Tag: Johnny Morrissey

The goalscoring legend who slipped through Brighton’s net

ONES that got away always make for fascinating stories and a striker who went on to become a goalscoring legend slipped through the net at both Brighton and Burnley.

Ian Muir is hailed an all-time hero by fans of Tranmere Rovers for whom he scored 180 goals in all competitions during what many regard as the best period in Rovers’ history. If it hadn’t been for injury, he could have played in the Premier League and Europe for Leeds United.

But he’s barely remembered for the struggles he had to get games at Brighton, let alone in a month with the Clarets.

Success could have eluded himf it hadn’t been for the time he spent at Brighton alongside the legendary Frank Worthington. He was considering a move to non-league Maidstone United, but, when Worthington quit Brighton in the summer of 1985 to take his first step into management on the Wirral, he made Muir his first signing.

“Ian Muir was a fantastic forward with great touch,” Worthington told Spencer Vignes in an Albion matchday programme interview. “He did things in training you just wouldn’t believe, yet he wasn’t even making the side at Brighton under Chris (Cattlin).”

Cattlin had taken the youngster on after he had been given a free transfer by Birmingham City where he’d made just one League Cup appearance in the 1983-84 season under Ron Saunders. But competition for forward places was intense with the likes of initially Alan Young and Terry Connor, then Worthington, Mick Ferguson and later Alan Biley.

Muir’s first involvement with the Albion first team was as a non-playing substitute for the home 3-0 win over Leeds on 24 March 1984. He made his debut the following Saturday at Fratton Park in place of the injured Young and was brought down in the penalty area only 20 minutes into the game to earn Brighton a spot kick, which Danny Wilson successfully buried to put the Seagulls ahead.

Muir in his Brighton days

Connor had a chance to put Albion further ahead and, as the matchday programme reported, “Muir sliced wide as Connor made the opening” before Pompey began a devastating fight back.

Albion had been hoping to complete a fourth win in a row for the first time in six years, but it wasn’t to be, and, into the bargain, Muir couldn’t cap his debut with a goal, instead firing wide when set up by winger Steve Penney.

Unfortunately, this was the game when former Spurs and Arsenal centre back Willie Young, on loan from Norwich City, was given the runaround by Pompey centre forward Mark Hateley, and, courtesy of a second half blitz, the home side ran out 5-1 winners.

Alan Young was restored to the no.9 shirt in the next match and scored twice as Albion beat Grimsby Town 2-0 at the Goldstone, but Muir was drafted in to take Connor’s place in the away game at Shrewsbury Town.

That match ended in a 2-1 defeat, but the News of the World angled its report on an unlucky afternoon for the young forward.

“It just wasn’t Ian Muir’s day,” wrote reporter Brian Russell. “The Brighton teenager (actually he was 20) playing only his second league game could so easily have taken the limelight from Shrewsbury two-goal hero, 17-year-old Gerry Nardiello.

“Young Muir headed the ball home in the eighth minute from Jimmy Case’s corner, but it was ruled out (for a foul by centre-half Eric Young).”

Alan Young produced a powerful header from a Muir cross that Steve Ogrizovic (later of Liverpool and Coventry City fame, of course) saved brilliantly.

Russell continued: “With Brighton battling to cancel out Nardiello’s 23rd-minute opportunist goal, striker Muir suffered. His delicate chip left the ‘keeper clutching thin air, but Shrewsbury skipper Ross McLaren headed out.

“Brighton levelled it with 15 minutes to go (through Eric Young). But, five minutes later, Nardiello pounced on Chick Bates’s chested pass to beat Joe Corrigan.”

Muir was on the scoresheet when Albion’s reserve side began the 1984-85 season with a 1-0 win over reserve team boss George Petchey’s old club, Millwall. It was a very experienced team featuring Corrigan in goal, full-backs Chris Ramsey and Graham Pearce – who had both played for the Seagulls in the FA Cup Final the year before – along with Steve Gatting and Neil Smillie. Giles Stille and Alan Young were also in the line-up.

Muir had to wait until 13 October for his next first team opportunity when he was a non-playing sub as Albion went down 2-1 at Oxford United. He then got on as a sub for Connor in a 0-0 home draw with Barnsley, but the game was so dire that Cattlin very publicly forfeited a week’s wages.

