Tag: Steve Coppell

Not many of them, but Sidwell’s goals were memorable

STEVE SIDWELL was not a recognised goalscorer but when he did find the back of the net it was often memorable and headline-making.

Such was his most talked about goal for Brighton – hit from the centre circle away to Bristol City in a Championship match on Bonfire Night in 2016. 

Eight years earlier, he stunned Goodison Park by rifling home from 25 yards after only 31 seconds of Aston Villa’s 7 December Premier League visit to Everton.

I was at Ashton Gate to see Sidwell’s amazing 50-yard lob over stranded Robins’ ‘keeper Richard O’Donnell (Jamie Murphy added a second in promotion-chasing Albion’s 2-0 win).

Manager Chris Hughton said: “It was a wonderful strike by Sidwell on his left foot when I would have expected it more from his right. It caught everyone by surprise, including their goalkeeper.”

I was also at the City Ground, Nottingham, seven months earlier when Sidwell went on as an 85th-minute sub and scored the winner (below) in the 91st minute to earn a 2-1 victory over Forest.

With his right foot this time, he drilled the ball in from 12 yards giving Albion a fourth win in five games which extended their unbeaten run to nine games.

“We felt that the game was becoming open and we felt we could bring players off the bench who could influence the game,” said Hughton. “One thing about Steve Sidwell is that he can break forward from midfield. I did not bring him on for that, but I am very glad he did it.”

Back to that game for Villa in 2008; moments after kick-off, Everton’s Mikel Arteta lost possession to Ashley Young. He fed James Milner who in turn found Sidwell. Finding himself with a sight at goal from 25 yards, he buried a stunning shot past Tim Howard. In an extraordinary end to the game, Young, who had scored Villa’s second, got a 94th-minute winner for the visitors after Joleon Lescott thought he’d salvaged a point in the 93rd minute, netting his second of the game. 

That opener at Goodison was a rare highlight for Sidwell in what overall was an unhappy two and a half years at Villa.

Sidwell had first caught Villa boss Martin O’Neill’s eye when he scored twice for Reading in a 2-0 home victory over Villa in February 2007.

O’Neill tried to land him before he opted to join Chelsea (the team he’d supported as a boy) and, by all accounts, predecessor David O’Leary had also tried to sign him.

So, it appeared to be a case of third time lucky when in July 2008 O’Neill took him for a reported £5million fee from being a Chelsea benchwarmer and gave him a three-year contract.

Sidwell during his first Albion spell

After success at Reading, where he had been reunited with Steve Coppell (who’d had him on loan at Brentford and Brighton as a young Arsenal player, as covered in my 2017 blog post), Sidwell had a disappointing season at Stamford Bridge, where he made just seven Premier League starts. 

Managerial change didn’t help his cause: he’d been signed by Jose Mourinho who left early in the season to be replaced by Avram Grant.

Sidwell later admitted: “I left for Aston Villa in search of regular football. In hindsight, I wished I’d stayed another six months because Luiz Felipe Scolari came in and you never know what might have happened then.”

At the time, Sidwell told Villa’s official website: “For me personally, it’s about getting back and playing. I have had a year of not playing as much as I would have liked so to get out on the pitch is the first aim.” 

Although he played in both legs of the InterToto Cup tie against Odense in July, knee and calf problems delayed his league debut until the end of October which he marked with a goal after going on as a late substitute in a 4-0 win at Wigan Athletic. That and the strike at Everton were two of four league and cup goals he scored for Villa that season when his 25 appearances (20 starts + five as sub) would ultimately amount to nearly half the total he made for the club: 37 starts + 27 as sub.

He didn’t add any more goals in the claret and blue and in the remainder of his time at Villa Park he was never really a regular, eg in 2009-10 only 14 of 33 appearances were as a starter and in 2010-11, three of six under Gérard Houllier.

Although he and O’Neill clashed on occasion, the Northern Irishman did say: “I’ve been very happy with him. It’s just that other players playing in positions all over the place have been playing brilliantly. Some people are playing out of their skin at this minute in our team. But I’ve been very pleased since he’s arrived at the football club.”

Sidwell’s former Reading teammate Nicky Shorey, who’d joined him at Villa Park, had high expectations of him ahead of his second season, telling the Birmingham Mail: “I don’t think Villa have seen the best of him yet. It’s been a strange season for Siddy. He’s been out injured for long periods and he’s picked up niggles here and there. I don’t think he’s ever had that before.

“For as long as I’ve known him, he’s never really been injured, so I think that’s something new for Siddy to try and learn from.”

Shorey said Sidwell had remained positive and upbeat around Bodymoor Heath and Villa Park and reckoned: “When he comes back for pre-season and hopefully has a good pre-season you’ll see the best of him and I think everyone will be impressed with how well he can do.

“When you know Siddy, that’s all he ever does – trains and plays with a smile. You haven’t got any worries with him on that count. He just keeps going and he’ll be fine. He’s just an all-round good midfielder and I’m sure he’ll show that before too long.”

Sidwell found himself competing for a midfield place with the likes of Milner (before his move to Manchester City), Gareth Barry, Stiliyan Petrov, Nigel Reo-Coker and Craig Gardner. He revealed later that he’d fallen out with O’Neill and at one point he went on the transfer list.

After O’Neill quit in protest at the sale of Milner to City, and ahead of Houllier’s appointment, Sidwell hoped to be given a new lease of life in claret and blue.

He overcame an Achilles’ problem and declared himself raring to go after playing 90 minutes in a 4-0 reserve team win over Blackpool at Bodymoor Heath.

“I feel I’ve shown glimpses,” he told the Birmingham Mail. “In the previous years, there have been good games and some poor games.

“If I get a run of games, I am sure I can perform to the best of my ability. Hopefully, now, whoever takes charge I will just get an opportunity and I will take it.

“It is going to be tough but it is down to individuals to perform in training, perform in reserve games and show the manager you are worthy of a start.

“Once you get that, you have to take it with both hands. Fitness wise, I’ve been training really well and looking sharp. It is just games that I need. I wasn’t unfit before the injury took place.”

When the Mail spoke to him ahead of a second city derby at the end of October 2010, Sidwell sought to exploit a two-month injury absence for Petrov saying: “It is all about opinions.

You don’t play under certain managers. Under certain managers you do get a chance.

“Once you get a chance it is about taking it and staying in the team.”

Sidwell started the game but was replaced by young Barry Bannan in the 58th minute of the dour goalless draw – and it turned out to be his last game for Villa (he was an unused sub away to Fulham the following week).

It was in a 2018 interview with Donald McRae of The Guardian that Sidwell revealed the extent of his disillusionment at Villa, telling the journalist: “When I was at Aston Villa I was on the most money in my career. But that was when I was at my unhappiest. I was living in Birmingham away from my wife and family.

“My middle son caught meningitis and was in hospital. The football never really took off and me and Martin O’Neill clashed. So, it was a combination of things.”

Released on a free transfer in January 2011, after being deemed surplus to requirements by Houllier, Sidwell joined Fulham – which is a story for another blog post.

After three years with the Cottagers, he followed ex-Fulham boss Mark Hughes to Stoke City and it was from there that he made his initial return to Brighton, on a half-season loan. 

Sidwell in action for Albion against Villa

In clinching his signing in January 2016, Hughton told the Albion website: “Steve is an experienced player who has played virtually his entire career in the Premier League. He knows this club, as well as a few of the squad and will supplement our existing midfield options.

“Beram Kayal, Dale Stephens, Andrew Crofts and others have been excellent in midfield for us this season, but we also need to make sure we have good options in every position of the team, and options which will be enough for us through until the end of the season.

“Steve brings that, and in addition, he is another experienced head; he is a player who’s proven at the very top level of English football. Brighton fans will know Steve is also a great athlete and top professional.”

Although he only made six starts, Sidwell went on as a sub 13 times in that half-season. When Albion had to endure the end-of-season play-offs after missing out on automatic promotion by only drawing (1-1) the last game of the season at Middlesbrough, it was Sidwell who stepped in to fill the boots of Stephens, who was suspended after his controversial sending off by Mike Dean at the Riverside Stadium.

Unfortunately, Sidwell was one of four Albion players who had to go off injured in the 2-0 play-off first leg defeat at Sheffield Wednesday. He suffered ligament damage but was taped up and given medication to enable him to play in the home tie, although he later admitted: “I should never have played really.”

He reckoned the Amex atmosphere for that game was the best he’d ever been involved in. In spite of a valiant effort, it ended in a disappointing 1-1 draw although Sidwell said: “I ended up playing one of my better games in a Brighton shirt, which maybe cemented a contract for the following season.”

Released on a free transfer by Stoke, Sidwell signed on a permanent basis for the Seagulls and was a key component in the side that won promotion from the Championship in May 2017. He made 29 starts plus eight substitute appearances that campaign.

“The whole reason behind my return was to help the club into the Premier League,” he said.

Sidwell was on the bench as Albion began life amongst the elite but after that “a slipped disc, surgery, and then before you know it your career’s gone.”

Sidwell later admitted: “It was really hard. I came here to do a job, to get the football club into the Premier League, and then it was time to go and enjoy it. I thought I had two or three years left, but that was cut very short.”

Recognising he was blessed to have enjoyed a 20-year career, he nonetheless said: “To not really say goodbye to football, something I’d done since I left school, and also to Brighton, was really disappointing.”

He stayed on at Albion as under-16s coach (right) for a while but increasingly his work as a pitchside pundit for live TV coverage of matches took up more of his time. He is also now a regular co-host of the popular That Peter Crouch Podcast.

Sidwell is also business development director of Box3 Projects, a company that constructs and designs office spaces to be rented out or sold.

Melton took Micky at his word – and saw red 

MIDFIELDER Steve Melton took manager Micky Adams at his word in a notorious pre-season friendly – and ended up being sent off after putting in a waist-high tackle on an opponent.

Adams subbed off a riled Richard Carpenter against Longford Town in July 2001 with instructions to former Nottingham Forest trainee Melton “to give the lad who was booting our players up in the air a taste of his own medicine. Make sure he knows you are around.”

