Tag: The Goldstone Ground

Sparks flew in Brighton v Chelsea FA Cup clashes

BRIGHTON v Chelsea in the FA Cup sparks memories for supporters of my generation stretching back several decades.

Many began as Albion followers the day the then First Division side from Stamford Bridge visited the Goldstone Ground in February 1967 when a dubious refereeing decision denied Third Division Brighton a shock win.

Others, me included, recall a fiery encounter in Hove six years later when Second Division strugglers Brighton were beaten 2-0 courtesy of two Peter Osgood goals in a game marred by violence on and off the pitch.

That third-round tie in January 1973 was dubbed “a day of shame” in the newspapers after two players were sent off, five were booked and crowd trouble erupted.

The chance for lower ranked teams to pitch their lesser talents against the big boys has always been at the heart of the FA Cup’s appeal.

That was certainly the case when Archie Macaulay’s mid-table Albion hosted Tommy Docherty’s top 10 Chelsea on 18 February 1967. To give it musical context, Georgy Girl by The Seekers had just taken over from The Monkees’ I’m A Believer at no.1 in the pop charts!

At a time when home crowds were normally 12,000 – 13,000, a sell-out gate of 35,000 packed into the Goldstone.

Cup fever had certainly captured the imagination of the Sussex public. In the previous round, 29,208 watched Albion beat Aldershot 3-1 in a third-round replay for the chance to take on the top division Pensioners (as Chelsea were called back then).

The two clubs hadn’t met in any other competition for 34 years – back in January 1933 Brighton beat the London side 2-1 in a third round FA Cup tie.

After such a long gap, maybe it was understandable that Albion’s young captain, Dave Turner, at 22, fell off the settee at home in excitement when he saw the cup draw made on the television.

Canny Brighton decided to sell tickets for the game at a reserve home fixture against Notts County, meaning a stunning 22,229 paid to watch the second string win 1-0 in order to secure their entry to the big game.

The matchday programme revealed how Docherty and several of his players had watched the Aldershot match to check out what would be in store for them.

Docherty meanwhile was very complimentary in his programme notes, declaring: “Chelsea know that we have a hard and difficult task today, and are not facing it in a complacent manner.”

He added: “We know that there is great potential for the Albion club. They have a First Division set-up at the Goldstone Ground, and First Division ideas, as well as a first-class pitch.

“The day cannot be very far away when they become one of our top clubs, and I am just one of many people in the game who will welcome their promotion to a higher class.”

However, the game was only five minutes old when Bobby Tambling gave Chelsea the lead. But before half-time, Chelsea’s John Boyle (who would several years later joined Albion on loan) was sent off for kicking Wally Gould. And just four minutes into the second half, Turner gave Albion parity.

Goalkeeper Tony Burns, who had top flight experience with Arsenal, made several decent saves in the game and, with the clock ticking down, a cracking strike by winger Brian Tawse in the closing minutes of the game looked to have won it for the Third Division side.

“I smashed a volley past Peter Bonetti from 20 yards out with the score at 1-1 and thought I’d got the winner,” Tawse told Brian Fowlie of the Sunday Post in 2015. “It was a goal that could have made my career – but the referee chalked it off.”

Unfortunately, the official had spotted an infringement by Kit Napier and the ‘goal’ was disallowed.

As Brighton would discover again only too painfully in the 1983 final, these winning chances rarely happen twice, and, sure enough, in the replay at Stamford Bridge Chelsea ran out 4-0 winners in front of a massive crowd of 54,852.

Chelsea went on to reach that season’s final at Wembley only to lose 2-1 to a Spurs side that had Joe Kinnear at right-back and Alan Mullery in midfield.

Hardman Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris, their captain in 1967, was still leading the side by the time of the 13 January 1973 game and John Hollins and Tommy Baldwin also played in both. The dismissed Boyle was on the Chelsea bench in 1973. Only John Templeman (right) played in both games for Brighton.

The UK had just joined the European Economic Community (as it was then called) and You’re So Vain by Carly Simon was no.1 in the charts. Albion had moved up a division under Pat Saward having won promotion the previous May, but the side was struggling at the foot of the Second Division, unable to cope at the higher level.

Nevertheless, there were two players looking forward to the cup tie: Bert Murray and £28,000 signing Barry Bridges had both won silverware at Chelsea in the 1960s.

