Tag: Jim Barron

The Doog signed Brighton-bred Tiger for top tier Wolves

Tony Towner on the wing for Brighton at the Goldstone Ground

TONY TOWNER finally got to play in the equivalent of the Premier League only for it to end in disappointment.

Just over ten years after Towner burst onto the football scene with hometown club Brighton, with his old club going in the other direction, he pulled on the old gold of newly-promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers.

It was at the start of the 1983-84 season, with Liverpool at home first up, while relegated Albion faced Oldham away as they reverted to second tier football after four years at the top.

In those days, the competition was known as the Canon League First Division – and it went off in the wrong direction as far as Wolves were concerned, failing to win in their first 14 league matches although that opener ended in a 1-1 draw against the Reds, when Towner joined the action as a sub in the 69th minute.

My previous blog post about Towner in 2017 focused on his early days at Brighton and his subsequently achieving cult hero status at Rotherham United. He had experienced promotions and relegations with both clubs, playing in the second and third tiers.

He had moved on (to Millwall) from Brighton before they reached the elite level for the first time so linking up with Wolves finally gave him the top tier platform that had previously eluded him, signing for a side who’d bounced straight back to the top after relegation in 1982.

The history books record that Towner wasn’t even signed by manager Graham Hawkins, who was on holiday when former Wolves legend Derek Dougan sealed the winger’s £80,000 move from Rotherham in the summer of 1983.

Wolves legend Derek Dougan

While a pundit for Yorkshire TV, Dougan had seen plenty of Towner playing for the Millers and, as chairman and chief executive of Wolves, he reckoned he could do a job at Molineux.

“They needed to add more players, they needed to strengthen, which is always the case for any team getting promoted to the top league,” Towner recalled in a 2021 interview with the Express & Star.

“In the end, I was the only one who came in through the door. I did feel a bit of pressure because of that but I was just concentrating on doing everything I could to be a success.”

Wolves’ finances at the time were not at all healthy and Hawkins’ assistant Jim Barron told wolvesheroes.com: “We started to discover that signing players was going to be difficult. I was on holiday when Graham rang me to say that The Doog had signed Tony Towner – a lovely lad but certainly not one we would have considered to be high-priority.”

Wolves winger Towner tussles for the ball with Tottenham’s Chris Hughton

As it turned out, he made 29 league and cup starts plus six appearances off the bench. He scored just the two goals: in a 3-2 defeat at Sunderland on 7 September 1983 (Gary Rowell was among the Mackem scorers) and with a long range header past Chris Woods in Wolves’ New Year’s Eve 2-0 win over Norwich City.

Sadly, that was one of only six wins all season and in what became a disastrous campaign they were relegated in last place. Hawkins left in February 1984 and Barron was in caretaker charge as they went down.

The fan website alwayswolves.co.uk said: “Towner was a one-season wonder, whom we wondered what all the fuss was about, despite his previous good form at the likes of Brighton and Rotherham.”

Nevertheless, the player himself revelled in the experience, telling Paul Berry in that 2021 interview: “We had some good players in the squad, but we just never got going that year. Every day you could sense around the place that something just wasn’t right.

“We were getting beat game after game, and I mean game after game, and it got so demoralising in the end.

“We were up against it and just weren’t able to bring in the sort of players they needed to strengthen, the money just wasn’t there.

“A lot of it was trying to gamble on younger players, and even though it was my first season at that level, at 28 I was one of the more experienced. In the end, we had a shocking year.”

While it was mostly doom and gloom that season, Wolves did pull off a shock 1-0 win at Anfield on 14 January 1984, which gave Towner a happy memory to look back on.

Against a Liverpool side that included Mark Lawrenson and Michael Robinson in their line-up,

John Humphrey was making his 100th League appearance for the bottom-of-the-league visitors and Steve Mardenborough scored his first goal for Wolves in only the 10th minute.

“After that, I’m not sure we even got out of our penalty area,” said Towner. “What a day that was. They hit the post I don’t know how many times but, somehow, we held on and won the game.

“To play at Liverpool is special enough, and you don’t get many chances to do that, but to win as well, that is something I will never forget even if I didn’t touch the ball that often!”

Even though Wanderers went down (with Notts County and Birmingham) fully 21 points behind 19th-placed Coventry City, Towner reflected: “I loved being associated with Wolves, even though it was such a difficult season.

“It was my only experience of the top division, and even though I was in and out of the side, it was a fantastic one and something I enjoyed.