After three goalless games straddling October and November 1984, Cattlin paired Muir with Worthington away to Blackburn on 10 November but still the drought couldn’t be breached, and Albion went down 2-0. The next game, Cattlin tried Ferguson and Connor as his front pair – same outcome: a 1-0 defeat at Leeds.

Muir didn’t get another chance with the Albion but in the spring of 1985 was sent out on loan to Lou Macari’s Swindon Town, where he played in three matches (and his teammates included Ramsey, who’d been released by Cattlin, and Garry Nelson, who would later become a promotion winner with the Seagulls).   

Somewhat curiously, when commenting on Muir’s departure from the club that summer, Cattlin said in the matchday programme: “I am sure Ian will get goals at whatever level he plays.”

Sure enough, Prenton Park eventually became his spiritual home and, although Tranmere struggled to stay in the fourth tier initially, Muir’s goalscoring exploits were synonymous with four years in which Rovers were promoted twice and appeared at Wembley five times. Highlights saw Muir score in the FA’s centenary celebrations in 1988 and an acrobatic and precise volley in Tranmere’s Leyland DAF Trophy victory over Bristol Rovers in 1990.

Muir and strike partner Jim Steel

He particularly began to prosper after Worthington’s successor, Johnny King, brought in tall target man Jim Steel alongside him in 1987.

Steel, who later became a police officer on Merseyside, said King, a Bill Shankly devotee, would compare him and Muir to John Toshack and Kevin Keegan. “That’s the way football was at the time,” he told the Liverpool Echo. “You looked for a little mobile player to feed off a tall striker.

“Muiry was one of the best finishers in the game at the time. If I’m honest, the intelligence of the partnership was down to Muiry, who was very good at reacting to things off me,” he said.

“I wasn’t the most technically gifted of players compared to the likes of Johnny Morrissey and Jim Harvey. But things happened around me and Muiry was very good at picking up the crumbs.”

Muir was Tranmere’s leading scorer from 1986 to 1990 and, in the 1989-90 season, he scored 35 goals in 65 games.

Such is the esteem in which Muir is held in those parts that a mural depicting him and all-time-appearances record holder Ray Matthias adorns the side of a house close to Prenton Park. A lounge at the ground is also named after him.

Born in Coventry on 5 May 1963, Muir played for the City’s schools side and Bedworth Juniors and won four England Schoolboy caps (against Wales, Scotland and two v West Germany) featuring alongside the likes of Tommy Caton, Ian Dawes, Terry Gibson and Kevin Brock.

He joined QPR as an apprentice aged 17 in 1980 and was a Hoops player for four years in total during Terry Venables’ reign as manager. In October 1982, he went on a one-month loan to Burnley. The respected all-things-Burnley writer, Tony Scholes, takes up the story.

“When Burnley played on QPR’s plastic pitch at Loftus Road in 1982 we came home with more than we’d bargained for. Two Trevor Steven goals in front at half time, we’d suffered a 3-2 defeat in the end although we managed to acquire a striker.”

Scholes pointed out how Muir had progressed into the first team squad at Loftus Road, but after a goalscoring start had fallen out of favour.

“He made a dramatic start to his first team career, scoring twice on his debut in a 5-0 thrashing of Cambridge United in April 1981,” said Scholes. “He kept his place for the one remaining game of the 1980-81 season but by the time he arrived at Turf Moor, well over a year later, he was still looking for his third game.”

It eventually came with Burnley, when he went on as a substitute in a 2-1 defeat at Charlton, replacing skipper Martin Dobson. He then started and scored Burnley’s goal in a 3-1 defeat at Leeds.

“He impressed, but the home fans never saw him and. at the end of the month, he was dispatched back to West London, his Burnley career over,” said Scholes.

Ian Muir alongside Terry Fenwick when Terry Venables managed QPR

Unable to get back into Terry Venables’ side at Loftus Road, Muir joined Birmingham and subsequently Brighton.

Finally given a platform to shine, the striker scored the majority of his 180 Tranmere goals between 1985 and 1991 and spearheaded the side that vaulted two divisions in three seasons between 1988 and 1991, before eventually being edged out by the arrival of John Aldridge.

The Liverpool Echo remembered: “It was inevitable his subtle skills and clinical finishing would make him a target for a larger club. Muir knew of Leeds’s interest as Tranmere campaigned to secure a place in the Third Division playoffs in 1990-91.

Muir told the newspaper: “Howard Wilkinson was sending scouts to watch me and coming along himself. When I went along to the ticket office before games, the Leeds scout was sometimes at the kiosk and I’d chat to him. He told me what was happening.

