
Goldson played in League Cup matches against Barnet and AFC Bournemouth but it wasn’t until December that he finally got his chance to feature in Albion’s debut Premier League season – and he turned in a Man of the Match performance as the Seagulls beat Watford 1-0 at the Amex.
He played in three games in January: FA Cup matches against Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough (2-1 and 1-0 wins), and the 4-0 home defeat to a rampant Chelsea.
Goldson and Duffy in action v Chelsea
As Albion progressed to the fifth round of the FA Cup, Goldson once again got a start, alongside Hünemeier, as Albion beat Coventry City 3-1 at the Amex.
His last league game in an Albion shirt was as a 71st-minute substitute for Duffy in a 4-0 reverse away to Liverpool on the final day of the season.
During the close season, Goldson seized on the chance to play for his boyhood hero Steven Gerrard, who had just been appointed manager of Glasgow Rangers. Gerrard drove all the way to Brighton for face-to-face talks with Goldson and explained how he saw him as a cornerstone of the rebuilding job at Rangers.
The often magnanimous Hughton was not going to stand in his way and said on the club website: “Connor has done extremely well for the club in the three years he has been here, but he wants to play regular senior football, and at this stage we cannot give him that guarantee.
“He has been a great professional and a pleasure to work with – and he has shown a great mental strength to come through a very tough time after he underwent crucial heart surgery just over a year ago.”
Determined to seize the opportunity presented to him in Glasgow, Goldson remarkably played in 151 of 159 games Rangers took part in over the next three years; when he made his 150th appearance, it was the quickest any player had reached that landmark in the club’s history.
After Gerrard departed Rangers to take on the manager’s job at Aston Villa, Goldson indicated he wanted to make a move himself, although, at the time of writing, he remains in Glasgow.
Born on 18 December 1992, Goldson grew up on the same Wolverhampton estate as future Wanderers players Leon Clarke and Carl Ikeme.
As the son of a Wolves-mad dad, it was probably not surprising that his early footballing promise was nurtured with Wanderers. The family lived only a 10-minute car ride from Molineux.
“I was with Wolves from the age of eight until I was 13,” Goldson recalled in an Albion matchday programme article, explaining that he was in the same group as Jack Price and Ethan Ebanks-Landell, who both made it through to the first team.
“I was a striker until I was about 10 or 11, simply because I was the biggest and the quickest, but I was then converted into a centre-half,” he said. “When I got to under 14 level, the manager stopped playing me and so my dad and I made the decision to leave for Shrewsbury – and it was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
Shrewsbury fast-tracked Goldson through the groups and he was training with the first team by the time he was 16. He signed professional forms at 17 and made his first team debut the following year.
“I owe Shrewsbury a lot, both the first-team management and the coaches who brought me through,” he said.
In The Athletic feature, Skitt described in detail how Goldson went through a difficult physical development phase which in effect involved “putting him back together”.
The physio was responsible for resetting his body and created a specific programme comprised of core work, gym sessions and remedial work to counter the loss of power growth spurts were causing.
“We even tried to get him boxing to improve his footwork because of his canal boat shoes. He is a size 14 and they are absolutely honking,” said Skitt.
After successfully rebuilding his body, Goldson played 18 games at the start of the 2013-14 season under Graham Turner but only 11 were as a starter, so he went on a two-month loan to Cheltenham.
His loan was extended but he was recalled after first team coach and reserve team manager Mike Jackson (the chap who has taken over as caretaker Burnley manager following Sean Dyche’s sacking) was put in charge at Shrewsbury until the end of the season following Turner’s resignation. Goldson played every minute of the last 21 league games.
Shrews were relegated but the following season, under Micky Mellon, with Jackson as coach, Goldson was a key player as they bounced straight back: he won the club’s Player of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year awards and was named in the PFA Team of the Year.
Such recognition led to Brighton signing him, doubtless with half an eye on his replacing Greer, who was edging towards the end of his playing days with the Seagulls.
It was a while before Goldson got his chance and Greer admitted in The Athletic feature that the new boy’s frustration spilled over into a set-to with the skipper in training.
“Training finished and we went into the dressing room to find that the lads had laid out two sets of boxing gloves for a laugh with the Rocky music playing,” said Greer. “As soon it was over, though, it was done, as I liked Connor.”