Melton duly put in a flying lunge on Longford midfielder Alan Reynolds that saw him receive an automatic red card and the fall-out from the challenge sparked an almighty punch-up which ended up with Albion’s Charlie Oatway and opponent Alan Murphy also being sent off after an altercation.

That particular battle then led to an even bigger scrap involving coaches and even the Longford chairman who took a punch in the face from one of his own players!

The so-called pre-season “friendly” – later dubbed the Battle of Longford – was abandoned with only 44 minutes on the clock by inexperienced ref Dermot Tone, who had only stepped in to officiate because senior Irish referees were at a seminar.

For Melton, it was all a far cry from making your Premier League debut two years earlier in front of 25,353 fans at the City Ground, Nottingham, in Ron Atkinson’s last-ever game as a manager. Melton was pitched in for already-relegated Forest for an East Midlands derby against Leicester and they went down in style (Blackburn and Charlton also went down), scraping a 1-0 win against the Foxes.

Born in Lincoln on 3 October 1978, Melton first linked up with Forest when he was just 11, playing at the centre of excellence. He signed full time at 16, a matter of days after finishing his GCSEs. He progressed through the youth team and reserves and it was during that time that he first worked with Adams, who’d been assistant manager to Dave Bassett before Atkinson’s arrival. 

Before he got close to the Forest first team, 18-year-old Melton and another trainee had experienced competitive football in Finland where Bassett had sent them to play for Sami Hyypiä’s old club MyPa on a three-month loan.

“He sent us out there to toughen us up. It also got us used to playing in a proper men’s league so that we learnt to value the prize of the three points and the standing within the first team,” he explained in a matchday programme interview.

That experience followed by his Forest first team debut didn’t have the outcome he wanted and after only three games under Atkinson’s successor, David Platt, he picked up an injury and couldn’t force his way back into the first team picture.

In February 2000, he switched 50 miles west to third tier Stoke City and admitted: “It seemed a good move as I didn’t have to travel too far. 

“It was a chance for me to play for a decent-sized club that were going strong in the cup and in the league. It was either that or play reserve team games for the rest of the year at Forest and wait for a break that I didn’t think was going to come.”

As it turned out, it was mainly a watching role, making only seven appearances as a substitute. He was a non-playing bench warmer alongside Chris Iwelumo (who did get on) when City won the Football League (Auto Windscreens Shield) Trophy at Wembley, beating Bristol City 2-1.

Stoke’s new Icelandic consortium hinted that they wanted to keep him on but in the absence of a contract offer, rather than risk uncertainty, he took up Adams’ offer to join fourth-tier Albion. 

A complimentary caption in the club match day programme

On a trial in the Emerald Isle the year before the Longford incident, Melton did enough across the week of the tour to earn a one-year contract. He had a long wait before getting a start but after 11 introductions as a substitute he finally made his full debut in February 2001, stepping in for Carpenter at Torquay after the regular midfield starter pulled out with an injured ankle. 

After playing his part in Albion’s first win (1-0 courtesy of Bobby Zamora) at Torquay for 36 years, Melton told The Argus: “I’m enjoying it here. I’ve settled in with the lads and I share a house with some of them.” 

On playing for Adams, he said: “I think Micky is going to be a really good manager. I enjoy working with him. A lot of the lads do. 

“Hopefully he will take Brighton up. He’s had a taste of managing at a higher level at Forest and I think he has the potential to do it again.” 

Melton’s outlook brightened the following month and he got starts in nine of the season’s remaining 15 matches as Adams led the Seagulls to promotion as champions. 

At home to his future employer Hull City, Melton made his home debut and scored his first goal for the club in a 3-0 win (Paul Watson and substitute Phil Stant also scored).

Reflecting on his involvement, he said: “It’s difficult to break in when the team keep winning every week, and they go unbeaten for 12 or 13 games, maybe drop a point but then go off on another run.

“It’s frustrating because you’re not playing, but you can’t really have too much of a case when the team is sat at the top of the league.”

Come the end of the season, he had done enough to be offered a two-year extension to his contract. As it turned out, the 2001-02 season followed much the same pattern as his first in terms of more appearances off the bench than starts.

He was on the scoresheet twice in the LDV Vans Trophy, scoring an extra time golden goal in a 2-1 home win over Wycombe Wanderers but was then inadvertently the fall guy in a 2-1 quarter-final defeat at Cambridge United.

Having given Albion a 36th-minute lead, latching on to Dirk Lehmann’s lay-off to fire a low right-footer past Lionel Perez from just outside the penalty area, he lost possession to Dave Kitson, who ran away to equalise, and then, four minutes into extra time, a shot by Armand One that was going wide took a wicked deflection off Melton’s shoulder to send United through to the next round.

A happier outing came when he made a rare start and scored as promotion-chasing Albion beat table-toppers Reading at the Withdean in February 2002. Peter Taylor’s Seagulls triumphed 3-1 on a rain-lashed night under the lights (Zamora and Junior Lewis also scored).

Goalscorers Melton and Zamora after a memorable win over Reading

“It was pleasing to start,” Melton told The Argus. “You have got to be patient and I have waited a good few months. 

“I have been on the outside for the last few weeks. Hopefully I can stay on the inside now. 

“Playing against the League leaders is a different matter completely from the LDV appearances that I made earlier in the season. 

“You can only do as well as you can when you are chosen to play and hopefully I did that. Once you have been given the shirt you have to try and keep it.” 

Melton’s goal was only the second league goal of his career and his first for 11 months. 

Taylor reckoned it was the best home performance since he took over from Adams the previous autumn and Albion won eight (and drew five) of the following 14 games to go on and clinch the third-tier title with the also-promoted Royals six points behind.

Melton scored Albion’s first goal of the 2002-03 season when he started in the 3-1 win at Burnley under his third Brighton manager, Martin Hinshelwood (Zamora and Paul Brooker also scored; Hinshelwood’s 18-year-old nephew Adam made his debut). 

Unfortunately, Melton tweaked a hamstring in the process and had to be subbed off. He only made nine more appearances (six starts plus three off the bench) as Hinshelwood’s short reign in charge ended with 10 league defeats in a row.

Incoming boss Steve Coppell brought in the likes of free agent Simon Rodger and Arsenal loanee Steve Sidwell and Melton found himself surplus to requirements.

It was in October 2002 that he moved to Hull on loan shortly after Peter Taylor had replaced Jan Molby as manager with the club about to move out of Boothferry Park and into the Kingston Communications Stadium.

Tiger Melton

Melton made 19 starts plus six appearances off the bench as the Tigers finished 13th in the old Third Division.

According to the website oncloudseven.com: “Despite his promise and Taylor’s persistence, Melton’s career at City was not a success and he showed only brief flashes of good form. Melton is, however, forever enshrined in the City record books because in December 2002 he scored the first ever goal at the KC Stadium against Sunderland, for the honour of lifting the Raich Carter Trophy.”

He found himself only on the fringes the following season and he had moved on to Boston United under Steve Evans by the time Taylor steered Hull to promotion as divisional runners up.

A recurring back injury restricted his playing time at Boston and during 2005-06 he was sent out on loan to Conference National side Tamworth. On his release from Boston in the summer of 2006, he switched to Southern League Premier King’s Lynn FC for two seasons.

Melton at Boston

In September 2008, he rejoined Boston with manager Tommy Taylor telling the club’s website: “Steve has great quality on the ball and that’s what we have been missing in the midfield area. 

Hopefully he will add another dimension to our team.”

But he was released at the end of the season and joined Lincoln United of the Northern Premier League Division One East, alongside his former Boston and King’s Lynn teammate Matt O’Halloran. After spells with Lincoln Moorlands Railway, Grantham Town and Worksop Town, he wound up his playing days back at Lincoln United.

In the meantime, his first job outside of football was in sales for mobile comms company Vodacom. He spent nearly seven years with the now defunct energy advice and installation company the Mark Group and since 2019 has worked for building services certification business The National Association of Professional Inspectors and Testers, where he is now commercial and compliance director.

Jamie Moralee’s pitfalls a valuable lesson for future prosperity

IT WOULD BE an understatement to say striker Jamie Moralee had mixed fortunes during his time with Brighton.

A one-time £450,000 signing, the former Crystal Palace player joined the lowly Seagulls on a free transfer when they were playing home games in exile at Gillingham in 1998-99.

His lack of goals earned a certain amount of derision from the handful of Albion followers who supported the club in those dark days.

And on one infamous occasion, in March 1999, he managed to get himself sent off within a minute of going on as a late substitute, without touching the ball.

Moralee sees red at Scunthorpe

To make matters worse, the punch he threw didn’t even catch the opponent, John Eyre, who promptly added to Albion’s woes by completing his hat-trick in a 3-1 home win for Scunthorpe United.

The Argus put Moralee’s “moment of madness” down to frustration at so regularly being on the subs bench (16 times – and only sent on in eight of them).

“He did not actually connect, but the intent was obvious and the resulting red card inevitable,” the newspaper reported.

Signed at the start of the season on a month-to-month contract, Moralee had a run of 14 starts under Brian Horton but after scoring just the one goal (in a 3-1 defeat against Mansfield), he was dropped to the bench.

Just before Horton quit to move to Port Vale, he gave Moralee a contract until the end of the season and in January, after Jeff Wood briefly took charge, the player hoped his impact as a sub when laying on a winning goal for Paul Armstrong against Scarborough would help change supporters’ views of his contribution.

“It was nice to be a bit of a hero for a change,” he told The Argus. “I was a bit unlucky with a goal which was disallowed at Chester in the game before and I just want to get on with Brighton and do my best.

“I’ll take the credit because I’ve not had much this season. Hopefully the corner has turned for me.”

Moralee said he had been asked to play several different roles and reckoned much of the criticism aimed his way was unjustified.

Moralee gets stuck in

“I feel I have done all right,” he maintained. “I don’t think the supporters really appreciate me and they let me know that when I came on, but I will just keep doing my job.

“The players give me all the support I need and I am confident enough to go out and do the business. I certainly won’t hide.”

Having missed several matches after the red mist descended at Scunthorpe, a third manager arrived in the shape of Micky Adams, and Moralee started the last seven matches of the season under the new boss, scoring once.

Moralee slides in

But it wasn’t enough to earn a new deal and Moralee was one of eight players released at the end of the season. Having played under three managers in one season for the Albion, there was swift change in the dugout at his next port of call too.