“Mark Proctor, who joined us from Middlesbrough the following season and worked under Wilkinson, knew about the deal and told me.”

Muir was arguably in his prime at the age of 27, but he suffered what would be a fateful knee ligament injury in a game against Chester City on 23 March 1991.

When Tranmere visited Leeds in a League Cup tie early in the following season, Muir hobbled into Elland Road on crutches. Muir recalled: “Before the game Gordon Strachan asked our midfielder, Neil McNab, where I was. Neil pointed to me standing there on crutches.

“Then Strachan said: ‘Ian is the unluckiest man in the world because we were going to sign him’. Leeds went on to win the league that season and I could have been with them, playing at the highest level playing in Europe the following season.

“I was gutted. I was so close and the injury changed everything. But that’s football. You get your ups and downs.

“I could never complain about the fantastic career I had at Tranmere and I wouldn’t swap my memories of the years at Prenton Park for anything.”

He wasn’t granted a testimonial after a decade with Rovers, but in 2020 there were moves afoot amongst their supporters to help him publish his autobiography.

Adulation has not waned and a young writer who didn’t even get to see him play wrote warmly about the striker’s achievements in this tribute.

In 1995, Muir returned to Birmingham City for a £125,000 fee but he played only twice before he suffered a groin injury. In an effort to get fit, he spent a month on loan at Darlington, and scored a goal, but his league career was over.

He went to play in Hong Kong, scoring a hat-trick on his debut for Sing Tao, and later played for Happy Valley. In June 2011, he recalled in an interview with the Liverpool Post: “The warm climate was a big help. Then the medical people found the cause of the groin problem was my spine. The pelvis wasn’t lined up properly. It could get out of joint just by lying in bed.

“One of the lads on the medical side was able to click me back into place. I have to say I have not had many problems with it since.”

Muir returned to the UK, and his native West Midlands and joined Nuneaton Borough.

“We won the league by 20 points and got into the Conference,” Muir told the Post. “We were top of the league after three months of the following season then it all went pear-shaped.”

The newspaper reported that Muir stepped down a level to Stratford Town, where his football days finished.

He did some voluntary coaching in schools and took a job in a factory for a year, and subsequently joined a friend in a business fitting out pubs and shops.

• Pictures from various online sources.

Willie Irvine restored Irish international career at Brighton

willie + chris

NORTHERN Ireland international Willie Irvine has encountered the highs and lows in life and I would urge anyone who hasn’t yet read his autobiography, Together Again (written by Dave Thomas) to add it to their book collection.

The Albion provided a platform for a brief resurgence in Willie’s career in the early 1970s but in the mid Sixties he was a big star scoring goals for fun as Burnley strutted their stuff amongst English football’s elite.

He scored 97 goals in 144 games (plus four as a sub) for the Lancashire side between 1962 and 1968 and in the 1965-66 season notched 29 league goals (37 including cup games) in what was the equivalent of today’s Premiership.

On the excellent Clarets Mad website, Tony Scholes wrote: “In my time watching the Clarets, none have been quite able to match the goalscoring exploits of Willie Irvine who, for two and a half years, was as good as anyone in English football when it came to putting the ball in the net.”

Sadly his highly-promising career at Burnley was never the same after he suffered a broken leg in a tackle with Johnny Morrissey in a FA Cup third round match at Everton in 1967.

A year later, the Turf Moor club turfed him out, transferring him to nearby Preston North End. By 1971, he was surplus to requirements there, and Pat Saward brought him to Third Division Albion on loan.

His first game, on the evening of 10 March 1971 at home to Fulham, couldn’t have gone much better because he marked his debut by scoring two in a 3-2 win.

He also scored in 1-0 wins over Shrewsbury and Bury, in a 3-0 win at Reading and in the last game of the season, a 1-1 draw with Plymouth Argyle. Not surprisingly, those goals led to him signing on a permanent basis that summer and the following season saw him play a key role as Brighton secured promotion to the second tier as runners-up to champions Aston Villa.

Irvine described warmly how Saward attracted him to up sticks from the North West and move to Sussex. “Pat sold me the place with his charm and persuasive ways,” he said, describing the former male model as “extrovert, infectious and bubbly”.

He added: “Pat Saward was a gem of a manager and a pleasure to play for. He said what he thought, but never offensively; in a matter-of-fact, plain-speaking kind of way, rather than aggressively.”