And to show the hatchet had been well and truly buried, Goldson revealed that after he’d taken the captain’s place in the side, behind the scenes Greer had offered him encouragement and advice. “He’s been very helpful and supportive at the same time,” he said. “There are plenty of people who wouldn’t be like that, so I can’t speak highly enough of him.”
Goldson had to wait until 15 December 2015 to make his Albion debut, when he went on as a substitute for the injured Hünemeier against Middlesbrough. Unfortunately, the visitors emphatically ended Albion’s 21-game unbeaten run, winning 3-0.
That game was watched from the stands by Jose Mourinho, who’d just been deposed as Chelsea boss, catching up on the progress of his former Real Madrid colleague and Boro manager Aitor Karanka.
For the new young centre-back, the rise to playing in the Championship was all a learning experience, and he said: “I’ve been working with Colin Calderwood a lot, even after training, and as a former centre-back himself, he has put on a lot of good drills.”
Little did he know at the time there would be far greater challenges ahead.
Steve Foster challenges Spurs’ Steve Archibald at White Hart Lane
LEGEND is overused far too much in football circles but, in some circumstances, it is justified. That applies to Steve Foster.
He played 800 games in a 21-year career which included nine years with Brighton in two separate spells.
His performances in the top-flight for Brighton led him to play for England at the 1982 World Cup and he lifted the League Cup in 1988 as the captain of Luton Town.
He might have enjoyed a longer spell at Aston Villa if the European Cup-winning manager who signed him hadn’t been unceremoniously dumped by ‘Deadly’ Doug Ellis.
Foster became – and, to older fans, still is – synonymous with Brighton & Hove Albion, and football followers the world over could readily identify the captain with the white headband.
In several interviews over the years, he has explained how the distinctive headpiece was actually a piece of padded white towel designed to protect a forehead split open in collisions with centre forwards Andy Gray and Justin Fashanu.
I wonder if physio Mike Yaxley’s wife Sharon, who made up the dressing before every game, realised at the time the key role she played in helping to make Foster one of the most identifiable characters in football.
Foster’s illustrious career is warmly documented in Spencer Vignes’ excellent 2007 book A Few Good Men (Breedon Books Publishing), featuring an interview with the player himself and those who played with him.
For example, Gerry Ryan told Vignes: “Fozzie was a huge player with a huge personality, a real leader and deceptively quick for a big man.
“When he played against the best, like Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish, he was the best. People talk about giving 100 per cent, but Fozzie gave 150 per cent in everything he did, and I mean off the field as well.”
Gordon Smith added: “He was a fantastic person, great fun and a terrific centre half.”
Vignes himself observed: “Steve’s willingness to put his neck on the line for the cause earned him hero status among the fans, together with the complete respect of the dressing room.”
Unsurprisingly, Foster pulls no punches in describing the various characters and events surrounding his colourful career, for instance describing Chris Cattlin as “definitely the wrong man. I told him the truth and what I thought of him.” And, of predecessor Jimmy Melia: “When Jimmy took over it was more like a circus than a football club.”
Foster said the two biggest influences on his career were Frank Burrows, the manager of his first club, Portsmouth, who taught him about balance as the key to strength on the pitch, and Brian Horton, the dynamic midfield driving force he succeeded as Albion captain.
“He shouted and screamed for 90 minutes to help us get results, and to keep everyone on their toes,” said Foster. “If he made a mistake, 10 other people would shout and scream at him, and he would take it. When I was captain at Brighton, and my other clubs, that’s how I tried to be.”
Such a recognisable figure as Albion’s centre-half
Fortunately, sufficient archive film footage remains for fans of different generations to see what a dominant force Foster was at the heart of Brighton’s defence, while I retain plenty of now-yellowing cuttings from the numerous columns of newsprint he filled during his pomp.
Born on 24 September 1957 in Portsmouth, Foster went to St Swithin’s Junior School before moving on to St John’s College. A centre-forward in the early days, he played for the Portsmouth Schools under-12s side but it was Southampton who took him on as an associate schoolboy.
He played in the same youth team as Steve Williams and Nick Holmes, who both went on to have long careers.