“Life’s too short to worry too much and think about the ‘if onlys’ – of course we needed more wins and who knows if I could have stayed there longer but it just wasn’t to be.

“I still feel it was a real achievement for me to get there and to play for Wolves and I loved it.”

While not all Wolves fans liked what they saw in Towner, interviewer Berry was one who did appreciate his attributes.

“Towner was one of those exciting wingers, direct, able to employ a trick or two to get past defenders or relying on his genuine pace,” he wrote.

“Wolves fans have always loved their wingers, those with the capabilities to beat opponents, get fans off their seats, and while it was a step-up for Towner at a time when Wolves were struggling, he still had chances to show what he could do.

“As a young whippersnapper, I remember sitting on the wall of the Family Enclosure near the South Bank, gradually wrecking my nice white trainers in the pitchside RedGra, and loving watching Towner – bedecked in Tatung pin-striped shirt, shorts and those magnificent hooped socks – picking the ball up on the halfway line and then running at the opposing full back.”

Towner at the Amex supporting his hometown club

Barry Butlin’s belter at Selhurst helped revive Forest career

BARRY BUTLIN is one of that pantheon of players who’ve scored winning goals for the Albion against Crystal Palace.

He may sound like the alliterative title of a south Wales holiday camp, but this was a moustachioed striker who’d joined Third Division Brighton on loan from Second Division Nottingham Forest.

When former Albion boss Brian Clough couldn’t find a place for him in his Forest line-up in September 1975, previous managerial partner, Peter Taylor, going it alone at the Albion, was more than happy to add Butlin to his forward line options.

Butlin had started his career at Derby County on the periphery of Clough and Taylor’s squad at the Baseball Ground.

During his five years as a Rams player, he’d twice been out on loan to Notts County, scoring eight in 20 games in 1968-69 and another five in 10 appearances in the 1969-70 season.

While Derby won the First Division title in 1972, Butlin was sold for £50,000 to Luton Town, where he made his mark with an impressive 24 goals in 57 matches.

One of them came in a 1-1 draw at Elland Road during Clough’s ill-fated 44-day spell as Leeds manager, and, in a typically odd Clough way, in the post-match press conference he put his arm around Butlin and told the journalists: “This is who you want to write about after that wonderful goal. He deserves it.”

The following month, Butlin’s goalscoring exploits for the Hatters saw Forest boss Allan Brown take him to the City Ground for a fee of £120,000.

Imagine how he must have felt when his old Derby boss Clough arrived to take over at Forest in January 1975!

Nevertheless, the striker said all the right things publicly ahead of the manager’s first game, a third round FA Cup replay against Spurs, as recorded in Jonathan Wilson’s excellent book Brian Clough: Nobody Ever Says Thank You The Biography (Orion Books 2011).

“The lads all know that everybody is starting from scratch with everything to prove,” said Butlin. “Brian Clough has the ability to make an average player good and a good player great.”

Such a show of loyalty might have been understandable in the circumstances but Wilson also recalls Clough’s eccentric attitude towards players when they were injured. Butlin fractured his cheek in a training ground incident when at Derby.

“As he lay on the ground, Clough screamed at him to get up, insisting there was nothing wrong with him,” wrote Wilson. “Even after he’d been taken to hospital, Clough refused to believe anything was the matter.

“When Butlin’s wife turned up looking for her husband and mentioned an ‘accident’ to Clough, he snapped: ‘I’ll tell you when there’s been an accident’.”

Although Butlin feared the worst when Clough arrived at Forest, he wasn’t instantly discarded, finishing that season with seven goals in 33 games (plus one as a sub), while fellow forward Neil Martin netted 12 in 30 matches (plus two as a sub).

Butlin had a front row seat in this Forest line-up

But Clough clearly had other ideas about who he wanted in attack and brought in John O’Hare, who had done well for him at Derby, but less well during the ill-fated spell at Leeds, and introduced a young Tony Woodcock.

Intriguingly, that summer Martin was reunited with Taylor at Brighton and, within a matter of weeks, Butlin was also heading to the Albion, although his move was only temporary.

As it happened, Martin got off to a decent start alongside Fred Binney up front, scoring three times in the opening matches. But Taylor obviously considered Butlin offered a more potent threat; and it wasn’t long before fans saw why.

