Tag: Ian Mellor

Teenage Teddy Maybank’s Chelsea promise dashed by injury at Brighton

TEDDY MAYBANK signed for the Seagulls for what at the time was a club record transfer in November 1977 and went on to score Brighton’s first ever top division goal.

But the new signing came in for some flak from the terraces and, over two years, never really delivered a significant return on the investment.

Maybank himself reckons the club forced him to play on with an injured knee when he shouldn’t have, which led to irreparable damage and ultimately a premature end to his career.

The former Chelsea centre-forward was signed to replace Ian Mellor, Peter Ward’s prolific strike partner in the 3rd Division, after Brighton had won promotion to the second tier.

“We let Ian Mellor go because we felt that he had reached a certain age and had probably peaked,” Alan Mullery told Matthew Horner, in his Peter Ward biography, He Shot, He Scored. “When Teddy Maybank became available, we thought that he was probably a better option.”

Born in Lambeth on 11 October 1956, Maybank lived the first 15 years of his life in Brixton and went to Christchurch Primary School, close to his home, where one of his playground footballing mates was Ray Lewington — now loyal deputy to Roy Hodgson — who, together with Maybank, went on to play for Chelsea and Fulham.

At the age of 11, Maybank moved to Stockwell Manor Secondary School and played various age group levels for South London Boys. One of the representative matches he played in took place at the Goldstone Ground on 25 September 1971, against Brighton Boys.

The Maybank family moved to Mitcham, close to the Chelsea training ground, and, when Teddy was 15, he joined them straight from school.

Maybank and Lewington progressed through Chelsea’s youth ranks at a time when the club’s focus was on bringing through home-grown talent. “It was a good time at Chelsea,” he said. “We had such a good youth side and I loved playing under Ken Shellito.”

That team, which won the South-East Counties Championship four years in a row, included Ray and Graham Wilkins, Lewington and John Sparrow.

Maybank’s first-team debut came in a 2-0 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur in April 1975 aged just 18, and he scored in only his second game, a 1-1 home draw against Sheffield United, but Chelsea were relegated from the top division that year.

The following campaign saw Maybank, still a teenager, become a first-team regular under Eddie McCreadie, grabbing five goals in 26 appearances between August and February.

After falling out of favour, he went out on loan to Fulham just before Christmas 1976 and then signed permanently for a £65,000 fee later that season.

Back in the ‘70s, Chelsea were a long way from the force they are now and Maybank admitted: “I wouldn’t say I ever played that well at Chelsea. I didn’t find it easy to score goals there.”

It was a different story at Craven Cottage. After scoring more than a goal every other game – 17 times in 31 games – Maybank was sold to Brighton for £238,000, which gave Fulham a swift and substantial profit that they used to pay off money owed on their recently-built Eric Miller Stand (now, the Riverside Stand).

                     Blond locks flying, Maybank comes up against QPR’s Dave Clement in a 1978  pre-season friendly. (Above right) This overhead kick against Sunderland at The Goldstone scraped the bar … otherwise would have been a Goal of the Season candidate!

Maybank made a good enough start for the Seagulls, scoring after just six minutes on his debut in a 2-2 home draw with Blackburn Rovers, played on a bitterly cold day in front of a crowd of 26,467. Tony Towner scored the Albion’s other goal and another debutant in that game was tough-tackling midfield player, Paul Clark.

Maybank was on the scoresheet again in the very next game as Albion recorded their first ever win, 1-0, at Blackpool.

It was in a game against Orient a week before Christmas that Maybank got a kick on his knee from defender Dennis Rofe (who later played for Leicester and Southampton) which caused an injury which he maintains wasn’t properly managed by the club.

He told fulhamfc.com in 2013: “They kept giving me injections, taking all the fluid out every Sunday after the game.

“I was barely training. I could run in a straight line but any time I put weight on my leg I would fall over. I wouldn’t feel any pain because of the injections, but I just fell over.”

The Brighton fans thought they had bought Bambi and were soon on his back, leading to a “pretty terrible time” that Maybank never really recovered from.