He began the next season up a division with Colchester United, whose manager Mick Wadsworth said: “I remember him as a very outstanding young player with Millwall. We watched him several times during last season.

“He is very sharp in and around the penalty box and his hold-up play is exceptional – a quality we were sadly lacking in the season just gone.

“Jamie was an outstanding prospect as a young player with Millwall and was sold on to Watford for £450,000 around five years ago before his career became blighted by injuries.

“Last season was his first full season for some time as he battled to shrug off a string of injuries and has probably used Brighton to get back to full fitness and match sharpness.”

The season was only three games old when Wadsworth resigned and was replaced by Steve Whitton who saw his United side beat Reading 3-2 in his first match (Warren Aspinall scored twice and Nicky Forster scored one for the visitors). Moralee, making his league debut for Colchester, was subbed off on 76 minutes.

After that, Colchester went on an 11-game winless run and other than a positive spell in January, had a forgettable season and finished third from bottom. Moralee made 21 starts plus eight as a sub.

Born in Wandsworth, London, on 2 December 1971, Moralee joined Palace as a YTS trainee, working his way through the levels alongside Gareth Southgate. He was a regular in the Palace reserves playing up front with Stan Collymore.

But after just two first team starts and four sub appearances under Steve Coppell, he was traded as a makeweight in exchange for Millwall’s Chris Armstrong.

Happy days in the Lions’ Den

When unveiled to Lions fans in a matchday programme article, Moralee boldly declared: “Having broken though into first team football with Palace last season and learned from strikers like Mark Bright and Garry Thompson, I feel I’m ready to come to a club like Millwall and score twenty goals a season.”

Amongst the goals for Millwall

Of the player he swapped places with, he even went as far as to say: “Chris was quick and by all accounts did very well here in the opening games this season, but I’ll score more goals than him.”

Continuing in a similar vein, he added: “I’m most effective in the box, I like the ball into my feet and, at the risk of sounding over confident, if I get the chances I’ll score goals for you.”

True to his word, Moralee did get amongst the goals for Mick McCarthy’s side and 20 goals in 63 appearances (plus 13 as a sub) over two seasons earned him a £450,000 move to Watford.

Moralee made a big money move from Millwall to Watford

But the Glenn Roeder signing had a tough time with the Hornets, only seeing his fortunes change after Graham Taylor returned to the club as manager. He explained the circumstances in a full-page piece in the Wolves v Watford matchday programme of 30 March 1996.

“Glenn bought me to play up front with a big target man, which I was used to at Millwall. But the partners I had were all smaller than me and I was now the big target man, a role that did not suit me and one that I do not enjoy.

“I had always been used to scoring, something that wasn’t happening, and this resulted in a loss of confidence.

“The intentions were there, but I needed a big target man to feed me the ball. It just did not work out.”

When Taylor took over from Roeder, Moralee got back the starting place he’d lost and learned how to play as a lone striker. “It is a lot of work but I believe I have developed into a better all-round player,” he said. “It is nice to have a manager with a little faith in me.”

After Watford were relegated to Division Two, in the summer of 1996 he moved on a free transfer to Crewe Alexandra where he didn’t register any goals and made just 13 starts and six sub appearances.

He ended the 1997-98 season with Royal Antwerp in Belgium and spent pre-season with Fulham before Horton took him on at the Albion, initially on a monthly contract basis, at the start of the 1998-99 season.

After his season at Layer Road, he linked up with former Crystal Palace colleague Peter Nicholas at Welsh Premier League side Barry Town. He spent three seasons with Barry, winning the Welsh Premier-Welsh Cup double each season. He was also involved in three Champions League campaigns with the club and netted 59 goals in 96 appearances.

Financial problems at Barry led to Moralee moving on and he had spells with Forest Green Rovers, Newport County and Chelmsford City before ending his playing career in 2006.

After retiring from playing, Moralee set up his own football agency, New Era, in conjunction with former Albion teammate Peter Smith, with Rio Ferdinand as its highest profile client.

In an interview for a webinar, Moralee said the agency aims to teach up and coming talented footballers how to avoid the pitfalls that affected his own playing career.

Describing his own “very up and down career with a couple of highs and many, many lows”, he explained to The Player, The Coach, The Person webinar: “When I got a few quid, I was spending it on all the wrong things. Buying cars and watches and going out too much; drinking too much. I wasn’t investing it.”

Hard work, application and a ruthlessness to succeed in life are aspects he’s now passing on having realised they were attributes that would have made a difference to his own career as a player.

“I needed to stay in football in some capacity,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a coach or manager.I knew that young players, if they got to the edge of the pitfalls I fell down, I could help them.”

He is particularly pleased to have helped players who had rejection in their early days who went on to have successful careers, such as Welsh internationals Chris Gunter, Neil Taylor and Ashley Williams.

Moralee spoke openly about his 20-year friendship with Rio Ferdinand in a 2018 film for the ‘Best Man Project’ of The Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm): an initiative to celebrate the power of friendships which supports men in looking out for their mates.

Opening up on the power of friendships in football

Coppell’s Palace signing Humphrey knew all about ups and downs

FULL-BACK John Humphrey signed for Crystal Palace in lieu of rent his previous club, newly-relegated Charlton Athletic, owed for playing home matches at Selhurst Park!

Humphrey was 29 and with more than 350 senior appearances behind him when Steve Coppell added him to an experienced defence to play alongside Eric Young and Andy Thorn in the old First Division.

It was a level Humphrey was well used to having started out there with Wolves (where he played in the same side as Tony Towner) and at Charlton in a defence that included  Colin Pates.

All that came before Humphrey came to Albion’s rescue in the dark days of the 1996-97 season, as I recounted in my 2020 blog post about him.

This time I’m highlighting his time at Selhurst Park, which he spoke about at length in a January 2023 interview with cpfc.co.uk.

“I saw myself as one of the senior players,” Humphrey remembered. “We had the likes of Richard Shaw coming through and Gareth [Southgate] coming through and we signed people like Chris Coleman and Chris Armstrong. Alongside that we had some experience with Eric Young and [Andy] Thorny, so I hoped I fitted in to part of the jigsaw.

“[The challenge] for me was getting used to the style of play, because at that time I know Stevie was not so much direct but he wanted to get the ball forward as early as possible because of the threat of [Ian] Wright and [Mark] Bright. So, it took me a while to get used to that.

“I do remember after a few games Stevie dropped me for a game to say: ‘This is what I want you to do.’ Then he put me back in… I was part of his restructuring and in that first year it worked out very well.”

So much so that at the end of his first year at the club Palace reached third – their highest league finish in history – and won the Zenith Data Systems trophy (otherwise known as the Full Members’ Cup) at Wembley, beating Everton 4-1.

Humphrey was still playing in the Premier League at the age of 34 and clocked up 203 appearances for the Eagles before briefly returning to Charlton for the 1995-96 season, moving on to Gillingham and then helping out his old Charlton teammate Steve Gritt in Brighton’s hour of need.

Revered at Charlton, chicagoaddick.com wrote of him: “In the five seasons he patrolled our right side of defence he missed only one league game and faced the best wingers and strikers playing in the country at that time: Barnes, Waddle, Le Tissier, Lineker, Rush, Aldridge, Beardsley, Fashanu.

“Maybe it was because we stood in the decrepit Arthur Wait Stand but Humphrey was fantastic to watch up close. Graceful, but strong in the tackle. He was a quick-thinker and a quick mover. He would glide down the right wing and put in some peaches of a cross.”

Humphrey won three consecutive player of the year awards (1988, 1989, 1990) – an honour no other Charlton player has received.

Humphrey in action for the Albion at Gillingham

By the time he arrived at Brighton, he was 36 and had played close on 650 professional matches.

“Steve wanted me because I was experienced, could get the players organised and was able to talk them through matches,” Humphrey told the Argus in a January 2002 interview. “He knew I was steady, reliable and dependable, that nine games out of ten I’d play pretty well and that I would give 100 per cent.

“It was a lot of pressure but I’d been through a few promotions (three) and relegations (six) with Wolves, Charlton and Crystal Palace.” He continued: “The stressful situations I had gone through with those other clubs had given me experience of how to try and keep a season alive.

“I could do a job for Brighton and I felt I did that and the team turned out to be good enough to hang on. It was one of the biggest achievements of my career.”

He added: “It might have been going out of the frying pan of Gillingham into the fire at Albion but I’m glad I made the jump.”

Humphrey looked back fondly on those difficult times and told the newspaper: “They have great fans and the Goldstone was always packed for the home games.

“You couldn’t help but be lifted by the crowd. The team couldn’t win away, but managed to win at home. So, one win every two games was decent and led to that eventful day at Hereford.”

When he left the Albion as part of a cost-saving measure the following season, he turned semi-pro and played initially for Chesham in the Ryman League premier division, then Carshalton, Dulwich Hamlet and Walton and Hersham.

“Having come from the professional ranks to semi-pro it was difficult to adjust to the different standards like some of the attitudes of players to training for instance,” Humphrey said. “Also, I found the training itself wasn’t that enjoyable.

“I remember at Walton and Hersham turning up for a session, but we weren’t allowed on the pitch and had to do a road run. That was frustrating and I begun to think that maybe there were other things in life than just playing football.”

Former teammate Pates was his conduit to a new career as a teacher at Whitgift School in Croydon, where ex-Palace and Chelsea midfielder Steve Kember also joined them.

“I knew Colin from Charlton when we roomed together,” he explained. “I was aware he was at the school and he said he needed help for after-school sessions and asked me to come along.

“So I did and the football took off at the school and I got involved in other sports like rugby and basketball and got a full-time job there.”

He also retained his links with Charlton, coaching their under-15 team, and told the Argus in that 2002 piece: “I deal with privileged kids at Whitgift who may go on to be doctors, lawyers or solicitors while at Charlton the kids usually aren’t so privileged.

“To a lot of them, football is a way of making something of themselves. It gives me a great buzz when one of the Charlton youngsters makes positive progress.”

Humphrey later moved on to become head of football at Highgate School in north London.