Butlin lets fly and scores the winner at Selhurst Park in 1975

In only his second game, in the third minute of Albion’s clash with Palace at Selhurst Park on 23 September 1975, Butlin got on the end of a Gerry Fell cross and hit an unstoppable shot that turned out to be the only goal of a pulsating game played in front of a crowd of 25,606 – a quite remarkable number for a third tier fixture.

“It still sticks with me, that one,” Butlin told Spencer Vignes, in his book Bloody Southerners (Biteback Publishing), which details the Clough-Taylor period at the Goldstone.

“It was the start of a cracking time down at Brighton,” said Butlin. “I only wish I could have gone on a little longer.”

Butlin soars to connect with this header

Butlin followed up that midweek winner at Palace with another goal on his home debut four days later when Chesterfield were beaten 3-0 (Peter O’Sullivan and Binney the other scorers).

Although not on the scoresheet, he also featured in two more wins (2-1 at Shrewsbury Town and 1-0 at home to Preston). However, in his absence Forest had gone through a mini slump, losing four out of five matches.

Butlin had taken his wife and children to Sussex with him, staying in the Courtlands Hotel in Hove. They all really liked the area, and the player had hopes of making the move a permanent one. Clough had other ideas.

“Brighton made me so welcome, but Forest weren’t doing very well at all,” Butlin told Vignes. “When I came to the end of my loan period, Brian got me straight back up to Forest and I had a real purple patch during which I played really well.”

In fact, he finished the season with eight goals from 38 games played as Forest finished eighth in the old Second Division.

Collector’s item

“We had this team meeting before one game and Brian said: ‘If sending you down to Brighton gives you that impetus, then I’d better start sending some more players down there!’

“I’d seen the seafront and the wonderful countryside and thought it was the prelude to us staying there as a family, but it wasn’t to be. I was disappointed to say the least.”

Born in the south Derbyshire village of Rosliston, on 9 November 1949, Butlin attended Granville County Secondary School in Woodville from 1961 to 1966, and proudly records on his LinkedIn profile that he obtained six GCEs. He was also the school football captain.

He signed on for Derby in July 1967 but the likes of Richie Barker and Frank Wignall initially, then O’Hare and Kevin Hector, were ahead of him as the Rams progressed from the old Second Division into the First, before winning the title in 1972.

Chances for Butlin were few and far between. He made just four first team appearances in five years but those loan spells at Notts County at least demonstrated there was a player in the making, able to find the back of the net.

A knee injury prevented him making an immediate impact at Luton, after Harry Haslam had signed him, but he was the top scorer as Town gained promotion to the elite in second place in 1973-74.

The Hatters assured promotion by securing a 1-1 draw at West Brom in the penultimate game of the season, and midfield player Alan West relived the moment in an interview with theleaguepaper.com.

“I remember Barry Butlin, who was magnificent in the old centre forward’s role that season, got the vital goal,” he said. “I played in midfield with Peter Anderson and Jimmy Ryan. Peter was a great player and finished that season as our second highest scorer behind Barry.”

Just before Christmas in 2014, Butlin and West were among several former players who got together for a 40th anniversary celebration dinner. Also there were John Faulkner, Gordon Hindson, Alan Garner, Jimmy Husband, John Ryan, Jimmy Ryan, Don Shanks and Ken Goodeve.

Luton history website hattersheritage.co.uk remembers Butlin as “brilliant in the air and no slouch on the ground” and mentions the shock fans felt when he was sold to Forest, particularly as Town were desperate for goals at the time.

In the 1976-77 season, Butlin once more went out on loan, this time to Reading, and the heave-ho from Forest he had long expected finally came when Peter Withe was brought in.

Butlin was sold to Peterborough United and in two seasons with the Posh he scored 14 goals in 77 matches. His teammates at London Road included former Forest colleagues Jim Barron and Peter Hindley as well as former Albion midfielder Billy McEwan.

United just missed out on promotion from the Third Division, finishing fourth in 1977-78. It was a disastrously different second season, by which time another former Albion player, Lammie Robertson had joined them – when Posh were relegated to Division Four.

Butlin’s final club was Sheffield United, as they faced their first season outside the top two divisions. Signed by his former Luton boss Harry Haslam, Butlin scored 12 times in 53 matches for the Blades, but by the end of 1980-81 season, after Martin Peters had taken over, United were relegated to the fourth tier for the first time in their history.

Butlin retired and spent three decades working as a financial adviser and mortgage manager in Sherwood, Nottingham.

He lived in Derby and between July 2000 and October 2010 was secretary and treasurer of the Derby County Former Players’ Association.