PROLIFIC goalscorer Neil Martin was once considered to be one of the finest headers of a ball in football.
A Scottish international who was among an elite group to net 100 goals in both the Scottish and English leagues, Martin scored 46 of them in 99 top flight appearances for Sunderland.
It was 50 seasons ago that he arrived at Brighton towards the end of his career, almost at the same time as Peter Ward (right, above) was starting his. In fact, for a few weeks they shared a club-owned house overlooking the sea (until they each found their own homes) and Martin gave the youngster a lift into training.
Ironically, although Martin scored on his Albion debut and netted nine goals in 18 starts (plus five sub appearances), it was his departure from the club after only eight months that led to Ward’s introduction to first team football.
The previous season, Martin had scored the first goal of Brian Clough’s reign as Nottingham Forest manager, the only goal of the game in a FA Cup third round replay win against Spurs at White Hart Lane in January 1975.
The Scot had been at Forest for four years by then and, as if to prove there’s no sentiment in football, he was given a free transfer at the end of the season. That’s when Clough’s former managerial partner, Peter Taylor, picked him up for Brighton.
After a lacklustre first season in sole charge of the Albion (Clough had quit Brighton for his ill-fated 44 days at Leeds), Taylor brought in some experienced old heads to bolster a tilt at promotion with the signings of 34-year-old Martin, Phil Beal (30) and Joe Kinnear (28) from Spurs.
It was Albion’s 75th anniversary season and the popular blue and white striped shirts were reinstated as the first-choice kit having been dropped the previous season for all white with blue cuffs and collar.
Martin played up front with Fred Binney and the pair were on the scoresheet in the opening day 3-0 home win over Rotherham United (his former Coventry teammate Ernie Machin got the other).
Martin scored twice in his third match, a 3-3 draw at Sheffield Wednesday, but the impatient Taylor soon chose to give Binney a new partner in on-loan Barry Butlin.
Restored to the side after Butlin’s return to parent club Forest, Martin made 11 successive starts and scored six times. But his brace in a 4-2 home win over Hereford United on 6 December 1975 were his last goals for the club.
Taylor seized an opportunity to sign Aston Villa’s out-of-favour Sammy Morgan (who he’d previously tried to sign when he was assistant manager at Derby) and Martin swiftly found himself on the outside looking in.
He only made one more start, replacing the injured Morgan, in a 1-0 win over promotion rivals Millwall at the start of February 1976 and he was then transfer-listed following a disagreement with Taylor when subbed off in a reserve game a week later, and was even banned from the ground by the disciplinarian boss. At the time, he had only just bought a house in Seaford.
The first team squad vacancy meant Ward was moved up the pecking order of strikers and he made his debut in a Goldstone friendly against Ipswich Town (Albion won 3-1, Ian Mellor got two, Andy Rollings the other). The following month, Martin moved to Crystal Palace where he scored just the once in nine appearances.
By then 35, he took a similar journey to lots of other English and Scottish players in their 30s edging towards the end of their careers by going to play in the North American Soccer League (NASL).
He played in the same San Antonio Thunder team as former England captain Bobby Moore, ex-Arsenal and Wolves left-back Bob McNab and former Sunderland teammate Harry Hood, and scored five goals in 19 games for the Texas-based club.
It wasn’t Martin’s first involvement in the NASL though because, in the summer of 1967, he was part of a Sunderland contingent who played as Vancouver Royal Canadians. The 16-man squad also included goalkeeper Derek Forster, who also later played for Brighton.
Born in Tranent, just east of Edinburgh, on 20 October 1940, Martin started out with Tranent Juniors and looked back on his career in a 2020 interview with Ninian Cassidy for Alive & Kicking, published on Facebook.
After leaving school, he began working at the local coal pit but he got his break into professional football with Alloa Athletic.
He described having to make a circuitous near 50-mile bus journey from his home in Tranent to make his debut for Alloa. Hungry after the long journey, he downed pie, beans and chips for lunch before going out and scoring in his first game for the Wasps.
He was still self-training at the local dog track twice a week before meeting up with his teammates to play on a Saturday but after scoring 25 league and cup goals in his first season (1960-61), he earned a move to Queen of the South.
Still remembered fondly as a legend of the club, former teammate Iain McChesney said of Martin: “Neil was a big gem. It didn’t matter what you did to him, he never got involved. He got kicked stupid but still, he picked himself up and got on with the game and scored goals. I remember him saying to me, ‘That’s the best thing you can do, that’s the best reply of the lot, stick the ball in the net and they can’t do anything about it’.”
When Queen of the South were promoted back to the top division as Division 2 runners up in 1961-62, Martin scored 30 league and cup goals. Fan chat group contributor Ronnie Rae said: “Brilliant player. He had a fantastic partnership with Ernie Hannigan playing for Queen of the South, his heading ability was outstanding. We had a great team back in the day.”
In 1963, he got the chance to move for a £7,500 transfer fee to Hibernian, the club he’d supported as a boy, and the following year the legendary Jock Stein, who he later said had the biggest influence on his career, took over as manager. Martin netted 29 league and cup goals for Hibs in the 1964-65 season.
Supporter Andy Szafer remembered Hibs beating Falkirk 6-0 in 1964 when Martin scored four: “I’ve still to come across anyone who could head a ball like Neil,” he said. “No one comes close…maybe Ronaldo, but Neil tops that list for me.”