Barry Bridges slots home for Chelsea in a FA Cup tie v Peterborough and, pictured by the Daily Mirror’s Monte Fresco, ahead of the 1973 match against his old club.

“It’s a tremendous draw for the club and a dream draw for Bert Murray and myself who both started our careers at Chelsea,” Bridges told Goal magazine. “Personally, it will be nice to see most of the Chelsea lads again. I grew up with Peter Bonetti, Ron Harris and Ossie (Peter Osgood).”

Unfortunately the Albion game was one of several former Worthing schoolboy Bonetti missed through injury and illness in the 1972-73 season, John Phillips deputising in goal at the Goldstone.

How this young supporter recorded the team info in his scrapbook

Dave Sexton, a promotion winner with Brighton in 1958, saw his Chelsea side put the ball in Albion’s net within the first 10 seconds of the game but Bill Garner’s effort was ruled out for offside, to the bemusement of the football writers watching. As the game unfolded, not only did it end in defeat for the Albion but it attracted ugly headlines for all the wrong reasons as Harris and Brighton left back George Ley were sent off.

Ley was dismissed in the 85th minute for bringing down Baldwin from behind and then getting involved in a punch-up with England international Osgood, the scorer of Chelsea’s goals in the 17th and 60th minutes, who himself was booked for his part in the altercation.

Albion’s Eddie Spearritt had been the first to go in the book on 23 minutes (for a foul on Alan Hudson) and on 73 minutes was involved in the incident which led to Harris being sent off for the first time in his career.

Esteemed football writer Norman Giller recorded it like this: “Harris got involved in a tussle with Spearritt, and, as he pushed him, Spearritt went down holding his face as if he had been punched. The referee directed Ron to an early bath. All the bones he had kicked, and here was Harris being sent off for a playground push.”

1970 Cup winner Dave Webb went in the book for wiping out Spearritt, joining colleague Steve Kember who was cautioned for fouling Steve Piper. Albion’s Graham Howell also went into referee Peter Reeves’ notebook for taking down Baldwin.

The kicking and aggression on the pitch led to fighting on the terraces with 25 people arrested. And Leicester referee Reeves had to be given a police escort off the pitch.

Former Spurs captain-turned-journalist Danny Blanchflower, writing in the Sunday Express: declared: “This FA Cup third-round tie was as disgraceful as any match I’ve ever seen.”

In the opinion of Albion scribe John Vinicombe in the Evening Argus: “Football anarchy gripped the Goldstone during the last 20 minutes of Albion’s FA Cup tie with Chelsea.

“In the frenzy, players fought one another, hacked and kicked, and the violence tiggered an all-too-predictable chain reaction on the terraces where rival factions became one mass of writhing, mindless hooligans.”

Interestingly, Harris’ dismissal was subsequently overturned, Giller recording: “A Brighton-supporting vicar, with a pitchside view, wrote to the Football Association telling them what he had witnessed, and ‘Chopper’ was vindicated.”

Chelsea made it through to the quarter-finals of that season’s tournament before losing 2-1 to Arsenal in a replay. Arsenal lost in the semis to Sunderland, the Second Division side who stunned the football world at the time by beating Leeds United in the final.

Mike Bailey took the Seagulls to their highest-ever finish

ONE OF the all-time greats of Wolverhampton Wanderers led Brighton & Hove Albion to their highest-ever finish in football.

Midfield general Mike Bailey played for Wolves for 11 seasons between 1965 and 1976, leading the team to promotion from the Second Division in 1966-67, helping them to top-flight positions of fourth and fifth in 1971 and 1973, getting to the final of the UEFA Cup in 1972, and lifting the League Cup at Wembley in 1974.

MB WWFCLgeCupMike Bailey holds aloft the League Cup after Wolves beat Manchester City 2-1 at Wembley.

It was perhaps a hard act to follow Alan Mullery as manager of Brighton, particularly as the former Spurs and Fulham captain had led the club from Third Division obscurity to the pinnacle of English football within three years.

But Bailey had just got Charlton Athletic promoted from the Third Division and in the 1981-82 season led Albion to a 13th place finish, a record which was only threatened in 2017-18 by Chris Hughton’s side, who eventually ended up 15th.

Unfortunately, although Bailey’s team was relatively successful, the style of play he adopted to achieve that position was a turn-off to the fans who deserted the Albion in their hundreds and thousands.