“The club should never ever have allowed me to play in that situation,” he said. “A surgeon saw me outside of the club, opened me up and said: ‘if you ever play football again, you’ll be the luckiest bloke in the world’.

“Brighton had told me, basically, that I couldn’t do any more damage. They wouldn’t do it now, but because I was the highest transfer fee they ever paid, they didn’t really take my welfare into consideration at all. In the end, it ruined my career.”

                      Shoot! article and (above right) Maybank goes full length to head the second of  his three goals against Cardiff on Boxing Day 1978.

In an article in Shoot! magazine at the time, Maybank talked about how he hadn’t had the best of starts with his new club. He said: “I wasn’t playing well. I knew that. My early form was a disappointment to the fans. They expected me to come in and start scoring regularly and doing incredible things.

“It’s always hard when you change clubs and you need a while to settle in. I have to adjust to my new team-mates but they’ve also had to change and adapt to playing with me.”

Mansfield were trounced 5-1 at the Goldstone on 21 January 1978 when Peter Ward shone with a hat-trick. Maybank also got one, but it was his last of the season. He made only six more appearances between January and the end of the season and new signing Malcolm Poskett seized his chance alongside Ward.

Albion narrowly missed out on promotion (by goal difference) and during the close season Maybank went under the knife for a cartilage operation.

Fit for the new season, Maybank was among the goals as Albion beat Millwall 4-1 at The Den on 2 September. He got a brace that day but in the same month was in trouble with the manager who’d had an anonymous tip-off that the star striker and Welsh international winger Peter Sayer had been seen in a nightclub on the eve of what turned out to be a 4-1 defeat by Leicester City.

Mullery made an example of the pair and they were both ‘persuaded’ to donate a fortnight’s wages to the local Guide Dogs for the Blind Association.

On the pitch, the goals dried up for Maybank until Boxing Day when he netted a hat-trick in a 5-0 win over Cardiff City. In an Albion matchday programme in 2015-16, Maybank admitted to Spencer Vignes: “The crowd started getting on my back, and I got in a pretty dark place.

“When I got that hat-trick, I went from villain to hero and yet it had got so bad that the day before Alan Mullery picked the squad I’d told him I never wanted to play for the club again.

“From the changing room before a game, I used to hear the crowd boo my name when the team was read out over the tannoy.”

In total, Maybank scored 10 times as Albion won promotion, and he was leading the line in the famous promotion-clinching 3-1 win at Newcastle on 5 May 1979.

In that season’s Rediffusion Player of the Year competition, Maybank finished third behind winner Mark Lawrenson and runner-up Brian Horton.

In much the same way Pascal Gross was feted for scoring Brighton’s first-ever goal in the Premiership, so Maybank scored the Albion’s very first goal in the top division.

After being hammered 4-0 by Arsenal in the opening fixture at the Goldstone, the Seagulls were away to Aston Villa in the second game.

                      Arms aloft, Maybank celebrates Albion’s first ever top division goal with skipper Brian Horton and Peter O’Sullivan. (Above right) Maybank battles with Arsenal’s David O’Leary watched by John Hollins and O’Sullivan.

Latching on to a John Gregory through pass and, with the very last kick of the first half, Maybank buried a shot past ‘keeper Jimmy Rimmer.

Albion lost the game 2-1 but the national newspapers were full of praise for the newcomers to the division.

Frank Clough in The Sun wrote: “Teddy Maybank and Peter Ward tore great holes in Villa’s jittery defence and were only stopped by inadequate finishing and fine goalkeeping by Rimmer.”

It was the first of three Maybank goals at the top level, but, according to Ward, the striker had a big falling out with Mullery. The manager brought in Ray Clarke as his first choice centre-forward and, in December 1979, Maybank was sold back to Fulham for £150,000.

He had scored a total of 16 goals in 64 appearances for the Seagulls, less than half the ratio he’d been scoring when bought.

After just 19 games for Fulham, Maybank joined Dutch side PSV Eindhoven for £230,000 in August 1980 (Fulham making another tidy profit on the player).

His debut for the Dutch giants came in front of a packed house at the Nou Camp, where Barcelona were staging a four-team tournament with Vasco da Gama and River Plate.