But Saints boss Lawrie McMenemy let Foster go at 16, urging him to go elsewhere and prove him wrong. After Foster won his first England cap, McMenemy sent him a congratulatory telegram. “That was class, nothing but class,” Foster told Vignes.
Southampton’s loss was Portsmouth’s gain, courtesy of a tip off from local schoolteacher Harry Bourne to Pompey youth team coach Ray Crawford (who’d previously held a similar role under Pat Saward at Brighton). Bourne ran the Portsmouth and Hampshire schools teams.
Crawford describes in his excellent autobiography Curse of the Jungle Boy (PB Publishing 2007) how he called at the family’s house in Gladys Avenue, Portsmouth, but Foster’s mother was at a works disco at the local Allders store. Wasting no time, he immediately went in pursuit and, against a backdrop of deafening music and flashing lights, shouted above the din that they were interested in signing her son.
Foster called the club the following day and he was invited to play in a youth team game for Portsmouth – against Southampton! “I scored twice because I was playing as a centre-forward then, and they ended up offering me an apprenticeship on £5 per week which was my entry into the professional game,” said Foster.
Reg Tyrell, a respected former chief scout from Crawford’s time at Ipswich, watched the young striker in a youth team training game and declared: “That no.9, he’s no centre-forward but he’d make a good number 5.” A few weeks’ later, manager Ron Tindall’s successor, Ian St John (later Saint and Greavsie TV show partner of Jimmy Greaves), gave Foster his debut as a centre half!
Foster played more than 100 games during Pompey’s slide down through the divisions, and, at 21, had developed something of a fiery reputation. But Brighton boss Alan Mullery saw him as “big and brave, strong in the tackle and good in the air” providing “much-needed stability at the back” as the Seagulls began their first adventure into the top-flight of English football in 1979. He was signed for £150,000.
A couple of disciplinary issues in the early days of the new season looked like proving the doubters right to have warned Mullery off signing him, but an injury to first choice centre back Andy Rollings forced the manager to backtrack on a temporary ban he’d handed out. Foster made the most of his reprieve and never looked back.
By the end of a season in which the side grew collectively Foster was named Player of the Year and he earned international recognition, gaining an England under 21 cap as a substitute for Terry Butcher in a 1-0 defeat against East Germany in Jena on 23 April 1980 (Peter Ward was playing up front).
While the 1980-81 season saw Albion struggle and flirt with relegation, Foster’s tussles with some of the top strikers in the game saw his reputation grow, and he even chipped in with a vital goal in the final home game of the season against Leeds.
When Horton and Mullery departed at the end of that season, Foster took over the captaincy under new boss Mike Bailey, and, even though fans didn’t much like the way Bailey set up his side, Foster thrived with the emphasis on defence first.
England boss Ron Greenwood, who lived in Hove, was in the process of shaping his squad for the 1992 World Cup in Spain and, with injuries affecting some of the other centre backs in contention, Foster was given a chance to prove himself.
I can remember travelling to Wembley on 23 February 1982 to watch him make his debut against Northern Ireland, a game England won 4-0 courtesy of goals from Ray Wilkins, Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson and Glenn Hoddle.
I had been to the stadium 10 years before to watch another Albion player – Willie Irvine – make his international comeback in a 1-0 win for the Irish, but it was something special – and rare – to see a Brighton player line up for England.
To break through to the senior team in a World Cup year was a notable achievement, although, by his own admission, he accepted his good fortune directly correlated to injuries ruling out other players.
Although the record books show Foster earned three caps, in fact he represented the country four times that year.
A month after his debut against Northern Ireland, on 23 March, Foster played for an England XI in Bilbao against Athletic Bilbao. The game finished 1-1 with Keegan scoring for England. It didn’t qualify for a cap because it was a testimonial match for retiring Bilbao player Txetxu Rojo, but Greenwood used the fixture to familiarise the players with what was the venue for England’s opening round matches at the World Cup.
Foster also featured in a 2-0 friendly win over the Netherlands (goals by Tony Woodcock and Graham Rix) on 25 May as Greenwood continued to assess his options.
Foster (circled) in Ron Greenwood’s 1982 World Cup squad
When it was clear neither Alvin Martin nor Dave Watson would be fit for the tournament in Spain, Foster was selected as back-up to first choice centre back pairing Terry Butcher and Phil Thompson. Ahead of the third group match, Greenwood didn’t want to risk a ban for the already-booked Butcher, so Foster played alongside Thompson and England won 1-0 against Kuwait; Trevor Francis getting the England goal.