Martin Hinshelwood went down with Palace and up with Albion

REGARDLESS of the often overblown ‘bitter rivalry’ between Brighton and Crystal Palace, many people have served both clubs with equal distinction, none more so than Martin Hinshelwood.

A player at Palace until injury curtailed his career when only 27, he went on to have a long career in the game, much of it with Brighton; more often in youth development as a coach and briefly as the no.1.

In the summer of 2002, his appointment as Albion boss 11 weeks after his former Palace teammate Peter Taylor had quit came as something of a surprise considering chairman Dick Knight declared he had interviewed seven candidates for the post.

In more recent times, Albion have had a Uruguayan, a Spaniard, a Finn and an Italian as head coach, back in 2002 it looked a strong possibility Knight might appoint wild-haired German coach Winfried Schafer, who had just managed Cameroon at the World Cup, but the chairman suspected his lack of command of English might be too big a hurdle to get over.

A terrific start

A clear favourite had been Steve Coppell but when the ex-Palace manager fell asleep during his conversation with Knight, apparently fatigued after a long-haul flight, the chairman was suitably unimpressed and, with time running out before the 2002-03 season got under way, Hinshelwood was appointed instead.

A 3-1 win away to Burnley looked like a terrific start but after a 0-0 home draw with Coventry, the side went on a disastrous 10-game losing spell (a 2-1 League Cup win over Exeter City the only bright spot amid the gloom).

Knight had already publicly signalled he would take decisive action after the sixth defeat in a row – a 4-2 home reverse to nine-man Gillingham!

He told the Argus: “If the team went ten matches losing every one, then you have got to do something about it.

“It’s very easy to criticise him (Hinshelwood). Obviously, he is a manager under pressure because we have just lost six games.

Getting his message across

“To suggest we should instantly sack him puts out the wrong message. Most people right now will think it was the wrong decision to appoint him, but I am not going to panic. I am going to monitor the situation.”

Of course, that monitoring didn’t take long to reach an inevitable conclusion – four more defeats and Hinshelwood was relieved of first team duties. He was made ‘director of football’ and Knight went back to Coppell to try to keep the Albion in the division. He very nearly managed it, too, but such a bad run of defeats had taken their toll on the points total.

As it happened, it wasn’t the first time Hinshelwood had found himself in the Albion hotseat: he was caretaker manager on three occasions: in 1993 (before Liam Brady’s appointment), in 2001 (after Micky Adams left for Leicester) and again in 2009, when he was in charge for a 4-4 FA Cup first round tie at Wycombe Wanderers after Russell Slade had been sacked and before Gus Poyet’s arrival.

When researching backgrounds of any number of players for this blog, Hinshelwood’s name is often cited as the one who either made the approach to bring them to Brighton or who was a major influence in their development.

For example, when Hinshelwood first joined the Albion in 1987, from Chelsea, he was instrumental in bringing from Stamford Bridge to the Goldstone Doug Rougvie and Keith Dublin, who both played their part in getting Albion promoted straight back to the second tier in 1988.

Hinshelwood had been reserve team manager at Chelsea for two years during the managerial reign of John Hollins, after first team coach Ernie Walley, his former Palace youth team coach, put in a good word for him.

His long association with Brighton began with a ‘phone call to Barry Lloyd to congratulate him on landing the Albion manager’s job. The former Fulham captain asked Hinshelwood to join him at the Goldstone – and he stayed for the next six and a half years.

He returned to the club in the summer of 1998, when Brian Horton had taken over, and was appointed Director of Youth, with Dean Wilkins as youth team coach.

Pensive Hinsh

An interview with the matchday programme pointed out that across the following 14 years, he oversaw a youth system that produced 31 players who made it through to the first team, although he said such success had very much been a team effort, name-checking Wilkins, centre of excellence managers Vic Bragg and John Lambert, scouting chief Mark Hendon and physio Kim Eaton.

Dean Hammond, Adam Hinshelwood, Adam Virgo, Adam El-Abd, Dean Cox, Jake Robinson, Dan Harding and later Lewis Dunk, Jake Forster-Caskey and Solly March all graduated from that period. “To have been a part of their journeys makes me immensely proud,” he said.

Hinshelwood left the Albion for a second time in 2012 and worked variously for Crawley, Portsmouth, Stoke City and Lewes. He returned to the Seagulls once again when the former head of academy recruitment at Stoke, Dave Wright, who had joined Brighton in 2019, invited him to take on a role of scouting 13 to 16-year-olds.

When Hinshelwood himself was that age, he had visions of following in his dad Wally’s footsteps. He had been a professional for Fulham, Chelsea, Reading, Bristol City and Newport County, and, although born in Reading (on 16 June 1953), young Martin had become accustomed to an unsettled childhood, moving around the country to wherever dad’s next club took him.

The family finally settled in New Addington, near Croydon, with Wally playing non-league football in Kent and Martin played representative football for Dover Under 15s, Croydon Boys and Surrey Under 16s.

He was on schoolboy terms at Fulham when Bobby Robson was manager but they didn’t think he would make it. It was while he was playing for Surrey Schools that former Spurs and Palace manager Arthur Rowe scouted him for Palace and he was taken on as an apprentice in 1969.

Hinshelwood playing for Palace, up against Stoke’s George Eastham

Hinshelwood was given his first team debut by Bert Head in 1972. He played in midfield in the old First Division for a dozen matches but the side were relegated in his first season. The flamboyant fedora-wearing Malcolm Allison took over as manager and he was later replaced by Terry Venables.

Martin’s younger brother Paul (Jack Hinshelwood’s granddad) played in the same side at full-back and the brothers were alongside the likes of Kenny Samson and Peter Taylor. In 1975-76, when still a Third Division side, they shook the football world by making it to the semi-finals of the FA Cup, where they lost to eventual winners Southampton, although Martin missed the game through a right knee injury. It eventually forced him to quit playing in 1978, after he’d made 85 appearances for Palace in five years.

Venables appointed him as youth team coach at Selhurst Park and although he spent 18 months as player-manager of non-league Leatherhead, he then resumed his Palace role under Steve Kember.

Alan Mullery dispensed with Hinshelwood’s services during his brief managerial reign at Palace but he kept his hand in at coaching with non-league clubs Kingstonian, Barking and Dorking.

Selsey-based Hinshelwood then had a spell as manager of Littlehampton before the Chelsea job came up.

200th Andy Ritchie goal at crumbling Goldstone Ground

WHEN ANDY RITCHIE scored at the Goldstone Ground on 7 September 1996, it was a very different place to the stadium he’d graced as Player of the Year 14 years previously.

Ritchie was in his 20th season as a professional when he scored his 200th career goal for Scarborough against his former Albion teammate Jimmy Case’s Seagulls in a Nationwide Division 3 match.

Just 4,008 hardy souls dotted around the crumbling old stadium supported the Albion that afternoon compared to the sell-out 28,800 crowd who packed in to see Ritchie’s last home match in Albion’s attack when they beat Norwich City 1-0, courtesy of a Case goal, in a quarter-final of the 1983 FA Cup.

Ritchie’s last endeavours in Albion’s colours came a week later and, ironically, were in front of 36,700 at Old Trafford on 19 March 1983 when he had a goal disallowed against the club who sold him to the Seagulls for what at the time was a record £500,000.

The curiosity of that deal was covered in my 2017 blog post about Ritchie and I’ve since discovered how a number of observers were dumbfounded by Dave Sexton’s decision to let him leave United.

That Sexton more often preferred the strike pairing of Joe Jordan and Jimmy Greenhoff baffled football writer Mike Anderson who, after Ritchie’s switch to the Albion, detailed how the departed forward’s numbers were more favourable.

“Since making his debut for United against Everton three seasons ago he has proved himself to be a more consistent marksman than the Scottish international,” wrote Anderson.

“By the end of the 1978-9 season Ritchie had scored 10 goals in only 20 full League appearances, compared with Jordan’s nine goals in 44 games. And when last season finished he had hit 13 goals in 23 full games (plus six substitute appearances), whereas Jordan had taken his tally to only 22 goals in 76 games.”

Anderson’s opinion was shared by Tony Kinsella, writing in When Saturday Comes in November 1997, he described Ritchie as “a muscular whippet of a striker with two scorching feet, a delicious first touch, and a bonce of solid granite”.

Kinsella wrote: “In four frustrating campaigns, Ritchie notched an admirable average of a goal every two games, a somewhat superior rate to his cohorts. In retrospect, I guess Ritchie was in the right place at the wrong time. He possessed more skill than Jordan and cut a more daunting physical presence than Greenhoff, but fell short of both when it came to vice versa.

“Sexton, notorious for fielding sides greyer than a Mancunian sky, had the courage to blood a teenage goalkeeper, Gary Bailey, but got cold feet when dealing with the loose cannon that was Andy Ritchie.”

A young Ritchie at Manchester United

In a lengthy chat for the Fore Four 2 podcast, Ritchie revealed how it was Steve Coppell who took him under his wing as a newcomer to the United first team and ensured he got fixed up with a pension; something Ritchie hadn’t even considered.

And his roommate at United was wandering winger Mickey Thomas, who ended up following him to Brighton and also to Leeds!

While Sexton may have had reservations about Ritchie, plenty of other managers were keen to take him from United. Tommy Docherty, who had first signed Ritchie for the Red Devils, had wanted to take him to Queen’s Park Rangers but he was sacked as Rangers’ manager before a bid was in the offing. Chelsea and Newcastle made inquiries too.

Aston Villa offered United £350,000 for him but, after attending with his dad a face-to-face meeting with the glum-faced manager Ron Saunders, they turned down the move feeling he hadn’t conveyed that he really wanted him.

Ritchie also declared: “United were my home town team and I loved it at Old Trafford.

“It had been my aim since joining the United staff to be a success in their first team. I would have got a large amount of money had I gone to Villa, but I put self-satisfaction before money. I had received a lot of encouragement from the training staff at Old Trafford and I wanted to justify their faith in me by doing well at United.

“I knew that a transfer would mean adjusting to a side playing a different style of football. I felt that I might just as well spend that time proving I was worthy of a place at United where I was part of possibly the best club in the country. Unfortunately, I found myself playing reserve team football again until Brighton came in for me.”