Eventually, chairman Mike Bamber felt he had to address the slump in support by sacking Bailey in December 1982. “He’s a smashing bloke, I’m sorry to see him go, but it had to be done,” said Bamber. There are plenty – in particular Bailey! – who feel he acted a little too hastily.

Bailey shared his feelings in an interview he gave to the News of the World’s Reg Drury in the run-up to the 1983 FA Cup Final.

Mike Bailey talks to the News of the World; his often frank programme notes; his assistant, John Collins, a former Luton Town player.

“It seems that my team has been relegated from the First Division while Jimmy Melia’s team has reached the Cup Final,” he began.

Wanting to put the record straight having been hurt by some of the media coverage he’d seen since his departure, he explained: “I found the previous manager Alan Mullery had left me with a good squad, but, naturally I built on it and imposed my own style of play.”

Bailey resented accusations that his style had been dull and boring football, pointing out: “Nobody said that midway through last season when we were sixth and there was talk of Europe.

“We were organised and disciplined and getting results. John Collins, a great coach, was on the same wavelength as me. We wanted to lay the foundations of lasting success, just like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley did at Liverpool.

“The only problem was that winning 1-0 and 2-0 didn’t satisfy everybody. I tried to change things too soon – that was a mistake.

“When I left, we were 18th with more than a point a game. I’ve never known a team go down when fifth from bottom.”

It was clear from the outset of Bailey’s reign that he didn’t suffer fools gladly and there were numerous clashes with players, notably Steve Foster, Michael Robinson and Neil McNab, the displaced Gordon Smith and Mickey Thomas, a Bailey signing who repeatedly went missing because his wife didn’t like it in the south.

Bailey would vent his feelings quite overtly in his matchday programme notes; he was not afraid to hit out at referees, the football authorities and the media, as well as trying to explain his decisions to supporters, urging them to get behind the team rather than criticise.

Happier times as Mike Bailey becomes Albion manager and signs Tony Grealish to replace outgoing stalwart midfielder and skipper, Brian Horton.

Attempting to shine a light on the comings and goings associated with his arrival, he explained: “The moves we have been making are designed to provide Brighton with a better football team and one that can consolidate its position in the First Division, rather than struggle, such as in the last two seasons.”

By Christmas, the team were comfortably in the top half of the table and in an interview with the Argus, Bailey said: “I must admit that as a player and captain of Wolves I was a bit of a bastard, slagging others off, and that sort of thing. But being a manager, one sees everything in a different light. I am still trying to learn as a manager, especially now that I am with a First Division club.”

Three months later, shortly after he had appeared at a fans forum at the Brighton Centre, he very pointedly said: “It is my job to select the team and to try to win matches.

“People are quite entitled to their opinion, but I am paid to get results for Brighton and that is my first priority.

“Building a successful team is a long-term business and I have recently spoken to many top people in the professional game who admire what we are doing here at Brighton and just how far we have come in a short space of time.

“We know we still have a long way to go, but we are all working towards a successful future.”

As he assessed his first season, he said: “Many good things have come out of our season. Our early results were encouraging and we quickly became an organised and efficient side. The lads got into their rhythm quickly and it was a nice ‘plus’ to get into a high league position so early on.”

He had special words of praise for Gary Stevens and said: “Although the youngest member of our first team squad, Gary is a perfect example to his fellow professionals. Whatever we ask of him he will always do his best, he is completely dedicated and sets a fine example to his fellow players.”

Meanwhile, in his own end of season summary, Argus Albion reporter John Vinicombe maintained: “It is Bailey’s chief regret that he changed his playing policy in response to public, and possibly private, pressure with the result that Albion finished the latter part of the season in most disappointing fashion.

“Accusations that Albion were the principal bores of the First Division at home were heaped on Bailey’s head, and, while he is a man not given to altering his mind for no good reason, certain instructions were issued to placate the rising tide of criticisms.”

Vinicombe recorded that the average home gate for 1981-82 was 18,241, fully 6,500 fewer than had supported the side during their first season amongst the elite.

“The Goldstone regulars, who are not typical of First Division crowds (but neither is the ground) grew restless at a series of frustrating home draws, and finally turned on their own players,” he said.