However, only a few games later his knee flared up again.

“They opened me up and saw what a state my knee was in,” Maybank explained in that 2013 interview with fulhamfc.co.uk. “I was told in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t retire I would be playing with the youth team or reserves. I think they thought they’d been taken for a ride.”

Maybank was left with no choice. At the age of 24, he retired from the game.

Pictures from my scrapbook sourced from Shoot! magazine and the matchday programme.

All-time Albion hero Peter Ward scored inside a minute of debut

ward v bpool

ARMS aloft in familiar salute to yet another goal, the smiling footballer in a black and white picture on a Florida football club’s website dates back 40 years!

All around the world, it seems, Peter Ward’s goalscoring exploits for Brighton & Hove Albion are still the stuff of legend.

Four decades may have come and gone but the memories of this mercurial talent have never dimmed.

FC Tampa Rangers say of their youth coach: “During the 1976–77 season at Brighton, he scored 36 goals, beating the club record and winning him the golden boot.

“He is still revered by Brighton fans who sing a song dreaming of a team in which every player is Peter Ward: ‘We all live in a Wardy Wonderland’.”

If the word legend gets bandied about a little too frequently, where Peter Ward is concerned it is perfectly apt.

1-ward-scoresFew Brighton players have managed to approach the esteem in which this extraordinary talent is held by supporters who saw him score the goals which took the Seagulls from perennial third tier also-rans to a place among the elite.

It takes genuine talent, bravery and skill to score goals at all three levels but Ward delivered. In 220 games for the Albion (plus seven as sub) he scored 95 goals.

In his splendid 2007 book, A Few Good Men (The Breedon Books Publishing Company Limited), Spencer Vignes refers back to 1980 and says of Ward: “No centre forward since has managed to steal his crown. Some have come close – Garry Nelson and Bobby Zamora spring to mind – but Wardy remains special, the golden boy of what proved to be a golden time for the club.”

I was sorry to have missed Ward’s latest return to Brighton when in 2016 he joined some of the Goldstone heroes of the past at the Theatre Royal.

Impishly donning a curly wig on top of his now bald pate to make his grand entrance, Ward showed he’d still got something of the showman about him.

There was never a shortage of superlatives to describe his skills on the pitch. While his dad Colin was a compositor on the Tamworth Herald, his son’s talents with a football filled dozens of column inches in a variety of football publications.

PW green BWAlan Mullery, the manager who benefited most from his audacious skill and compared him to the great Jimmy Greaves, said: “He was just the skinny little kid who could do fantastic things with a football.”

Mullery told Shoot: “Peter has the ability to kill a ball no matter how it comes at him. His pace over short bursts is incredible and he shoots powerfully and accurately with either foot.”

He continued: “Above all else, Peter’s strength on the ball, for a player of his stature, is remarkable. He fools defenders who believe they can easily knock him flying.”

Two of Ward’s former teammates told Vignes what made him so special. “He had this long stride that just seemed to take him away from people,” said Peter O’Sullivan. “One step and he’d be gone. Once he got goal-side of a player, that was it really – bang! Nobody ever seemed to be able to catch him, even in training.”

Brian Horton joined the club around the same time as Ward and said of his younger teammate: “He was this thin, scrawny little player that needed to learn the game, but his finishing was unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.”

Nottingham Forest fans will have less happy memories of a player the managerial duo of Clough and Taylor took to the City Ground as they strived to replace Garry Birtles and Trevor Francis with any pairing from Ward, Ian Wallace and Justin Fashanu.

It just didn’t work out for Wardy at Forest although he tells Vignes in A Few Good Men: “I had a great time at Forest. I got on well with the lads and had a laugh.”

While he always got on well with Taylor, his relationship with the erratic Clough was a lot stormier which meant he was in and out of the side.

When Lichfield-born Ward left school he was only 4’8” and because he was told he was too small to make a career playing football he got a job as an apprentice fitter at Rolls Royce and played local football in the Derby area.

The detail of those early years can be discovered in Matthew Horner’s excellent biography of Ward (He Shot, He Scored, Sea View Media).