When England didn’t progress past the second phase, Greenwood’s spell as boss came to an end and he was replaced by Bobby Robson who, for his first game in charge, partnered Russell Osman with Butcher – both having played under him at Ipswich Town.
Foster didn’t play for England again.
Much has been written already about the 1982-83 season and Albion’s path to the FA Cup Final. Foster demonstrated real heroism in the semi-final at Highbury, playing through the pain of a septic elbow, and, memorably, towards the end of the game, launched into an overhead kick to clear a goal-bound shot to safety (pictured above).
History records Foster being suspended for the Cup Final – a well-documented appeal to the High Court against a two-game ban for accumulated bookings couldn’t get the decision reversed – but, as is often the case in football, his misfortune presented a golden opportunity for stand-in Gary Stevens who capped a man-of-the-match performance with the equalising goal. What he did that day persuaded Spurs to sign him.
Foster, of course, eventually got his Wembley chance in the replay but with a rampant Manchester United running out easy 4-0 winners, their fans also rather cruelly derided the Albion skipper with the chant I can still hear ringing around Wembley that evening: “Stevie Foster, Stevie Foster, what a difference you have made!”
In truth the whole defence lacked balance in the replay because manager Melia had elected to fill the right-back berth vacated by injury to Chris Ramsey with the left-footed Steve Gatting. He figured Stevens couldn’t be moved from the centre where he had performed so well on the Saturday, but it was a mistake, especially as Stevens had often played right back previously.
The relegation that went in tandem with Albion’s Wembley loss sparked the beginning of a big clear-out of the best players. First to go was Stevens, closely followed by Michael Robinson.
It wasn’t until the following March that Foster followed them through the exit, although, according to Foster, he might have gone sooner – even though he didn’t want to leave; a point he made clear in an interview with Match Weekly shortly after he signed for Villa for £150,000.
“I never wanted to move,” he said. “I had nearly seven years of my contract to run at Brighton and would have quite happily played out my career there. It’s a great little club.
“But economies dictated otherwise and, although manager Chris Cattlin wanted to keep me, he was under pressure to sell me and help ease the club’s financial problems.
“It was a wrench to leave Brighton because the club has treated me tremendously well and I’ve had some great times there – not least the FA Cup run last season.”
Cattlin had a slightly different take about the transaction in his matchday programme notes. “I feel that Steve Foster has been a fine player during his four-and-a-half years at the Goldstone, but I felt that the time was right and the offer good enough to let him go,” he said.
“I hope the move will benefit both Steve and the club. I hope it rejuvenates his career because he has been unlucky with injuries this season. It gives me breathing space for Eric Young to develop and it will also allow me to strengthen other positions if necessary.”
In a rather oblique reference to the need to get rid of high-earning players, Cattlin added in another matchday programme article: “Certain players have left Brighton in moves which I feel are important for our future. Salaries and bonuses of individual players are confidential and obviously I cannot disclose details, but the moves I have made I am certain are right.”
He added: “I can’t explain all the matters that have been considered but I will once again emphasise that we are building for the future and every move I make in the transfer market is being made with this in mind.”
Foster revealed that Villa boss Tony Barton, a former coach at Foster’s first club, Portsmouth, had tried to sign him twice before, but the clubs hadn’t been able to agree on a fee. Eventually, the transfer saw defender Mark Jones (who’d made seven top-flight appearances for Villa that season) move in the opposite direction, in addition to a £150,000 fee.
Barton wanted Foster to tighten up a leaky defence, to fill the position previously occupied by former European Cup winning centre-half Ken McNaught, who had moved to West Brom.
The relatively inexperienced Brendan Ormsby had been playing alongside McNaught’s former partner, Allan Evans, and the signing of Foster put his nose well and truly out of joint. “It’s obvious that I’m just going to be used as cover for Steve Foster or Allan Evans now and so it’s probably in my best interests to try and find another club,” he told Match Weekly.
As it turned out, it was Barton who was ousted; Ormsby stayed, and new manager Graham Turner decreed it would be Foster who was the odd one out. But I jump ahead too soon.