In a 2019 interview with the Albion website, Ritchie remembered: “We always had a good team spirit and we all used to go out together. Everyone played golf and we’d be out in the nightclubs, Bonsoir and others where you had to wipe your feet on the way out.

“Great times, absolutely fantastic. And the spirit transferred itself onto the pitch. I used to joke at Q&As that we had so many great individuals but put us together and we were crap because the social life got in the way of our football. But no, it was a fantastic club to be involved in.”

Ritchie attended a rugby-playing grammar school and played cricket and hockey for Cheshire, only turning to football at 13 or 14. He played for Manchester and Stockport Boys and scored six goals in nine games for England schoolboys under skipper Brendan Ormsby, who went on to play for Aston Villa.

In the 1983 Shoot! album, Ritchie explained: “It was while I was playing for Stockport Boys that I first realised I had a chance of a career as a professional footballer.

“I was selected for the England Under-15 side and played at Wembley Stadium. The first was against Wales. We won 4-2 and I scored a couple of goals. I then scored another when England beat France 6-1. They were great moments for me and my family.

“Appearing for England was definitely the highlight of my young career but I also enjoyed playing for Stockport and in local Sunday football.

“I played for a team called Whitehill, who were sponsored by Manchester City. It was then that I realised I could play for the Maine Road club.

“I had trials with Leeds United, Burnley and Aston Villa, but I only wanted to play for City.”

It was while playing for Stockport Boys v Manchester Boys that former United captain Johnny Carey, scouting for his old club, spotted Ritchie and made an approach.

“I went down to The Cliff (United’s training ground) and never looked back,” he said. “It didn’t take me very long to soak in the atmosphere and appreciate the tradition and name of Manchester United and, in the end, I was quite happy to sign for the Old Trafford club.”

Ritchie was 15 when he put pen to paper, and he turned professional on 5th December 1977.

Handed his first start in United’s first team shortly after his 17th birthday, he played four matches without scoring but had caught the eye of the England Youth selectors. He made four appearances under joint managers Brian Clough and Ken Burton, making his debut in a 3-1 win over France on 8 February 1978. England drew the return leg of that UEFA Youth tournament preliminary match 0-0.

He went with the England squad to Poland for the 31st UEFA Youth tournament in May 1978, played in a 1-1 draw v Turkey and a 1-0 defeat v Spain but a trapped nerve in his hip meant he sat out the 2-0 defeat to Poland that meant England didn’t qualify from their group. That squad included Terry Fenwick and Vince Hilaire, Tony Gale and Ray Ranson.

“The following year I was selected for England Youth again for the Mini World Cup in Austria. Unfortunately, I went over on my ankle in training and could not make the trip,” Ritchie recalled.

Ritchie hoped his move to Brighton might boost his chances of gaining a full England cap, but he ended up winning a solitary England under-21 cap when he was called up by the same Dave Sexton who’d sold him from United! “That really was a bit bizarre,” Ritchie later recalled.

He featured in a 2-2 draw with Poland at West Ham’s Boleyn Ground on 7 April 1982. Fellow striker Mark Hateley scored both England’s goals.

Ritchie in action for Leeds against Brighton

Ritchie’s time with Leeds was something of a mixed bag. The record books show he scored 44 times in 159 matches after he was signed by player-manager Eddie Gray. Playing in the second tier at the time, Leeds still had Gray, Peter Lorimer and David Harvey from the Revie era but Ritchie joined a mainly young side where the likes of John Sheridan, Tommy Wright and Scott Sellars were developing.

As Tony Hill observed on motforum.com: “Much of his time at Leeds was spent in dispute over his contract and for over a year he was on a weekly contract before moving to Oldham Athletic for £50,000 in August 1987.”

It was at Oldham where Ritchie really made his mark, scoring 82 goals in 217 league games (including 30 as a substitute) and helping them reach the League Cup Final and the FA Cup semi-final in 1990 and to win the old Second Division in 1991.

In 2020 the club’s official website declared: “Andy Ritchie is regarded as a club legend at Oldham Athletic and one of the greatest players to play for the club, having served Latics as a player as well as having a spell as manager.”

That goalscoring return to the Goldstone with Scarborough in early September 1996 came a year after he had joined the Seadogs as player coach on a free transfer. It was one of 17 he netted in the league from 59 starts and nine appearances from the bench.

By then a couple of months short of his 36th birthday, thankfully the Seagulls prevailed 3-2 courtesy of goals from Stuart Storer and two from Craig Maskell (the 99th and 100th of his career).

It certainly wasn’t the first time Ritchie had netted against the Seagulls. Twenty months after departing the Goldstone he scored the only goal of the game, tapping in from eight yards out, when Leeds beat the Seagulls at Elland Road.

He also scored for Oldham to knock Albion out of the FA Cup when the Latics won 2-1 in the fourth round on 27 January 1990. In a 1-1 draw at the Goldstone two months later, Ritchie missed a penalty but he made amends the following season scoring home and away against the Albion, netting twice in their 1 December 1990 6-1 thumping of the Seagulls on Oldham’s plastic pitch and scoring both when the Latics left the Goldstone 2-1 winners on 2 March.

He returned to Oldham on 21 February 1997 after Neil Warnock took him to Boundary Park as his player-assistant manager. He scored three times in 32 appearances, many of which were as a sub.

But when Warnock left to join Bury at the end of the following season, Ritchie was appointed as his successor. He managed 179 games, winning 59, drawing 45 and losing 75 with a win percentage of 32.96%.

After being sacked in 2001, he was out of work for three months before being appointed academy director at Leeds at a time when fellow ex-Man Utd player and coach Brian Kidd was head coach under Terry Venables and David O’Leary.

He found himself out of work again in 2003 when Peter Reid took charge but six months later he joined Barnsley, initially as academy manager before becoming first team coach under Paul Hart.

When Hart left Barnsley in March 2005, Ritchie was appointed caretaker manager and then landed the position permanently in two months later.

At the end of the following season, he led the club to a penalty shoot-out win over Swansea City in the League One play-off final at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff.

But the Championship season was only four months old when Ritchie was relieved of his duties with the Tykes struggling in the relegation zone.

Four months later, he was appointed manager of League One Huddersfield Town and told the club’s website: “There’s such massive potential here.

“There is no doubt that the club is geared up for promotion to the Championship and that has to be the aim now. It’s now a case of getting the players re-motivated and once we get into the Championship, we can reassess the situation.

“I tasted promotion last season and it was a great feeling – now I want to do it again as soon as possible.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to steer the Terriers to that goal and, after a 4-1 defeat against his former employers Oldham, he parted company in April 2008.

They won only 22 of his 51 games in charge although they did enjoy their best FA Cup run for 10 years which only came to an end in the fifth round when they were beaten 3-1 by a Chelsea side under Avram Grant that included Wayne Bridge and Steve Sidwell.

After all that, Ritchie returned in a watching brief to where it all began: at Old Trafford.

On matchdays, he worked as an ambassador in a hospitality lounge, and contributed to MUTV and Radio Manchester.

When the ball hits the goal it’s not Shearer or Cole it’s Zamora!

EVERY NOW AND AGAIN as a football supporter a truly special player stands out well above the rest you’ve watched. Bobby Zamora was most definitely in that category.

As the new year dawns on what will be my 55th year supporting Brighton & Hove Albion, it is perhaps fitting to spend a little time remembering just how good Zamora was for the Seagulls before his outstanding ability to score goals was taken to higher levels: Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham, Fulham and ultimately, and, quite deservedly, England.

That he came back to the Albion from QPR as his career began to ebb was nothing short of a bonus­ – and, while I’m not a big gambler, I was delighted to get a modest return from the bookies when my punt on him being the last goalscorer came good after he had gone on as a sub at Elland Road on 15 October 2015 and chipped the winner (below) to register his first goal since rejoining!

“That goal was definitely the highlight of my season,” Zamora told interviewer Adam Virgo in a Seagulls World interview. “It was my first goal since coming back and to score the winner so late in the game was unbelievable. It was a special moment for me, and it settled the nerves knowing that we’d got the three points.”

Just four days later, Zamora repeated the feat going on as a 76th-minute substitute for Tomer Hemed at home to Bristol City and beating goalkeeper Frank Fielding with a low shot from 15 yards out. Albion won 2-1; Sam Baldock having levelled things up against his former club after Derrick Williams opened the scoring for City.

Unfortunately, Zamora managed just five more in that second spell. He made 10 starts plus 16 as a sub in Chris Hughton’s side but he was struggling with a hip injury.

It eventually caught up with him and prevented him from contributing further to Albion’s aim of promotion back to the elite; his last game being as a sub in a 0-0 draw at home to Sheffield Wednesday on 8 March 2016. “If I was fit, I would have scored some goals and we’d have been promoted automatically,” he told the UndrThe Cosh podcast (pictured above).

Thankfully another returning striker in the shape of Glenn Murray completed that task the following season and went on to cement his own place in Albion’s history: his 111 goals in 287 appearances putting him second in the list of Brighton’s all-time top goalscorers.

Golden goalscorers: Zamora + Murray

Each of the different eras I’ve watched the Albion has thrown up truly memorable players who have generated their own air of excitement and anticipation because of the goals they scored.

The first one for me was Alex Dawson, who netted seven in the first five games I watched in 1969. Then along came Willie Irvine whose goalscoring in third tier Albion’s promotion-winning season of 1972 earned him an unexpected recall to the Northern Ireland side – and an appearance (that I went to watch) in a 1-0 win against England at Wembley.

Next, of course, was the truly outstanding Peter Ward, who jinked his way past defenders with apparent ease and scored goals for fun, his 36 goals in 1976-77 smashing a decades-old record. Like Zamora, he came back to the scene of past glories (albeit only on loan) and scored a magnificent winner against the team he supported as a boy, Manchester United.

Garry Nelson, with 32 goals, and Kevin Bremner were a superb front pair in another third tier promotion-winning line-up in 1988 while, in 1990-91, Mike Small and John Byrne combined brilliantly to take the Seagulls within a hair’s breadth of a return to the big time.

The arrival of a beanpole of a kid with an eye for goal in Zamora completely transformed Albion’s fortunes under Micky Adams and he was the talisman in back-to-back promotions following years in the doldrums.