Scout Jim Phelps recommended Ward to the then non-league Burton Albion manager Ken Gutteridge having worked with the freescoring player at a Sunday afternoon side, Borrowash United.

After joining the newly-promoted Brewers initially in the Reserves, the 1974-75 season was only a month old when he made his first team bow alongside former England internationals Frank Wignall and Ian Storey-Moore – and promptly scored a hat-trick in a 4-1 win over Tamworth, his hometown team.

By the middle of November that season, with 10 goals to his name, Ward’s scoring exploits had attracted the attention of league clubs and Brighton boss Peter Taylor, with plenty of contacts in the area, put in a bid.

The Burton chairman, Jim Bradbury, went public on the approach – which Gutteridge found completely unacceptable. He promptly resigned… and before long was appointed to Taylor’s backroom staff!

In the meantime, Burton resisted Brighton’s money and it later emerged that Gutteridge had told Taylor he would only take up the post on condition that Ward would eventually be brought to the Goldstone.

Taylor stuck to his word and eventually signed Ward for £4,000 in the close season of 1975.

The rest, as they say, is history and in researching for this piece it was difficult to sift through the multitude of material from my scrapbooks, programmes, books and other places to condense it all into something manageable.

Because of his popularity, most of the story is familiar to fans of a certain generation anyway and anyone who has not yet read Horner’s book should get themselves a copy because it is rich with material from Ward himself and others who played alongside him or observed him.

Scoring within 50 seconds of his Albion debut away to Hereford United in front of the Match of the Day cameras couldn’t have been a better start and the partnership he struck up with beanpole Ian Mellor was key to promotion from the old Division 3.

For what at times seemed like a fantasy coming to life, it’s intriguing to learn that Ward’s watching of the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me on the eve of two games was followed the next day by him scoring hat-tricks.

In the 1977-78 season, he saw it before making his England under 21 debut at the Goldstone against Norway in a 6-0 win, and, later the same season, he saw it again before an away game at Mansfield and scored three once again!

It seemed a natural progression that Ward would make it to the full England team and he did eventually – winning one cap for a six-minute substitute appearance against Australia in May 1980.

In fact he made the full England squad three years earlier for a game against Luxembourg but wasn’t involved in the match itself and, by his own admission, reckons he blotted his copybook with manager Ron Greenwood by being ill in the room he shared with Trevor Brooking after going out drinking with Brian Greenhoff.

ward coverIn the way that all good things must come to an end, the beginning of the end of the fairytale came as Albion struggled to come to terms with their first season at the top level.

Ward was certainly not as prolific as he had been lower down the football pyramid although, as reported in my previous blog post, the arrival of Ray Clarke helped him rediscover his form to finish that season as top goalscorer with 17.

However, a return to his Midlands home territory looked increasingly likely. He nearly went to Derby in November 1979 but a swap deal with Gerry Daly fell through, and Forest also wanted him but Clough walked away from the deal.

Eleven months later, though, Clough and Taylor were back in for him when Birtles was sold to Man Utd, paying the Albion £450,000 for his services. Andy Ritchie, being displaced by Birtles’ move to United, promptly replaced Ward at the Albion.

Ward made just 33 appearances for Forest, scoring seven goals, and in 1981-82 went on loan to Seattle Sounders.

In the autumn of 1982, Brighton brought him back to the Goldstone on loan and it was in the fourth game of a 16-game spell that he scored (above) what he considered his favourite goal, the winner against his boyhood idols Manchester United at the Goldstone on 6 November 1982.

Ward was part of the Albion line-up that won that memorable FA Cup fifth round tie at Anfield en route to the 1983 FA Cup Final but it was to prove his penultimate game as the eccentric Clough quashed Ward’s desire to stay with the Seagulls and that potential trip to Wembley.

At that time, Clough’s Forest hadn’t been to a FA Cup Final and he told Ward: “Son, I’ve never been to a Cup Final and neither will you.”

That spelled the end of Ward’s time at the City Ground and by the end of 1983 he was sold to Vancouver Whitecaps for £20,000; the beginning of what became a 13-year career playing mainly indoor football in America, where he still lives.