During that time, he played and scored for a Scottish League representative side against an English League XI in a 2-2 draw at Roker Park. The following year, in October 1965, that became his home ground when he switched from Edinburgh for a £45,000 fee.
By then, he’d collected two of his three full Scottish international caps. He partnered the legendary Denis Law up front in World Cup qualifiers against Poland (1-1) and Finland (2-1) within four days of each other in May 1965.
In the month after his move to Sunderland, he played alongside Tottenham’s Alan Gilzean in a 1-0 win over Italy in front of 100,000 at Hampden Park.
The blog Roker Report noted that he joined Sunderland in the same season as fellow Scot Jim Baxter who grabbed most of the headlines (not always for the right reasons). “Martin was a coup that we never quite realised,” it said. “Martin was a battler and shied away from no one at a time when every team had cloggers, enforcers and hard men.
“He scored all sorts of goals, though was a danger in the air and in the box from corners and free kicks.”
One particular man-of-the-match performance by Martin came when he scored twice in a 3-2 defeat to high-flying Manchester United at Roker Park on 11 December 1965. This was a Man Utd side with George Best – who scored twice – Denis Law and Bobby Charlton in their line-up.
Roker Report recalled: “On five minutes, Neil Martin beat (Nobby) Stiles to the ball and holding off the challenge of another defender he blasted a left-foot shot from the edge of the box that beat (Pat) Dunne all-ends-up. What a cracking goal this was and Roker Park was bouncing in acknowledgement.
“On seventy-five minutes came probably the best goal of the game. George Herd was strong in the tackle and came through two challenges before sending a glorious cross to Neil Martin standing approximately ten yards out. He towered above his marker and powered a header past a stranded Pat Dunne to lift the net and light a touch paper for the last fifteen minutes.”
After Martin’s 26 goals in 1966-67, no other Sunderland player managed 20-plus in a season for 11 years!
A personal highlight for the player at the end of that season was playing in a combined Newcastle-Sunderland XI alongside Jackie Milburn in the Newcastle legend’s testimonial game against an international XI that included Hungarian and Real Madrid ‘master’ Ferenc Puskas and the World Cup winning brothers (Milburn’s first cousins once removed) Jack and Bobby Charlton.
The blog author noted that when he was sold in 1968 for twice the amount Sunderland paid for him, it might have been regarded as good business but it seemed “short-sighted and an opportunity missed. Neil Martin would always make my top 10 Sunderland strikers.”
Fan chat group contributor Ronnie Scott added: “Great player for Sunderland; had tremendous heading ability. Always remember a bullet header he scored against the Mags (Newcastle) at St James’ in a 3-0 win…absolute quality…and yes l think he was underrated!”
That move in February 1968 was to Coventry City and, in his chat with Ninian Cassidy, he admitted he was “tapped up” by the Sky Blues, taking a ‘phone call about his willingness to make a move while he was in a hotel about to play an away game at Sheffield Wednesday.
Noel Cantwell, who had taken over from Jimmy Hill as manager five months earlier, added Martin to a line-up that already included his former Queen of the South teammate Ernie Hannigan on the wing. Indeed, occasionally he was able to field an all-Scottish front five (the others were Gerry Baker, Willie Carr and Ian Gibson).
Martin certainly answered Cantwell’s need for more goals, netting a hat-trick in only his second game, a 3–0 home victory over Sheffield Wednesday. All three came in 36 first half minutes (a third-minute penalty, 32 and 39). He could have had four but missed a second penalty Coventry were awarded.
When City played in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1970, Martin scored the winner in a famous 2-1 victory over Bayern Munich at Highfield Road (unfortunately they’d lost the away leg 6-1).
Over his three years with the Sky Blues, he captained the side for a while and scored 45 goals in 122 first team games.
It was something of a surprise when he moved to Nottingham Forest, under Matt Gillies, in the spring of 1971 but he helped the struggling side stay up. Martin was 30 by then and when Forest were relegated at the end of the following season, it marked the end of his days playing top flight football.
In the 1974-75 season, Martin’s two goals in a 3-2 win over Sheffield Wednesday meant he passed the landmark of scoring 100 goals in English league football as well as in Scotland and he finished the season with 12 goals. He left the City Ground having scored 28 goals in 119 matches.
Martin’s final playing days were in the Republic of Ireland, with Dublin-based St Patrick’s Athletic, interestingly being given a lifeline by another former international striker who’d played for Brighton, Barry Bridges.
In total, Martin played 248 club games in Scotland netting 161 times, he scored 135 goals in 401 appearances for English clubs and six times in 30 appearances abroad.
After hanging up his boots, Martin spent time as a youth coach at Walsall when Dave Mackay was the manager and the pair later spent 10 years together in Kuwait and Dubai (they won six league titles with Al-Arabi in Kuwait). He also had a difficult spell as joint manager of Walsall with Alan Buckley in the 1981-82 season.
After leaving football, he ran two pubs in Birmingham before retiring back to Tranent.
In 2012 he was in the news when he nearly lost the sight in his left eye through retinal vein occlusion (RVO) – a blockage in a vein which can cause blindness. A drug treatment – new at the time – saved the sight. Martin had initially thought the blurred vision he was suffering was cataracts.
In parallel lines 