Tag: Lilleshall

Season-opening hat-trick a dream come true for Freeman

THE NEW season opening game 26 years ago saw Darren Freeman score a hat-trick as the back-in-Brighton Seagulls hammered Mansfield Town 6-0.

For Freeman, who’d previously played under Micky Adams at Fulham and Brentford, it really couldn’t have been a better debut for his hometown club as the 1999-2000 season got under way at the Withdean Stadium.

Freeman hit the headlines again when he scored the first league goal of the millennium, crashing home a volley after only two minutes in a noon kick-off 4-2 Withdean win over Exeter City on 3 January 2000. It also earned him a magnum of champagne from league sponsor Nationwide.

Headline-maker

“It was a dream come true to play for my hometown club,” Freeman later admitted. After he’d scored that hat-trick at Withdean, he managed to pick out his dad’s face in the 5,582 crowd and fondly recalled his ‘That’s my boy!’ look of pride.

If the start of the season was spectacular, trouble was lurking round the corner with Freeman ending up suspended for seven matches – all in the first half of the season. He incurred a three-game ban after being dismissed for a stamping incident at Cheltenham and worse was to follow after he spat in Plymouth defender Jon Beswetherick’s face.

Beswetherick said: “He caught me in the face with his fist just inside the 18-yard box. I ran after him to have a word in his ear and on the way back up the pitch he just spat in my face.

“He had to go. Footballers all say that is the lowest thing you can do. It was probably in the heat of the moment, but I am sure he regrets it now.”

Not only did he receive a four-game suspension, manager Adams fined him a week’s wages and said: “He let himself down, the club down, his family down and everybody connected with Brighton. He knows that and he is full of remorse. He has been left in no doubt at all that it’s not good enough.”

Freeman was top scorer with 13 goals by the end of the season but a new goalscoring hero had begun to emerge in the shape of raw teenager Bobby Zamora!

That’s not to say Freeman’s days in the stripes were over, but his second season was dogged by injuries. Two hernia operations ruled him out from the start of September to the middle of December, then, after he had worked his way back into the starting line-up, in February 2001 he put in a transfer request after being left out of the side for a home game against Blackpool, sparking an angry reaction from Adams.

“I picked a side against Blackpool which I thought would win us the game and he wasn’t in it,” he said. “He is entitled not to agree, but there is a wrong way and a right way of knocking on my door and he chose the wrong way.

“I’ve never had one player ask to leave a club where I have been a manager. This is somebody as well who I had the utmost time and respect for, having taken him to two of my previous clubs.”

Freeman had a change of heart the following month after Adams restored him to the bench.

“I want to be a part of things,” he explained. “Obviously I’ve had a bad season with injuries and a lot of it was frustration.

“When me and Micky had a chat and I asked for a transfer we both said a few things. We didn’t have a massive fall-out. We are both adults and we have got to get on with it.”

The Argus revealed Freeman’s mentor, and former Albion forward and Northern Ireland international Gerry Armstrong played a part in the decision.

“I speak to Gerry a couple of times a week,” Freeman said. “A man of his experience can only give you good advice. I’ve had a number of conversations with him. It was my own choice to come off the transfer list, but Gerry has talked some great sense into me.”

Albion finished the season as division champions but by then Freeman was having a third hernia operation having made just six starts plus 12 appearances off the bench.

“I admit that as much as I was pleased for the lads, I felt gutted I wasn’t really part of it,” Freeman admitted. He went to Lilleshall and worked through the summer in an effort to regain fitness and earn a new contract.

But it was an uphill battle and although he struggled through pre-season and played in Albion’s opening friendly at his old club Worthing, he told the Argus: “I could hardly walk after the game. I was up all night in absolute agony.”

He was sent to see Harley Street specialist Jerry Gilmore who delivered devastating news: “There is no way you can carry on playing professional football. You are in a right mess, but hopefully we can do something to give you a better quality of life.”

A fourth hernia operation followed but not being able to resume his career hit him hard.

“The club have played an absolutely massive part in helping me through and all of my family and friends, because it has really been a rough time,” he told the Argus.

“It has been great working with him (Adams). He gave me the opportunity to experience promotions, the freedom to express my way of playing and the opportunity to fulfil my ambition.”

In a matchday programme interview several years later, Freeman told Spencer Vignes: “On reflection, I was lucky. Some people play their entire career and don’t win anything, and yet every club I played for got promoted.”