Foster’s arrival at Villa Park as featured on a matchday programme cover
A picture of Foster being introduced to the Villa faithful appeared on the front cover of the programme for the 17 March home game against Nottingham Forest although he didn’t make his Villa debut until 14 April 1984, away to Leicester City, which ended in a 2-0 defeat.
Foster made seven appearances by the end of the season and he got on the scoresheet in only his third game, netting together with future Albion player Dennis Mortimer, in a 2-1 win over Watford on 21 April.
Villa finished the season in 10th place but it wasn’t good enough for the erratic chairman Ellis. Suddenly Foster found the man who signed him had been sacked, and the side Barton had led to European Cup success was gradually dismantled.
To the astonishment of the Villa faithful, Barton was succeeded by former Shrewsbury Town boss Turner.
Foster played 10 games under the new boss, and scored twice, once in a 4-2 win over Chelsea on 15 September and then again the following Saturday in a 3-3 draw away to Watford.
He’d started the season alongside Evans but Turner then offered a way back to Ormsby. While Foster played a couple of games alongside Ormsby, Turner preferred Evans and Ormsby together, making the new man surplus to requirements.
His last game for Villa was away to Everton on 13 October and the following month he was sold to Luton for £70,000 – less than half the fee Villa had paid for him eight months earlier. Foster simply put it down to his face not fitting with the new man.
It was a completely different story with Luton boss David Pleat and Foster’s time at Kenilworth Road coincided with the club’s most successful period in their history, even though Pleat left to manage Spurs.
Alongside representing his country, Foster said the best moment of his career was captaining the Hatters as they won the League Cup (then sponsored by Littlewoods) at Wembley in 1988 with a 3-2 win over Arsenal, his former Brighton teammate Danny Wilson scoring one of their goals (Brian Stein got the other two).
They reached the final of the same competition the following year too, but on that occasion lost 3-1 to Nottingham Forest. By then Foster was assistant manager to Ray Harford, and it looked like he was on a path to become a boss in his own right.
But that summer, when his old Albion captain, Horton, who had taken over from Mark Lawrenson as the manager of Oxford United, asked him to join him as a player at the Manor Ground, he was unable to resist and a new chapter in his career began.
It meant a drop down a division but Foster accepted the challenge and went on to play more than 100 games for United, many being quite a struggle as the side fought for survival at the foot of the second tier.
In the autumn of 1991, injury sidelined Foster from the U’s team and he believed it could have been the end of his career.
However, when the following summer he was contemplating whether or not to retire, he gave Brighton boss Barry Lloyd a call and asked if he could keep his fitness going by joining in pre-season training with the Seagulls.
Lloyd could see that the former skipper was still able to perform and, although the club was in a downward spiral, Foster seized the opportunity to extend his career and help out his old side.
Another veteran of that side, Clive Walker, told Vignes for A Few Good Men: “Fozzie might not have been so mobile then but his positional sense was absolutely brilliant, as was his ability in the air.”
Foster said: “Funnily enough during that second period I played probably some of my best football. I had to because of the position the club was in. There was no money so you had to pull out all the stops.”
Foster continued to play after Lloyd had departed, and he vented his anger publicly about the off-field shenanigans new boss Liam Brady was having to operate under.
Foster eventually called it a day at the end of the 1995-96 season, saddened at the club’s plight. He was granted a testimonial match against Sheffield Wednesday, played as a pre-season friendly in July 1996. Throughout Foster’s career he had continued to live in Hove and he retains his affection for the Albion to this day.
During his second spell at the club, Foster was the PFA rep and he had to deal with the heartbreak of telling the parents of a young player (Billly Logan) that an ankle injury was going to end his career. The youngster got just £1,500 compensation.
As a result, after his own playing days were over, Foster set up an insurance business (Pro-Secure) which continues to this day, making sure players are properly covered and get suitably recompensed if things don’t turn out as they’d hoped.
Although Foster hasn’t always been popular with the Albion’s hierarchy (courtesy of suggested involvement in potential takeovers), his association with the club hasn’t dimmed and Seagulls fans of two generations took him to their hearts for his on-field performances and leadership spanning a total of 332 games.
• Pictures from my scrapbook, the Albion matchday programme over several seasons, and some online sources.
In parallel lines 