Irvine continued: “Saward had the knack of making people feel important. He instilled pride and a sense of identity…..Pat loved attacking, entertaining football and worked tirelessly for the club. I would have run through that proverbial brick wall for him.”

As Brighton neared promotion, Irvine said: “Saward, with a joke or a smile, an arm around the shoulder or a bit of geeing up, knew just how to keep a dressing room happy or dispel any tension or nerves.”

Fans of a certain vintage will recall a memorable goalscoring season for Irvine was capped off (literally!) by a most magical strike against Aston Villa in front of the Match of the Day cameras.

Willie’s goal was judged by the legendary manager Jock Stein as the third best goal of the season shown on Match of the Day and Brighton went on to win promotion. It was undoubtedly the best of the 17 he scored in 40 matches that season.

It was the first time I had experienced the excitement of going up, but there was one further thrill in store for me before the season came to a complete close.

In those days, there was an end-of-season tournament played between the “home” nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). I had already been to a couple of England internationals at Wembley but the England international on May 23 1972 was extra special because lining up for Northern Ireland was Albion’s very own Irvine.

Now, I had not been a football supporter for very long, but even I knew that it was virtually unheard of for Third Division teams to have current international players playing for them.

Born at Eden in County Antrim on 18 June 1943, Irvine was the youngest of 18 children, and was brought up with seven siblings in the seaside town of Carrickfergus by his mother, Agnes, after his father Alec died during a wartime blitz in Belfast.

He had played five times for Northern Ireland’s under 23 side before stepping up to the full international team and winning 21 caps at the height of his career. But I never dreamt – and, on reading the autobiography many years later, neither had he – that he would re-appear for his country after dropping down to the third tier of English football.

My allegiances were split that day and I have to say it didn’t really upset me that Northern Ireland ended up 1-0 winners thanks to player-manager Terry Neill’s solitary goal – laid on by Irvine!

Here is how The Official FA Year Book (1972-73) described the goal: “From Hegan’s corner, Irvine beat Shilton to the ball and headed it down to Neill, the Irish player-manager, playing in his 50th international, to shoot into an empty net from two yards range.”

The game saw England give international debuts to Colin Todd and Tony Currie, and Colin Bell was England captain in the absence of Bobby Moore. Two players who would later join the Albion – Martin Chivers, as a substitute for Malcolm Macdonald, and Sammy Nelson, the Arsenal left-back – were also on show.

“I was delighted to have won my place back in my national team and I thought I did reasonably well,” Irvine told the Albion matchday programme. “When I reported back for international duty Derek Dougan welcomed me like a long lost uncle. He is a little older than I am. But I feel that at 29 I still have something to offer to the Irish side.

“It’s a wonderful experience playing for one’s country. I always get a great thrill when I hear I have been selected. My last three appearances, I believe, were solely due to that much publicised and televised goal against Aston Villa.”

Irvine also said he hoped to earn more caps, especially as he opened the new season with four goals in three games. But he wasn’t selected again, and his days as an Albion player came to an end before Christmas that year.

It’s no surprise that Irvine played alongside George Best in some matches for their country and in a 2010 interview with Suzanne Geldard in the Lancashire Telegraph, he recalled how they became roommates in 1964.

“I was 18, George was only 16, so because we were the babies in the team they put us together,” said Irvine. “He was the kindest, nicest lad you could ever meet in your life.

“People adored him. I’ve even seen people cutting pieces of his hair off for keepsakes, but he would just shrug his shoulders.

“George Best was without doubt an amazing footballer. You had to get on his wavelength, but that was difficult because he was way above everyone else. He picked me out two or three times and helped me score.”

Life has been rather unkind to Irvine since his glory days but, as the title of the book implies, he has got it back together after reaching a very low ebb.

Together Again reveals how it all turned sour for him at the Albion when his relationship with Saward deteriorated badly. Despite scoring five in 13 league and cup appearances in the opening months of the new season, in December 1973, against his wishes, he was transferred to Halifax Town in part exchange for Lammie Robertson.

On reading that he had no memorabilia of his time at the Goldstone, 35 years after he left the Albion, I sent him my copy of the Albion programme for that famous win over Villa and he kindly returned an autographed photo showing him in action with Chris Nicholl, which I had sent with the programme.

Irvine died aged 82 in July 2025.