Born in Brighton on 22 August 1973, Freeman went to Varndean School, started playing football with Hollingbury Hawks and then joined Whitehawk as a teenager before playing at Isthmian League level for Worthing and Horsham.

“I came through the non-league system and was given the opportunity to fulfil my dreams,” he told Vignes. “I wasn’t the greatest player but what I can say is I gave everything for every club I played for.”

Freeman turned professional with Gillingham under Tony Pulis in August 1994, where he played alongside future Fulham and Albion teammates Richard Carpenter and Paul Watson. He recalled how it was while he was playing for the Gills against Fulham that Adams’ no.2 Alan Cork got in his ear and told him not to sign a new contract at Priestfield because Fulham wanted to sign him.

Sure enough, as Freeman admitted to Vignes: “Once I knew Fulham were interested, then I was interested. They were, and are, a massive club and it was nice that a team like that wanted me.”

Impressed by Adams’ man-management skills, he said: “He made me feel wanted and that I was a big part of his plans for the 1996-97 season. He sold Fulham to me, saying we were going to do well. And we did, because we won promotion.”

In full flow for Fulham

Fulham fans website HammyEnd.com recalled: “The £15,000 Micky Adams paid to Gillingham for the services of shaggy-haired Darren Freeman proved to be a bargain.

“The popular forward quickly became a firm favourite with the Fulham faithful on account of his ability to terrorise defenders, either out wide or through the middle as a conventional centre forward.

“Injuries robbed Freeman of the chance to make good on his undoubted talented, but he still scored nine goals as the Whites went up from Division Three in 1997.”

In an interview with fulhamfc.com, Freeman said: “Micky brought in a great bunch of lads and the togetherness was fantastic. The team morale was really, really good.

“He was quite a young manager, I think he’d actually played that season, but he’d got a great bunch of lads together and we really kicked on.

“When you consider that it was Micky’s first full season as a manager, it’s incredible what he achieved. He went about his business and did his job fantastically.”

He added: “Micky had a lot of faith in me and I feel very privileged to have achieved my goals and my ambitions from when I was a kid, and to be a part of Fulham was the icing on the cake.

“We were paid to do a job but, when I look back at it, it was a dream come true and I don’t think you realise until later on in life how important it was. Fulham, to me, the fans and the whole club, it was just a special time for me.”

As with many others at Craven Cottage, Freeman’s fortunes changed when Kevin Keegan and Ray Wilkins were installed as managers by Mohamed Al Fayed and he joined something of an exodus across London to Brentford.

Coincidentally, Freeman scored on his league debut for Brentford in a 3-0 win over Mansfield (the Stags must have loved him!) and his teammates in that 1998-99 season included Watson, Lloyd Uwusu, Warren Aspinall and Charlie Oatway. Owusu ended the season as top scorer with 25 goals (Freeman scored nine) as the Bees won the Third Division championship.

After his playing days were brought to a premature end, Freeman spent five years as manager of his first club, Whitehawk, leading them to three promotions (from the Sussex County League to the Conference South) and in 2012 to winning the Sussex Senior Cup.

He briefly managed Peacehaven and Telscombe before occupying the manager’s chair at Lewes for nearly three years.

He subsequently became a football agent, initially spending 18 months with Sports Total, one of Europe’s leading football agencies, before joining forces with his former Brentford team at Dirk Hebel Sports Consulting (Hebel named one of his sons Darren after his teammate!).

Freeman told Vignes he relishes the opportunity to pass on his knowledge of the game to current players. “They say nothing compares to playing, but I find it very rewarding. It’s the next best thing to being out there, definitely.”

Spurs’ Junior acted the Dream after scoring for the Seagulls

JUNIOR MCDOUGALD played professional football for 23 years and managed to combine it with acting, featuring in Sky 1’s Dream Team series.

Brighton fans of a certain vintage will remember him as a nippy, diminutive forward who scored 22 goals in 88 matches (+ seven as sub) during a difficult period for the club.

By his own admission (in an interview with the Argus), he left too soon, and a move to Rotherham United didn’t work out.

Born in Big Spring, Texas, on 12 January 1975, McDougald grew up in the UK and his early potential saw him associated with Tottenham Hotspur from the age of nine.

He was subsequently chosen as part of a group of the country’s top 25 14-year-old footballing prospects to be nurtured at the FA’s National School at Lilleshall.