At the beginning of the following season, off-field matters brought disruption to the playing side. Arsenal’s former FA Cup winner Charlie George had trained with the Seagulls during pre-season and senior players Foster, Robinson and McNab publicly voiced their disappointment that the money wasn’t found to bring such a player on board permanently.

McNab in particular accused the club of lacking ambition and efforts were made to send him out on loan. Similarly, Robinson was lined up for a swap deal with Sunderland’s Stan Cummins, but it fell through.

Meanwhile, Albion couldn’t buy a win away from home and suffered two 5-0 defeats (against Luton and West Brom) and a 4-0 spanking at Nottingham Forest – all in September. Then, four defeats on the spin in November, going into December, finally cost Bailey his job. Perhaps the writing was on the wall when, in his final programme contribution, he blamed the run of poor results on bad luck and admitted: “I feel we are somehow in a rut.”

It would be fair to say Bailey the player enjoyed more success than Bailey the manager. So, where did it all begin?

Born on 27 February 1942 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, he went to the same school in Gorleston, Norfolk, as the former Arsenal centre back Peter Simpson. His career began with non-league Gorleston before Charlton Athletic snapped him up in 1958 and he spent eight years at The Valley.

M Bailey charltonDuring his time there, he was capped twice by England as manager Alf Ramsey explored options for his 1966 World Cup squad. Just a week after making his fifth appearance for England under 23s, Bailey, aged 22, was called up to make his full debut in a friendly against the USA on 27 May 1964.

He had broken into the under 23s only three months earlier, making his debut in a 3-2 win over Scotland at St James’ Park, Newcastle, on 5 February 1964.He retained his place against France, Hungary, Israel and Turkey, games in which his teammates included Graham Cross, Mullery and Martin Chivers.

England ran out 10-0 winners in New York with Roger Hunt scoring four, Fred Pickering three, Terry Paine two, and Bobby Charlton the other.

Eight of that England side made it to the 1966 World Cup squad two years later but a broken leg put paid to Bailey’s chances of joining them, even though he got one more chance to impress Ramsey.

Six months after the win in New York, he was in the England team who beat Wales 2-1 at Wembley in the Home Championship. Frank Wignall, who would later spend a season with Bailey at Wolves, scored both England’s goals. Many years later, Wignall was playing for Burton Albion when a certain Peter Ward began to shine!

In 1965, Bailey broke his leg in a FA Cup tie against Middlesbrough and that was at a time when such injuries could be career-threatening.

“I was worried that may have been it,” Bailey recalled in his autobiography, The Valley Wanderer: The Mike Bailey Story (published in November 2015). “In the end, I was out for six months. My leg got stronger and I never had problems with it again, so it was a blessing in disguise in that respect.

“Charlton had these (steep) terraces. I’d go up to them every day, I was getting fitter and fitter. But it was too late to get in the 1966 World Cup side – Alf Ramsey had got his team in place.”

 Bailey missed out on the 1966 England World Cup squad but he won Football League representative honours and enjoyed success as captain of Wolves.

During his time with the England under 23s, Bailey had become friends with Wolves’ Ernie Hunt (the striker who later played for Coventry City) and Hunt persuaded him to move to the Black Country club.

Thus began an association which saw him play a total of 436 games for Wolves over 11 seasons, leading a side with solid defenders like John McAlle, Francis Munro and Derek Parkin, combined with exciting players like forwards Derek Dougan and John Richards, plus winger Dave Wagstaffe.

However, when coach Sammy Chung stepped up to take over as manager, he selected Kenny Hibbitt ahead of Bailey so the former skipper chose to end his playing days in America, with the Minnesota Kicks, who were managed by the former Brighton boss Freddie Goodwin.

Nevertheless, Bailey’s contribution to the team famous for their old gold kit saw him inducted into the Wolves Hall of Fame in 2010.

On his return to the UK, Bailey became manager of Hereford United, then he returned to The Valley as manager of Charlton and, immediately after getting them promoted to the third tier, took over at Brighton in the summer of 1981.

A somewhat extraordinary stat I discovered about Bailey’s management career in England through managerstats.co.uk was that he managed each of those three clubs for just 65 games. At Hereford, his record was W 32, D 11, L 22; at Charlton W 21, D 17, L 27; at Brighton, W 20 D 17, L 28.

In 1984, he moved to Greece to manage OFI Crete, and he later worked as reserve team coach at Portsmouth. Later still, he did some scouting work for Wolves.