• Pictures from various sources: the matchday programme, Evening Argus and Shoot! / Goal.

Cross the colossus majestic in promotion-winning season

1-cross-clincherGRAHAM Cross won promotion from the third tier in successive seasons – one with Brighton & Hove Albion, the next with Preston North End.

They came after a record-breaking 15-year spell with his hometown club Leicester City.

Cross was a tower of strength and ever-present in Alan Mullery’s 1976-77 promotion-winning team. He was so consistent that his fellow professionals named him and fellow Seagulls Brian Horton and Peter Ward in the division’s PFA team of the year.

One standout performance I recall was in a cracking League Cup replay at the Goldstone against Division 1 side Ipswich Town on 7 September 1976 (see picture above).

Despite the Albion being down to 10 men, having had Phil Beal carried off injured after sub Ian Mellor had already come on, Cross scored the winning goal two minutes from time to give Albion their first competitive victory against a first division team for 43 years!

“Graham had an absolutely tremendous 1976-77 season for us and I can’t speak too highly of him,” Mullery told Shoot! “When I first started planning for the new term I reckoned on having him in the side for our step up into the Second Division.”

G Cross BW HSHowever, when he realised he could land the highly promising 20-year-old Mark Lawrenson from Preston for £112,000, those plans changed.

Lawrenson had played brilliantly against the Albion during the promotion season and was eager to take the step up so he headed south together with full back Gary Williams and Cross and left back Harry Wilson went in the opposite direction.

“I wish him well at Preston and can assure their supporters they are getting one of the most honest lads in the game in Graham,” said Mullery.

Cross certainly played his part as Preston earned promotion from the third tier – one of his teammates was centre forward Michael Robinson, who joined Albion in 1980 – but in the following season the magic touch eluded him when he played 19 times for Lincoln City but didn’t manage to stop them being relegated to the Fourth Division.

3-gc-leicesterCross had been part of the furniture at Leicester and the meashamfox blog recalls how he scored on his debut on 29 April 1961 against Birmingham City in a 3-2 win at Filbert Street.

He was a real ‘Mr Versatility’ who played in eight different positions, although mostly  in midfield – the history books describe him as an inside forward or wing half – and at centre back.

During all the hullabaloo surrounding Leicester’s remarkable Premiership title win in 2016, there were flashbacks to the last time a Leicester side went that close to clinching the league title – in 1962-63 – with Cross a member of that side.

In an interview with the Leicester Mercury, his former Scottish international teammate Frank McLintock spoke about a so-called signature move called ‘the switch’ Leicester employed whereby Cross dropped back and McLintock bombed past him.

“It was a load of rubbish, really,” McLintock told the paper. “It was just that I was really fit and Graham, who was a great player, would be a bit puffed out when he got back. We just swapped positions for a bit.

“The opposition would get confused with who was picking up who. Even Bill Shankly copied it later on at Liverpool.”

Unlike the 2016 vintage, the 1963 side blew their title chances by losing their last four league games. However, they did reach the FA Cup Final that year. Cross was in the side that lost 3-1 to Manchester United. He was also in the Leicester side that lost the 1969 final 1-0 to Manchester City.

His performances in 1963 were good enough to earn him a call up to the England under 23 team, making his debut in a 0-0 draw with Yugoslavia at Old Trafford. In the return fixture two months later, he scored a penalty to supplement an Alan Hinton hat-trick as England won 4-2.

He was a permanent fixture in the side for 10 matches (including a 4-1 win over West Germany, when future Albion colleague Peter Grummitt was in goal). But in November 1964, Leeds’ Norman Hunter took over the no.6 shirt.

Cross was recalled for one more game, in April 1966, when the under 23s beat Turkey 2-0 at Ewood Park. Two of the side that day – Martin Peters and Roger Hunt – would go on to be part of the England World Cup winning team three months later, but Cross never progressed to the senior England team.

Nevertheless he did pick up a  League Cup winner’s medal when Leicester beat Stoke City in 1964 but was a loser the following year when they were beaten narrowly by a Chelsea side containing Barry Bridges and Bert Murray.