On his graduation from Lilleshall in 1991, he joined Spurs as a trainee. Alongside McDougald both at Lilleshall and Tottenham was Sol Campbell, the defender who went on to star for Spurs and Arsenal, as well as England. Campbell told tottenhamhotspur.com: “I’ve some fond memories of Junior. We used to play against each other when we were 13, then we were at Tottenham and Lilleshall when we were 14.

“He’s a smashing lad and I can’t speak highly enough of him. He’s a good bloke, a good man and a fabulous footballer.”

McDougald joined the full professional ranks at White Hart Lane in the summer of 1993, but when he didn’t make the breakthrough to their first team, he made the switch to Brighton.

He described his time at Spurs as “a dream come true” and, in an article on tottenhamhotspur.com, said: “I know it’s an old cliché but I’d always supported Spurs.

“I think it’s well documented now that I even wrote to Jim’ll Fix It to ask to go training with them!”

He added: “It was a great experience, a positive experience and it was always my dream to play for the club.”

Spurs fanzine My Eyes Have Seen The Glory (mehstg.com), recalled him as “a young striker who scored a large number of goals for the Tottenham junior sides, but progressed no further than the reserves at White Hart Lane. Blessed with good pace, but a little on the short and light side.”

Unfortunately, while his contemporary Campbell went on to superstardom, McDougald was released at the age of 19.

“It was very disappointing to leave,” he said. “But at the same time, I was ambitious and, when Liam Brady at Brighton called me, I saw it as a great opportunity. I wanted first team football.

“Any disappointment was hidden by excitement. It was a new start.”

I can remember seeing McDougald make his debut in the opening game of the 1994-95 season, away to Swansea City at their old Vetch Field ground; Albion resplendent in the turquoise and black striped shirts in the style of the kit once worn by boss Brady at Inter Milan.

McDougald’s subsequent one-in-four scoring ratio with the Seagulls was set against the backdrop of financial turmoil at the club and he was there when the club was relegated to the fourth tier.

“There was no stability off the field and that could transfer itself on to it,” he told the Argus. “I was very young and Liam Brady was a great help. I was pleased to have played with legends like Steve Foster, although he was coming to the end of his career.

“The supporters were fantastic and really good to me as a young player. Overall, I had two enjoyable years there and I’m delighted to see them doing so well now. They’ve always had the potential and the fans deserve the success.”

Towards the end of his second season with the club, he was loaned to Chesterfield, where he scored once in nine games, and he then chose to move to Rotherham United for £50,000 in August 1996.

“It is only when you leave somewhere sometimes that you realise how good a club it was,” he told the Argus. “I have fantastic memories of Brighton. The support was so good and they have such potential.

“I thought I was doing the best thing for my career when I left. I wasn’t to know I would go to Rotherham, score on my debut, get injured in the same game and not play for three months.”

He had a relatively successful six-month spell at Toulon in France but efforts to re-establish himself back in the UK with Cambridge, Millwall and Orient didn’t work out.

“With the gift of hindsight maybe I would have stayed at Brighton for another season or two and established myself,” McDougald said in the Argus interview.

It was only when he signed for Dagenham & Redbridge in 1999 that he got back in the headlines, in particular when, in January 2001, he scored in the FA Cup 3rd round as the non-league Essex side held Alan Curbishley’s then Premier League Charlton Athletic to a 1-1 draw.

The 4th round draw paired the winners of the tie with Spurs, so it looked like it would be a perfect match for the former Spurs youngster, but the Addicks edged the replay 1-0 in extra time to spoil his dream.

Nevertheless, his form for Dagenham saw him selected for the England semi-professional side at a Four Nations Trophy tournament in 2002, where he was up against his clubmate Tony Roberts, the former Spurs goalkeeper.

Alongside the serious business of earning a living from playing football, McDougald also appeared for the fictional Harchester United side in Sky’s Dream Team, together with former Albion players Peter Smith and Andy Ansah.

“It was through Andy who actually recruits the players,” he said. “Pete Smith told me it was fun and it is. We just do what footballers do and are filmed playing, in changing rooms and night clubs. It is a good little avenue.”

By the time Dagenham made it into the Football League, McDougald had moved on to St Albans and, in the 2003-04 season, he was part of a Canvey Island squad that also included former Brighton players Mickey Bennett, the aforementioned Peter Smith, and Jeff Minton.

He later played for Kettering Town, Histon, and Cambridgeshire side St. Ives.

McDougald, a Born-again Christian, has since become the co-founder and director of children’s charity Sports Connections Foundation which uses sport to help and inspire children.