Zamora’s Albion story is pretty well known but let’s remind ourselves of how it all began.

Depending on whose account you believe more, it was either Dick Knight or Adams who had the foresight to bring Zamora to the Withdean.

Adams said: “The first time I saw him he came onto the training ground; he looked like a kid. But he was tall and gangly with a useful left foot; there was potential there.”

In fact, Zamora might never have arrived in Sussex if Albion had been successful in securing a permanent deal for on-loan Lorenzo Pinamonte. When Brentford outbid Brighton for the services of the Bristol City loanee, Albion turned their attention to Zamora (left), a Bristol Rovers player who was only getting sub appearances under Ian Holloway but had scored eight goals in six games on loan at nearby non-league Bath City.

“He was six foot one and we knew he had a very good first touch and could hold the ball up well, the type of player we wanted,” Knight recounted in his autobiography Mad Man: From The Gutter to the Stars (Vision Sports Publishing, 2013).

Zamora duly arrived on loan and scored six in six matches (including a hat-trick in a 7-1 away win at Chester). He scored an equaliser and was named Man of the Match on his debut v Plymouth and by the end of February was Player of the Month.

Hat-trick ball at Chester

While Knight and Adams wanted him to stay, he insisted on returning to Rovers where he thought he might force his way into Holloway’s starting line-up. But it was back only to the bench as Nathan Ellington, Jason Roberts and Jamie Cureton were ahead of him in the pecking order.

As preparations began for the new season, Albion offered £60,000 for Zamora but Rovers chairman Geoff Dunford wanted £250,000. An incredulous Knight said he wouldn’t go higher than £100,000 and couldn’t believe they could demand such a figure for someone who hadn’t actually started a first team game.

Zamora had Rovers’ youth team coach Phil Bater to thank for forcing through the move. He accompanied the shy youngster into a meeting with Holloway, who tried to say he’d get some games if he stayed. Bater reckoned the youngster was being strung along and argued Zamora’s cause saying he stood more chance of playing if Rovers let him join the Albion.

After some brinkmanship from each club’s respective chairmen, with Knight threatening to walk away from the deal, it finally went through two days before the start of the season, although Albion’s chairman reluctantly agreed to a 30 per cent sell-on clause for the player.

Zamora instantly became one of the top earners on £2,000 a week with a goal bonus built in.

“It was an absolute coup that we had finally secured this player,” said Knight. “I could only see good things in him, could only see that he would be a huge asset to us.

“Football is all a matter of opinions. There is little science to it. For me, Zamora was the best signing I ever made.”

Zamora has eyes on the ball closely watched by a young Wayne Bridge for Southampton

Not only did Zamora manage to score 31 goals as Albion won promotion from the basement division, he went one better when they went straight to the top of the third tier the following season, netting 32 times in 46 matches.

A significant number of those goals came courtesy of Zamora’s excellent understanding with left-footed right-back Paul Watson, of whom he said: “He created a lot of goals for me with those quick free kicks. He didn’t put a foot wrong too often and was very underrated. He never got the credit his hard work deserved.”

Expanding on it in another interview, he said: “Whenever Watto got the ball I knew precisely where I needed to run to and he knew where to deliver it. It was such a great connection: Watto has an absolutely wonderful left foot and it made my job as a striker so much easier when you get deliveries like that.”

Declaring that even in the Premiership he hadn’t come across anybody with a better left foot, he added: “I was very lucky to have played in the same team as him; he created numerous goals for me; not only with his deliveries but with his intelligent play as well.”

Watson had arrived at the club with Charlie Oatway and was part of a cluster of players who had served under Adams at Brentford and Fulham. When Adams and assistant Bob Booker steered Albion to promotion as fourth tier champions, Zamora was player of the season and he and Danny Cullip were named in the PFA divisional XI.

Not long into the following season, the lure of taking over as manager at a Premier League club saw Adams quit Brighton, initially to become Dave Bassett’s no.2 at Leicester City, but with the promise of succeeding him.

“While I thought I had a shot at another promotion, it wasn’t a certainty,” Adams explained. “I knew I had put together a team of winners, and I knew I had a goalscorer in Bobby Zamora, but football’s fickle finger of fate could have disrupted that at any time.”

His successor, Peter Taylor, knew how fortunate he was to inherit an experienced squad, and said: “Of course the greatest asset we had was Bobby Zamora. Having him meant that we could play a front two at home and away from home we could play him on his own and he would still get us a goal out of nothing. He was an incredible player and miles too good for that level.”

And Zamora wasn’t only a star on the pitch, as Knight spoke about in his autobiography. “When he was at his zenith at Brighton, the requests we got for him to visit schools, hospitals and go to prize-givings far outweighed all the other players together, but he was always amenable. He was never starry, never refused. I couldn’t speak more highly of Bobby Zamora as a person.”

Knight recounted in his book how, after a 1-0 win at Peterborough, when Zamora missed a penalty but also scored the only goal of the game, Albion’s promotion to the second tier was confirmed and in his own inimitable way Posh boss Barry Fry said to Brighton’s star striker: “You’re a fucking great player and you’ll play for England one day, I’m fucking sure of it.”

Zamora was still only 21 when Tottenham signed him from relegated Brighton in July 2003. He left the south coast having scored a total of 83 goals in 136 appearances but in his last season in the stripes he netted just 14 as the Seagulls battled unsuccessfully to retain their tier two status.

Unfortunately, he missed eleven matches with a dislocated shoulder and, had former Premier League striker Paul Kitson been fit to play alongside him (he managed only seven starts plus three off the bench), the season may well have had a different outcome.

Everton’s Bill Kenwright had offered £3m for Zamora during the season but their manager Walter Smith seemed less convinced and, with Kevin Campbell and Wayne Rooney likely to be ahead of him, Zamora stayed in Sussex.

But chairman Dick Knight promised not to stand in his way if an opportunity was presented at the end of the season and that came from Tottenham. Manager Glenn Hoddle and assistant Chris Hughton had been to see Zamora in action at the Withdean on a number of occasions.

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy played hardball over the deal. Eventually, Knight settled on a £1.5m fee but, because of the original sell-on clause, £450,000 was due to Bristol Rovers.

Hoddle told The Guardian: “He has got good pace and great movement on and off the ball. No disrespect to Brighton, they have got a good team down there, but we have got players here who can make the most of his movement.”

The player’s agent Phil Smith told the newspaper: “The fee for Bobby is £1.5m which is a decent price in today’s market for a Second Division striker.

“It has been a long time coming for Bobby but he is delighted to be going into the Premiership. It has always been an ambition.”

Disappointed Albion manager Steve Coppell observed: “It is a big move for Bobby and nobody really expected we could hang onto him for much longer. But it has blown a big hole in any plans I had. I don’t have a better option than playing with Bobby Zamora up front.”

When he arrived at Spurs, one of the senior pros who took him under his wing was none other than Gus Poyet.

“As a young guy coming into the team, he was one of the senior pros who would always talk to me and encourage me,” Zamora told the matchday programme. “He didn’t have to do that, but he went out of his way to do so and you could see he had coaching qualities. He would often point things out on the pitch that you’d pick up on, and when he spoke, you’d listen.

“He wasn’t starting every game either, so in training I did more things with him than maybe the rest. I really got on well with him.”

As it turned out, Zamora made only 18 appearances for Spurs (11 as a substitute) and only scored once – ironically a single goal that knocked West Ham out of the Carling Cup in October 2003.

In January 2004, Spurs chose to use him as a makeweight in taking Jermain Defoe from the Boleyn Ground to White Hart Lane.

Phlegmatic Zamora didn’t look on it as a failure but embraced the “learning curve” of training alongside the likes of Poyet, Robbie Keane, Darren Anderton and Jamie Redknapp.

“I came away a better player and with more experience,” he said. “Glenn Hoddle had signed me and then he got sacked not long afterwards. David Pleat took charge and we didn’t really see eye-to-eye, but the lads and the club were brilliant and I learned so much from my time there.

“I took a chance by stepping back down to the Championship with West Ham – but it was the opportunity of playing regular football again that was the pull for me.”

Brighton’s Brown a guiding light for future footballing talent

BRIGHTON-BORN Steve Brown walked out on the Albion as a schoolboy but later returned as an influential coach of the club’s emerging talent, including a young Lewis Dunk.

Previously, as reserve team coach at West Ham, Brown brought through the likes of Jack Collison, James Tomkins and Junior Stanislas.

Indeed, the former Charlton Athletic defender applied his aptitude for teaching budding young footballers to various settings, including Charlton and at Sussex independent schools Ardingly College and Lancing College (2017-19).

In his two-year spell as Albion youth team coach, between 2008 and 2010, 11 youth players signed professional contracts, and five made first-team appearances, including Dunk, Grant Hall and Jake Forster-Caskey.

In an end of season summary, Brown reported: “We have out-passed and out-played teams but not finished them off, and that is something the players need to learn to do, but the foundations are there.

“We have taken things on board from Gus (Poyet) and the first team, and we’ve tried to adapt that to the players in the youth team.”

He added: “The way the first team manager plays here, everyone has got to know what they are doing and be a very good forward-thinking football player – but at youth level you are going to get inconsistency because they are not at that level yet.”

Brown took on the Albion youth team job when Russell Slade was in charge, shortly after obtaining his UEFA A coaching licence, which he had been working towards at Charlton and West Ham, through the different stages of the badge process.

In an interview with the matchday programme, he admitted: “In some respects I’ve come home. In my playing career I had a couple of opportunities to come here and came very close when Steve Coppell was manager.

“I also had talks when Martin (Hinshelwood) was in charge and the two of us have stayed in contact ever since. So, when he phoned up to offer me the job, I grabbed it with both hands.”

Although at the time he dropped down a couple of levels, he said: “Your coaching philosophies don’t change whether you’re with a West Ham international or a Brighton youth team player. The message that you are trying to get across is the same – you want them to improve.

“It’s also my job here to make the players understand it’s not a cakewalk. They see the professionals and think it’s going to be a natural progression for them but it’s not.”

Born in Brighton on 13 May 1972, Brown went to Coldean Primary School and Patcham Fawcett High School.

His dad, Gary, had been a professional footballer in South Africa before returning to play non-league in Sussex, so it was little surprise his son developed a love for the game.

