ONCE A PROMISING Newcastle United youth team footballer, Ken Craggs didn’t make it as a player but went on to serve Albion as a ‘backroom boy’.
Indeed, he had three separate spells with the club, the first being the most prominent. Having joined the Albion in 1978, Craggs was at Alan Mullery’s side as assistant manager when Brighton first climbed to the top of English football.
He later worked as a scout for Jimmy Melia, who himself had been a scout for the Albion under Mullery.
And Brian Horton, the captain who led the Seagulls all the way from the Third Division to the First, appointed Craggs as a scout when he managed the Albion between 1998 and 1999.
Craggs had also worked for Horton when he was the manager at Manchester City, Huddersfield Town and Hull City.
Horton viewed Craggs as a mentor and kept in touch with him long after their footballing days were over.
When Craggs died aged 85 in July 2021, Horton told Brian Owen of The Argus: “Ken knew an awful lot of people in the game. We got on great. He was just fun to be around.”
Referring to how Mullery and Craggs worked together, he said: “Mullers was a hard task master, which I enjoyed. I like people who demand more. Ken was his back stop.
“He would be the buffer between manager and players. They would work in tandem and they were good for each other.”
It was chairman Mike Bamber’s instruction for Mullery to sack Craggs, Melia and coach George Aitken as a cost-cutting measure that prompted the ebullient ex-Spurs and Fulham captain to quit the club in 1981.
“He even wanted to get rid of the kit-man Glen Wilson, who had been at Brighton for years,” Mullery wrote in his autobiography. “The club meant the world to him. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d fired these people.”
Mullery swapped managerial chairs with Mike Bailey and moved to newly-promoted Charlton Athletic and Craggs went with him. When Mullery left the club after a year, his assistant took over the Second Division side.
Craggs was in the job for six months and the club history books record how he was the manager when the Addicks pulled off something of a coup in October 1982 by signing former European footballer of the year and Danish international Allan Simonsen from Barcelona for £324,000 after he had been forced out by the signing of Diego Maradona. It had been thought Simonsen would either go to Tottenham or Real Madrid but he revealed publicly that he wanted to play for a club at a less stressful level.
With only five wins in 16 league matches, Craggs’ last game in charge at The Valley saw Rotherham United wallop the home side 5-1 with ex-Brighton winger Tony Towner proving a handful on the right and scoring one of the goals and Ronnie Moore hitting a hat-trick.
Craggs was born on 10 April 1936 in Quarrington Hill, a small mining community in County Durham, close to Cassop Colliery, where his father worked and he expected to follow him.
But he was noticed playing for the local village school football team and he was selected to play inside forward for the Durham Schools representative side. That got him noticed by Newcastle United.
He joined them as an amateur and played in the club’s youth team, although it wasn’t uncommon for him to play two games in a day, turning out for United and then his local youth club side as well.
Young Craggs was invited to have a trial for the England Youth team and it was during one of these sessions that he was spotted by Fulham scout Bill Rochford.
At the tender age of 17, he seized the chance to leave home and head for the bright lights of London and a career as a professional at Fulham.
Craggs shared digs with Bobby Robson, another miner’s son from Durham who had joined Fulham.
“Ken never won a first team place, but he was a powerful centre-half for the reserves,” Mullery remembered.
Craggs spent seven years on the playing staff without breaking into the first team.
He dropped into non-league football, initially with King’s Lynn in the summer of 1960 and later played for Folkestone, Tunbridge Wells United, Dartford and Hounslow, where he was the player-coach.
He then returned to Fulham in September 1968 as a part-time youth team coach and scout under Robson. He found and developed the likes of Brian Greenaway, Les Strong, Tony Mahoney, Terry Bullivant and goalkeeper Perry Digweed, who later moved to Brighton for £150,000.
He eventually joined Fulham in a full-time coaching capacity and Robert Wilson, who went on to make 256 appearances for the Cottagers, recalled: “I joined Fulham as a 16-year-old in 1977, when Ken Craggs was in charge of the youth side and from there the likes of Tony Gale, Dean Coney, Paul Parker, Jeff Hopkins, Jim Stannard, Peter Scott, John Marshall and many others all progressed to the league team.”
Team line-ups of that time show Craggs pictured alongside Barry Lloyd and Teddy Maybank, who later followed Craggs to the Goldstone for a fee of £238,000.
Another striker who caught Craggs’ eye when he was a coach at Fulham was Malcolm Poskett. After Craggs moved to Brighton, the player’s goalscoring form at Hartlepool eventually led to a transfer to the Goldstone, the £60,000 fee representing a tidy profit for the struggling north east minnows.
Others who benefited from his acumen included Gary Stevens, who was released by the aforementioned Robson when he was manager at Ipswich Town, but picked up by Brighton.
Stevens said: “Ken played a huge part in many of our careers. He was the main reason I came to Brighton as a 16-year-old and I will always be grateful for his contribution.”
Giles Stille was a part-time player at Kingstonian when Craggs spotted him and after turning pro he made his top flight debut against Manchester City in December 1979 when going on as a sub for Horton in Albion’s 4-1 win. Unfortunately, his time at Brighton was beset by injuries and illness and he was forced to retire prematurely when only 26.
The Albion was quite a different club when Craggs returned for a third spell in 1998, not least because the side was playing home games in exile at Gillingham. His role was to help Horton and his no.2 Jeff Wood to look for bargain signings.
For instance, Craggs and Wood unearthed Gary Hart, who signed from Stansted for £1,000 and a set of playing kit and he went on to become something of a club legend.
“Ken and Jeff knew more players from down south than me ,” said Horton. “He would have definitely gone to watch him on Jeff’s recommendation.
“We put him into a reserve game at Worthing and he only needed one game for me and that was it, we were doing the deal.”
IN MY OPINION, one of the best wingers ever to pull on the famous blue and white stripes was Clive Walker, an evergreen player who remarkably played more than 1,000 games for eight clubs.
Walker has also worked for Talksport and appears regularly with former Chelsea and Spurs player Jason Cundy on Chelsea TV and radio (as above).
In parallel lines 