Pictures from various sources: Goal and Shoot! magazines; the Evening Argus, the News of the World, and the Albion matchday programme.

Howard Wilkinson – aka ‘Sergeant Wilko’ – began coaching at Albion

wilko bhaYORKSHIREMAN Howard Wilkinson was a key part of the first Albion side I watched. The former Sheffield Wednesday player was a speedy winger in Freddie Goodwin’s 1969 team.

But away from The Goldstone, he had already been sowing the seeds of his future coaching and managerial success.

My father was a founder of local amateur side Shoreham United, a Brighton League team, and the future “Sergeant Wilko” (as the press liked to dub him) was brought in to do some expert coaching with United’s first team.

I well remember as a young boy sitting on the sidelines in Buckingham Park, Shoreham, watching him put the players through their paces with various routines.

I waited eagerly with my autograph book as Wilkinson shared the benefit of his skills and experience with the willing amateurs.

I was chuffed to bits when he rewarded my patience with his signature at the end of the session but who would have thought the man before me would go on to manage League Champions Leeds United as well as the England national team!

I’ve since discovered how Wilkinson had taken his preliminary coaching badge shortly after joining Brighton in the summer of 1966. Readers of the matchday programme were told how Wilkinson was one of six Albion players who were taking the badge at Whitehawk under former Brighton wing half Steve Burtenshaw, who’d turned to coaching that year after his Albion playing career had come to an end.

By the summer of 1968, Wilkinson had already taken his full FA coaching badge at Lilleshall when only 25, and, as well as Shoreham United, he was coaching youngsters at Fawcett Secondary School, Brighton Boys, Sussex University and the Sussex County XI.

Born in the Netherthorpe district of Sheffield on 13 November 1943, he earned early recognition for his footballing ability playing for Yorkshire Grammar Schools and England Grammar Schools.

Wilkinson earned five caps for England Youth in 1962. He scored on his debut in a 4-0 win over Wales at the County Ground, Swindon, on 17 March 1962 in a side that also featured future full England international Paul Madeley (Leeds United).

He also appeared in the UEFA Youth Tournament in Romania the following month when England were beaten 5-0 by Yugoslavia, 3-0 by the Netherlands and drew 0-0 with Bulgaria. The following month he was in the England side beaten 2-1 by Northern Ireland in Londonderry in the Amateur Youth Championship for the British Association.

Wilkinson played local football with Hallam when he started to attract attention and was initially on the books of Sheffield United but it was city rivals Wednesday who took him on as a professional. The manager at the time was Vic Buckingham, known as the pioneer of ‘total football’, the philosophy later adopted by his protege Johann Cruyff.  But it wasn’t until the 1964-65 season under Alan Brown that Wilkinson broke into the first team, making his debut on 9 September 1964.

“My football league debut was a tough one against Chelsea, who were then top of the league, at Stamford Bridge,” he said. “We forced a 1-1 draw and I quite enjoyed the match.” He also played the following Saturday in the return fixture when they lost 3-2 at home to Chelsea (Bert Murray scored two of Chelsea’s goals). Wilkinson made 12 appearances across the season as Wednesday finished sixth in the old First Division.

The following season he scored both Wednesday goals in a 4-2 defeat away to West Ham United on 16 October 1965 and on 8 January he was on the scoresheet in a home 2-1 defeat versus Leicester City, but he only made eight appearances all season, playing his last game for the Owls on 19 March 1966. He wasn’t part of the Wednesday team who lost 3-2 to Everton in the 1966 FA Cup Final.

Wilkinson left Hillsborough for the Albion a few days after England won the World Cup and scored on his debut in the opening match of the season as Brighton drew 2-2 at home to Swindon Town. He was on the mark again two games later getting Albion’s goal in a 1-1 draw at Reading. He was also a scorer in one of the few highlights of that first season, when third tier Brighton beat Jimmy Hill’s top tier Coventry City 3-1 in a League Cup replay.

The winger from Wednesday continued to earn rave reviews for his performances until suffering concussion and a fractured cheekbone during a match away to Middlesbrough. In the days when medicine still had a long way to go, Wilkinson was out of the side for ages.