“You can definitely say that football was in the family genes,” Brown told doverathletic.com.

His performances for the Patcham Fawcett school team led him to be selected for East Sussex and Brighton Schoolboys, and the Albion signed him up on schoolboy forms for two years.

However, when 14, he admitted: “I just fell out of love with football for a time. When you’ve got a squad of 25 boys and only 11 can play, you spend a lot of time just training. I missed the competitive edge of matches and as a result I began to enjoy my football less and less.”

So, he walked away from the Albion and returned to playing for East Sussex and Brighton Schoolboys, as well as Whitehawk, where his dad was first team coach.

Fresh-faced Brown became an apprentice at Charlton Athletic

When he was 16, he was spotted by a Charlton scout, and was taken on as an apprentice. Reflecting on how hard he had to work to get a regular spot in the reserve side, before eventually signing as a professional, he said: “It’s really about how resilient you are.

“Lots of players get rejected once, twice, even three times before someone takes a chance on them. You just have to refuse to give up and learn not to take one person’s rejection as final.”

However, Brown’s career nearly ended before it had begun when he suffered a serious knee injury at 18, forcing him to completely reshape his game and the way he played.

“From that point, decision-making had to become his strength because his body would be permanently affected,” wrote Benjy Nurick in a blog about the defender. “I had a cruciate, the operation went wrong,” he said. “I’ve got nothing left in the right knee now.”

He told Benjy: “I don’t think people appreciated how bad the injury was. I’d say from about 26-27 years of age…from that point onwards, I was icing front and back after training and after games. I wasn’t a pill taker on a regular basis, but I did get put on some quite strong anti-inflammatories.

“I’d finish a match and for anybody that ever sort of said ‘where’s Browny?’ I had an ice pack on the front of my knee and I had an ice pack on the back of my knee and I was laying on the floor of the dressing room!”

Having made his first team debut alongside the likes of Garth Crooks and Tommy Caton, Brown established himself in the Addicks defence and played a crucial role in the club’s 1998 promotion via a memorable play-off against Sunderland at Wembley.

Brown put in a crucial tackle in extra time to ensure the score stayed 4-4 and then scored in the decisive penalty shoot-out, although he admitted: “It was an absolutely horrific experience.

“The pressure was unbelievable and once the ball went in, I didn’t care if anyone else in our side missed. I know that sounds selfish, but I was just so overwhelmed with relief at scoring.”

Brown earned a bit of a reputation as a stand-in goalkeeper too, as witnessed in May 1999, in a game against Aston Villa. After Addicks goalkeeper Andy Petterson had been sent off, Brown donned the gloves and made a number of crucial saves as his side ran out 4-3 winners.

Brown told Laura Burkin for whufc.com: “It was not the first time for me in goal, actually. I had gone in a couple of other matches over the years, against Manchester City and Southampton if I remember rightly.

“But the one with Aston Villa was the one that stands out. As soon as Andy had been sent off, the gaffer asked me and I said yes, no problem. I was quite pleased with myself, there was a dangerous cross and I got my hands to that well and a few corners as well, and I enjoyed it!”

Unfortunately, those heroics were unable to prevent Athletic returning to the second tier. But Brown was skipper when they won promotion as champions in 2000. “We broke a host of records on our way to the title. It was my best year in football,” he declared.

It’s widely felt by Addicks fans that Brown played some of the best football of his career alongside Richard Rufus at the heart of the defence under Alan Curbishley’s managership.

But what did Brown make of the former Albion midfielder as a boss? “He didn’t give out a lot of praise, you had to earn it, but he left no stone unturned in terms of our preparation for games.

“He could throw the odd teacup but was generally a level-headed guy who would work out ways for you to improve if he felt you needed it.”

Brown’s 12-year playing career at Charlton came to an end in 2002 and he joined former teammate Alan Pardew at Reading, making 40 appearances before retiring in 2005.

He told the Reading Chronicle: “I went from one very family-orientated, stable club which had seen some very good times straight into another one that was very much in a similar state.

Reading had come out of League One, was in the ascendancy, had a new stadium, the owner made the club financially responsible, they had Alan Pardew as manager who was doing well. You can leave one football club and walk into a bit of a nightmare…and I didn’t. It was a brilliant move for me.

“We got to the play-offs my first year at Reading. When I turned up, they’d just gotten rid of Matthew Upson who had been outstanding for them, so I had extremely big shoes to fill. And I slotted into his shoes and filled them quite nicely and we got to the play-offs.”

Unfortunately, although Reading had James Harper and Steve Sidwell pulling the strings in midfield, they lost Nicky Forster to injury in their semi-final first leg against Wolves, and went down 3-1 on aggregate.

“If it hadn’t been for the injury to Nicky, I think momentum would have carried us through,” said Brown. “But losing Nicky…he was our number one striker by some distance and losing him left us very short up top.”

A recurrence of that anterior cruciate ligament injury eventually forced Brown to stop playing and after a spell coaching in Charlton’s academy, he linked up with Pardew again after he’d taken over as West Ham manager before the management team changed in July 2007.

As well as working as head of football at Ardingly College, Brown also scouted for Charlton Athletic and covered first team matches as a radio co-commentator for BBC London. That radio work gradually expanded into coverage of Premier League and EFL matches.

On leaving Brighton in 2011, Brown joined his former teammate Forster at Conference South Dover Athletic, becoming his assistant manager. In the summer of 2013, he moved on to become manager of Ebbsfleet United, a role he held for 18 months.

Next stop was a brief stint in charge of Lewes before he moved on to become joint manager and director of football at Margate.

While working at Lancing College, Brown was also a regional scout for Stoke City, searching out potential players for the club’s development squad.

Petterson the fall guy during disastrous winless run

ANDY PETTERSON conceded two goals in the first seven minutes of his Albion debut but still picked up the man of the match award when managing to deny visitors Walsall any further goals in a 2-0 defeat.

He pulled off a brilliant point-blank save on the stroke of half-time to deny goalscorer Jorge Leitao a second goal and later blocked the same player’s angled drive. Steve Corica had opened the scoring for the Saddlers.

The game on August Bank Holiday Monday in 2002 was part of a disastrous run under new manager Martin Hinshelwood. In only eight games as a stand-in for injured Michel Kuipers, Petterson conceded eighteen goals, including four against his old club, Portsmouth, in only his second game.

He shipped another four in a game at home to Gillingham, one of which the matchday programme described as “the most embarrassing moment of Petterson’s long career”.

With the score 3-2, and Albion committing everyone forward, including the goalkeeper, in search of an equaliser, when 10-man Gillingham broke on a counter attack, backpedalling Petterson fell over giving Gills striker Kevin James an open goal to notch a fourth for the visitors.

Petterson only appeared once under Hinshelwood’s successor, Steve Coppell, when Kuipers had been sent off in the 89th minute of a home game against Bradford City. Paul Brooker was withdrawn and the sub goalie went between the sticks, although his first involvement was to pick the ball out of the net, Andy Gray having scored from the penalty kick awarded for the infringement that saw Kuipers dismissed.

In pouring rain, Albion – and Petterson – clung on throughout five added minutes for a 3-2 win, bringing to an end a 14-game winless league run. Bobby Zamora scored two penalties for the Seagulls and new arrival Simon Rodger, a loyal Coppell lieutenant, curled in a beauty from outside the area.

Although he was a non-playing sub on two further occasions, Petterson was let go. In a recent interview, he said he had been nursing a recurring calf injury during his time with the Albion.

Albion were the 12th of a remarkable 21 clubs the Aussie ‘keeper joined on loan or permanently.

Wolverhampton Wanderers were another stopping off point for the perennial back-up ‘keeper from Fremantle and it was one of his regrets that he only had a four-month loan spell at Molineux, having previously spurned a two-year deal with the Black Country side to make what turned out to be a career-damaging move to Pompey.

Instead of building on a career that had shown signs of promise at Charlton Athletic, Petterson flitted from club to club without ever putting down roots.

Born in Fremantle, Western Australia, on 26 September 1969, he was still only a teenager when he arrived in the UK and signed for Luton Town, where he spent four seasons.

The Hatters Heritage website recalls: “Andy was so desperate to make a name for himself in the English professional game that he paid his own passage to take up a trial at Luton. Fortunately, his gamble paid off as he was offered a contract at Kenilworth Road in 1988 although he had to wait until the start of the 1992-93 season before making his League debut.

“Impressing in pre-season with his shot stopping ability and quick reflexes, Andy was ever present for the first 14 games but a calamitous performance during a 3-3 draw at Cambridge effectively put paid to his Luton career.”

Petterson joined Alan Curbishley’s Addicks for £85,000 in July 1994, was their player of the season in 1996-97 in the First Division and played for them in the Premier League.

But he was generally no. 2 to Sasa Ilic, and subsequently dropped down to third choice behind Simon Royce, another goalkeeper who spent time with the Seagulls. The situation prompted Petterson to join struggling Portsmouth on loan in November 1998.

“Portsmouth were in financial trouble and down at the bottom of the table,” he recalled in an interview with the Argus. “I went there for three months and everything went very well. Then in the summer I was out of contract at Charlton.

“Portsmouth were one of three clubs in for me and they offered me quite a good deal, so I decided to sign for them. Everything went well under Alan Ball for the first six months, but he got the sack and it was downhill for me from there.

“We had another four managers (Tony Pulis, Steve Claridge, Graham Rix and Harry Redknapp) in the three years I was there and my face never fitted really. It was just unfortunate I went there. I was happy with the way it started, and it was a good club to be at, but it just wasn’t meant to be for me.”

In an extended interview with Neil Allen of The News, Portsmouth, in June 2020, Petterson reflected on his missed opportunity to join Wolves instead of Pompey, when he had been released by Charlton.

“Wolves’ boss Colin Lee was interested,” he said. “I was in Australia and flew back to England ahead of signing at Molineux on a two-year deal on the Monday afternoon.

“Then, late Sunday, my agent called. Milan Mandaric had taken over Pompey and they wanted to talk on Monday morning.

“That was the club I wanted to join, I had familiarity there. I signed a three-year deal. If the club had been taken over 24 hours later, the move would never have happened and I would have ended up at Wolves.”