Three years before joining Brighton, Cross received a long service clock to mark 500 first class appearances.

Throughout this period, he was also one of that rare breed who played county cricket too.

A right-arm medium-fast bowler, he played 83 first class matches for Leicestershire between 1962 and 1976 and took 92 wickets at an average of 29.95. His top batting performance was a knock of 78.

I am indebted once more to the meashamfox blog to learn that it was Cross’ dual sporting prowess that eventually brought his Leicester career to an end.

In the summer of 1975, he was part of the Leicestershire side captained by Ray Illingworth that won the county championship and the Benson and Hedges Cup, making him the only man to have played in cup finals at Wembley and Lord’s.

But the Leicester board took a dim view of him carrying on playing cricket instead of reporting back for pre-season training and he was suspended.

He was sent out on loan to Chesterfield and played 12 times for them in the 1975-76 season, before being released.

He arrived at the Goldstone on May 25 1976 at the same time as full back (and future manager) Chris Cattlin.

Manager Peter Taylor had impeccable contacts in the Midlands and in Cattlin, from Coventry, and Cross, from Leicester, he acquired two experienced campaigners who had played at the top level in the game for many years.

Taylor’s intention was that Cross would have the sort of impact at Brighton that the ageing Dave Mackay had on Derby when Taylor and Brian Clough signed him from Spurs.G Cross LEic

Taylor had tried to sign Cross before, in the pair’s early days at Derby. Leicester even accepted an £80,000 bid but Cross prevaricated over the move and they turned their attentions elsewhere. He admitted his regret at missing out on the £4,000 cut of the deal but told Goal magazine: “I’m happy in Leicester and I’m pleased that I decided to stay.”

That decision would ultimately lead him to become the all-time appearance record holder for Leicester, having played 599 games; a feat still not surpassed.

Clough and Taylor were renowned for building their sides on solid defences and, having already captured Grummitt, Graham Winstanley, Andy Rollings and Wilson, Taylor added Ken Tiler, Dennis Burnett, Cattlin and Cross.

Taylor, of course, didn’t hang around to see how Cattlin and Cross would contribute. With only four weeks to go to the start of the season, he decided to quit and renew his partnership with Clough, this time at Nottingham Forest.

One of the first images fans saw of his replacement, Alan Mullery, showed him embracing Cross and Cattlin at the pre-season press photocall.

Cross mostly played alongside Rollings, with Burnett and Winstanley filling in when Rollings was sidelined.

Interestingly, Cross never actually moved to Brighton during his spell with the Seagulls: the deal he agreed allowed him to continue to train with Leicester because he and his wife had business interests in the Leicester area.

The meashamfox blog declared “Graham Cross was Leicester City’s finest ever player” although the author was also sad to report how in February 1993 “he had been jailed for using post office funds to pay off his gambling debts”.

The blog concluded: “Despite this blip in his life, for me ‘The Tank’ Graham Cross is a true Leicester legend.”

Pictures from my scrapbook show:

  • A cracking Argus picture and headline record the winner Graham Cross scored against Ipswich in the League Cup.
  • A full page colour photo in Goal magazine when at Leicester.
  • Celebrating his inclusion in the PFA division 3 team of the year with Brian Horton and Peter Ward at the annual awards dinner.
  • Another Goal article, from 1973, marking a clock presentation to Cross in recognition of 500 senior appearances for Leicester.
  • Cross in the Preston team line-up alongside Michael Robinson, who would eventually join the Seagulls via Manchester City.
Cross aged 77 was interviewed and photographed by The Times ahead of Leicester’s 2021 FA Cup Final win over Chelsea

100 goals in Scotland and England for Neil Martin

2 MartinSCOTTISH international Neil Martin remains a legend at one of his homeland clubs but his brief time at Brighton was more like a bad dream after a goalscoring start.

QoS Martin

The striker’s youthful picture can still be found on the legends section of Queen of the South FC’s website where it notes he was among the first players to score 100 league goals in both Scotland and England.