“I seemed to be out for an eternity after that injury,” Wilkinson told journalist Spencer Vignes in a matchday programme article. “They didn’t have the technology back then that they do today to mend injuries like that. I had an operation, they reset it, and I was on fluids for ages. It wasn’t nice.”

I’m grateful to the excellent Albion retro blog, The Goldstone Wrap, for digging out a quote from Wilkinson’s 1992 book, Managing to Succeed, in which he revealed this nugget about life on the south coast:

“When I was a player at Brighton, under manager Archie Macaulay’s guidance, we had some remarkable preparations for important matches and cup-ties. There were liberal doses of sherry and raw eggs, calves foot jelly, fillet steak, and plenty of walks on the seafront where we were taken to fill our lungs with the ozone.”

In five years with Brighton, he made 130 appearances (plus 17 as a sub), scoring 19 goals. He always had an eye towards what would happen after his playing days, explaining: “It was during my last year at Brighton that I decided to try and do a teaching qualification combined with a degree, ready for when I finished playing.”

He moved on from the Albion at the end of Pat Saward’s first season, having made only 18 starts under the new Irish manager. Jim Smith had contacted him to ask if he would join him at Boston United as player-coach. “It turned out that I would be on just as much money as I was at Brighton, even though Boston were non-league, so I went.”

Wilkinson enrolled on a degree course in Physical Education at Sheffield University and over four years combined coaching and playing with being a student, a husband and a father. On top of that, he ended up as manager after Smith left. Boston won the Northern Premier League title four times in his six years at the club and people started to take notice.

The FA appointed him as their regional coach for the Sheffield area and by 1978 he was helping out Dave Sexton and Terry Venables with the England under-21s. In December 1979, he joined Notts County as a coach under Jimmy Sirrel, eventually taking over as team manager for the 1982-83 season when County were a top-tier side.

In June 1983, he returned to Wednesday as manager and, in his first season in charge, steered them to promotion from the second tier. He kept them among the elite for four seasons.

Undoubtedly the pinnacle of his career was guiding Leeds United to the League Championship in 1992. He moved to Elland Road in 1988 and built a decent side captained by the future Scotland manager Gordon Strachan.

They won the last of the old Football League Division One titles and, remarkably, to this day Wilkinson remains the last English manager to achieve that feat. Not surprisingly he was that season’s Manager of the Year.

United fanzine The Square Ball had only good things to say about the man in a 2011 article. “Howard Wilkinson gave Leeds three fantastic seasons of unforgettable glory in 1989/90, 1990/91 and 1991/92; and the Charity Shield at Wembley and the European glory nights against Stuttgart and Monaco stand with the best memories of Leeds’ modern era. More than that, he gave Leeds United back its sense of justifiable self-worth; no longer living in the past, no longer derided in playgrounds, Leeds were a proper football club again, fit for the modern era.”

Sacked by Leeds in 1996, he then began to move ‘upstairs’ so to speak and was appointed as the Football Association’s technical director as the forerunner to several executive-style appointments.

However, he twice found himself in temporary charge of the England national team, firstly after Glenn Hoddle was forced to resign.

He oversaw a 2-0 defeat to France in a friendly at Wembley before Kevin Keegan took the reigns. Twenty months later he stepped into the breach again when Keegan quit and took charge of a World Cup preliminary match in Helsinki, England drawing 0-0 against Finland.

After England, he had a brief unsuccessful spell at Sunderland, assisted by Steve Cotterill, and later was involved in and around the boardroom back at Hillsborough.

Wilkinson’s work as technical director of the FA between 1998 and 2002 has been hailed as having a major impact and influence on the domestic game, providing a blueprint for the subsequent building of the National Football Centre at St. George’s Park.

In the 2024 New Year Honours List, having just turned 80, Wilkinson was awarded an OBE for his services to football and charity, including ongoing work as chairman of the League Managers Association. LMA chief executive Richard Bevan OBE said: “Howard’s legacy in English football may be one of the most unheralded yet important in the modern game.

“Universally respected and loved by his colleagues and peers in the game, he has built an association of professional football managers, which is globally recognised as one of the most progressive organisations in world sport.

“As one of English football’s greatest thinkers, he has supported thousands of managers, coaches, players and administrators in the game to fulfil their potential and build impactful careers in football.

“He has achieved so much in his life, whilst retaining the values, humility and decorum that were instilled in him as a young coach, passing on these values to everyone he has worked with and for.”