Petterson told The News: “It was the beginning of the end when I went back to Pompey. My career never really recovered. I was kind of a journeyman before that, but at least was signed to a parent club and sent on loan to places.

“After moving to Pompey permanently it was six months here, three months there. It was the beginning of the end for my career. I guess everything happens for a reason – and for some reason it happened to me.”

Ipswich (three times), Swindon, Bradford, Plymouth, Colchester, Wolves, Torquay and West Brom were all temporary moves for the Australian stopper. After his short stint in Sussex, he also went to Bournemouth, Rushden and Diamonds, Southend, Walsall and Notts County.

“I always had belief in my ability and always wanted to play,” he said. “I think I was a good goalkeeper, although maybe mentally didn’t have the belief in myself enough.

“I’m a bit of a laid-back, casual sort of guy. Sometimes you have to be that pushy arrogant sort of person for the coach to take notice of you a bit more. I tried to do it, as a footballer you have to be a bit of an actor, but it just wasn’t in my nature.”

Referring to the fact he had 16 years as a professional footballer in the UK, he added: “That’s what gives me the belief that I was a decent goalkeeper. But something wasn’t quite there for me to go to the next level, I guess.”

He eventually only got a run of regular games when he returned to Australia and played for Newcastle Jets and then ECU Joondalup.

After his playing days were over, he became a goalkeeper coach for several clubs, including Bali United in Indonesia for a while. In August 2022, he was appointed goalkeeper coach at East Bengal FC.

“I have experienced the highs, the lows, all that kind of stuff, so can relate to goalkeepers,” he told Allen. “I’ve been through plenty.”

Tony Rougier couldn’t have wished for a better Albion start

A GOAL by Tony Rougier three minutes into his debut as a substitute gave Brighton a glimmer of hope in their battle to avoid relegation.

His strike against Mark McGhee’s mid-table Millwall side at Withdean Stadium on 22 February 2003 was the only goal of the game and lifted Albion out of the bottom three of the Championship.

When Bobby Zamora dummied Kerry Mayo’s pass to allow Arsenal loanee Graham Barrett to turn and move the ball goalwards, Rougier nipped in to complete a neat finish past Tony Warner in the Millwall goal.

Manager Steve Coppell had sent on the Reading loanee as a 61st minute substitute for winger Paul Brooker although he admitted to Stuart Barnes of The Guardian: “I honestly didn’t know if Tony would make a difference, but I felt he would pep up everybody else because we were starting to lose our grip.

“Getting out of the bottom three will give the players a lot of self-esteem. For a long time this season they have questioned whether they belonged at this level.”

Trinidad and Tobago international Rougier joined the Seagulls having been sidelined by Alan Pardew at Reading who paid £325,000 when signing him from Brian Horton’s Port Vale.

Horton gave the Argus an insight of what Albion fans might expect when he said in an interview: “Tony has a great build and he is a threat with his pace and strength.

“We had to sell him because we needed the money and he was one of our major earners.”

He had been Vale’s leading goalscorer with eight goals in 38 games when they were relegated from the First Division in 2000 before moving to Reading that August.

Rougier made a total of 84 appearances for Reading, scoring six goals, and in his first season helped them to the Division Two play-off final where they lost 3-2 to Walsall (and Rougier scored an own goal after going on as a substitute). But a year later, he made 20 starts and 13 appearances off the bench as Reading were promoted in second place – behind the Albion!

He had scored twice in 12 outings for Pardew’s high-flying Royals in 2002-03, including in a 1-0 win against Albion at Withdean. But competition for places was fierce, with the likes of Nicky Forster, Darius Henderson, John Salako and Nathan Tyson.

Coppell told the Argus: “I speak with Alan fairly regularly but this came totally out of the blue when I phoned him up.

“Tony is a big, strong lad and he gives us options. He can play as a wide man or down the middle and the move suits Reading, the player and me.”

Getting to grips with Jason Brown of Gillingham

Coppell needed forward cover because Gary Hart was about to start a four-match suspension, Zamora was banned for the next away game at Gillingham, Paul Kitson was still injured and Barrett was struggling for form and goals.

The following matchday programme observed Rougier had not been signed for his goalscoring prowess, but rather for his “power, direct running, and causing havoc that others can exploit”.

But the goal was very welcome in a season that might well not have ended in relegation if Coppell had started the season in charge rather than joining after so many games had already been lost under Martin Hinshelwood.

Rougier made his first start in a 3-0 defeat away to Gillingham playing up front with Barrett when Zamora and Hart were suspended.

He featured in home wins over Rotherham United (2-0) and Nottingham Forest (1-0) as well as an away defeat at Stoke City (0-1), but he missed the 2-1 defeat at Sheffield United after twisting his right ankle against Forest.

He bowed out in style in his final appearance, making one goal and scoring a second in a memorable 2-2 draw away to Ipswich Town.

I took my then 14-year-old son Rhys to the clash at Portman Road and the lively midfielder-cum-striker in the no.34 shirt, who had been taken to the hearts of the Albion faithful, was suitably serenaded with the chant ‘Ra-ra-ra Rougier’ to the tune of the popular vaudeville and music hall song Ta–ra–ra Boom-de-ay.

His first significant involvement saw him go up for a header from Hart’s cross and Town goalkeeper Andy Marshall diverted the ball into his own net to gift Albion an equaliser.

Future Albion loanee striker Darren Bent missed a penalty that would have put Ipswich back in front, and then, with 10 minutes to go, Albion fans were buoyant with expectation when Rougier slammed the ball into the roof of the net after Ipswich had failed to clear their lines.

Unfortunately for Brighton, a 30-yard thunderbolt from Martin Reuser flew past Dave Beasant to put the home side level and Albion had to be content with a point, which ultimately wasn’t enough to avoid making an immediate return to the division they’d left the previous season.

While the player was keen to extend his stay, Pardew wanted him back to help with Reading’s promotion run-in, although thankfully he wasn’t involved in Brighton’s shock 2-1 win at the Madejski Stadium on 4 April (and Steve Sidwell, who had been on loan at the Albion earlier that season was an unused sub). Goals from Brooker and sub Kitson took the spoils for the Albion, Cureton netting for the home side.

The Royals finished fourth in the league before losing 3-1 on aggregate to Wolves in the play-off semi-finals, and Rougier was released on a free transfer having scored three times in 13 starts and nine appearances off the bench.

Rougier told the Argus he would be interested in returning to the Albion, but nothing came of it and he joined Brentford instead. Manager Wally Downes believed the player had “real quality” although Brentford fans seemed to have divided opinions on what he brought to the side.

‘Snappy’ on The Griffin Park Grapevine reckoned: “The guy is a huge asset, especially in the last 10 minutes of a game when he can hold the ball up and dance his way around players like they were statues and relieve the pressure on the defence.”

‘West Ealing Bee’ agreed: “He is an asset to the club and a very important part of the team.” But ‘Boston Bee’ had a totally different take on the player: “Even when he actually tried (15min/match) he looked like he wasn’t trying. His lack of interest in the game going on around him drove me crazy.”

Rougier made 34 appearances for the Bees, scoring five goals but when Martin Allen took over as manager in March 2004, Rougier was one of five players he allowed to leave Griffin Park as part of a squad overhaul that ultimately helped them to a last-day escape from relegation.

Meanwhile, Rougier linked up with another ex-Albion captain, Danny Wilson, at Bristol City on a free transfer. Indeed, Rougier appeared for the Robins when they lost 1-0 to McGhee’s Albion in the divisional play-off final in Cardiff on 30 May.

But when Wilson lost his job that summer, Rougier followed him out of the exit and he returned to Trinidad, where he won the last of 67 international caps for Trinidad and Tobago.

Rougier stepped into coaching

He has since turned to coaching, becoming a UEFA A licensed coach, and attained a degree in sports development. On his LinkedIn profile, he describes himself as the founder, president and technical director of FC South End, and, in 2014, among his past coaching experiences was a spell working with his nation’s under 20 squad.

Four years later, he had moved to the United States to coach the New England Revolution academy team.

Born on 17 July 1971 in Sobo, a village in south west Trinidad, his footballing career was initially confined to his home country.

Tom Lunn, writing for Reading fan website thetilehurstend.sbnation.com in 2019, profiled Rougier describing how the player began his senior footballing career in his home country with La Brea Angels. His Wikipedia page says he also played for Trintoc, United Petrotrin, and Trinity Pros.

An Albion matchday programme article said Rougier then moved to New York where he spent a year working in the baggage department at John F Kennedy airport before heading to the UK.

After overcoming work permit issues, he was taken on by Raith Rovers where, over the course of two years, he became something of a cult hero. In 2018, he returned to Fife to be inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame.

“This is where it all started,” he said in an interview with the club’s TV channel. “It never felt the same whichever club I went to afterwards. The Fife people gave me respect and it’s something I’ll never forget.”

Rougier welcomed back in Fife

During the interview, Rougier remembered fondly an occasion when he man-marked Paul Gascoigne, playing central midfield against Rangers.

His stand-out moment was a UEFA Cup second round tie in Munich’s Olympic Stadium on 30 October 1985 when Raith only narrowly lost 2-1 to Bayern Munich who boasted the likes of Oliver Kahn in goal and Jurgen Klinsmann up front.

His performances for Raith earned him a £250,000 move to Hibernian. He scored four times in 45 matches for Alex McLeish’s Edinburgh outfit but in January 1999 joined Port Vale, signed by Horton’s predecessor John Rudge for £175,000.

By then, he had established himself in the Trinidad and Tobago national side, a teammate of Dwight Yorke, and often being chosen as captain.

In his own words, he describes himself as: “A highly experienced football coach and former professional player with a career in the game spanning more than 25 years, I has successfully made the transition into coaching, management and club operations through a consistent focus on long term player and team development.

“A former national team captain with Trinidad & Tobago and a promotion winner in both England and Scotland, I have been able to effectively apply my on-field experience to guide team success and coaching strategy at professional, grassroots and school level.

“I am a positive, dynamic and passionate professional who is committed to my continued progression as a coach. I am always open to opportunities in which I can develop while positively impacting a football club or organisation, and would relish the opportunity to work with elite players within an ambitious environment.”