It was while playing for the Wearsiders that he gained three Scotland international caps, all in 1965.

IMG_5147Martin scored 28 goals in 119 games for Nottingham Forest having moved down from Scotland in the 1960s and begun his English league career with Sunderland.

Martin partnered the legendary Denis Law up front in World Cup qualifiers against Poland and Finland and his third and final cap was earned in a 1-0 win over Italy playing alongside Tottenham’s Alan Gilzean.

IMG_5146One of his most prolific spells was at Coventry City (above) where, in three years, between 1968 and 1971, he scored 40 goals in 106 appearances.

He was slightly less prolific for Forest (although he was on the scoresheet in Clough’s first game in charge) before Peter Taylor brought him to the Albion on 26 June 1975.

Four new players were presented to the assembled press that pre-season and standing alongside Martin was one Peter Ward.

Martin scored on his league debut for Brighton as Rotherham United were dispatched 3-0 but he didn’t stay in the side long because Taylor brought in loan signing Barry Butlin, also from Forest, for five games to play up front alongside Fred Binney and Gerry Fell.

Martin did get a run back in the side during the autumn, when he added to his goals tally. But Taylor obviously felt the attack needed something extra and the £30,000 arrival of Northern Ireland international Sammy Morgan from Aston Villa spelt the beginning of the end of Martin’s short spell at the club.

He scored eight league goals and one in the FA Cup in 18 starts (plus four substitute appearances) but it all ended somewhat acrimoniously.

The Argus reported on February 13 1976 that the 32-year-old former Scotland international had been transfer listed and banned from the Goldstone.

Words had evidently been exchanged after Martin had been subbed off in a reserves game and, try though he did, reporter John Vinicombe couldn’t find out exactly what had gone on.

Taylor was renowned for his tough stance with players. He suspended six players in the September that season and he had fallings out with Ian Mellor, Joe Kinnear and reserve ‘keeper Derek Forster.

Martin didn’t play for the club again, instead being moved on to Crystal Palace where he scored just the once in nine appearances.

At the end of the season, he joined what was a familiar exodus for ageing English league players at the time and played alongside England’s World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore, and ex-Arsenal full back Bob McNab, for San Antonio Thunder in America.

It wasn’t unfamiliar territory for Martin because, in the summer of 1967, he was part of the Sunderland contingent who played in the NASL as Vancouver Royal Canadians. The 16-man squad also included the above-mentioned Forster.

After Martin’s 1976 stint at San Antonio, he didn’t play in England again. His final playing days were in the Republic of Ireland, interestingly being given a lifeline by another former international striker who’d played for Brighton – Barry Bridges.

The former Chelsea, Birmingham, QPR and Millwall striker had a couple of seasons managing Dublin side St Patrick’s Athletic, where Martin joined him.

The Scot had a brief managerial foray with Walsall, mainly in tandem with Alan Buckley, but it didn’t end well and he left the club in 1982.

Born in Tranent, just east of Edinburgh, on 20 October 1940, Martin’s break into the professional game came at Alloa Athletic. His 25 league and cup goals in the 1960-61 season brought about a move to Queen of the South where he continued to score plenty of goals – 33 in 61 appearances.

A £7,500 transfer fee took him to Hibernian in 1963. He’d supported them as a boy and after Jock Stein took over as manager in 1964, Martin netted 29 league and cup goals in the 1964-65 season. He said later that Stein was the biggest influence on his career.

It was top-tier Sunderland who paid £45,000 to take Martin south of the border. His goalscoring in his first taste of English football wasn’t quite as prolific as it had been in Scotland, mainly due to the Wearsiders not being able to decide on the best strike partner for the Scot.

Eventually, in 1968, he moved on to Coventry City, newly-promoted to the old First Division. He spent three years at Highfield Road, developing good partnerships with Ernie Hunt and John O’Rourke, with the emerging talents of Willie Carr and Dennis Mortimer providing good service from midfield.

His switch to Nottingham Forest towards the end of the 1970-71 season helped them survive the drop, but they went down the following season and that was the last Martin saw of top-flight football.

1 Martin
3 Martin