Tag: Wayne Clarke

Transfer makeweight Storer became all-time Seagulls hero

STUART Storer cemented his place in Brighton’s history when he scrambled home a last-gasp winner in the final ever home game at the Goldstone Ground.

When a seemingly goal-bound header from Mark Morris bounced off the south stand end’s crossbar, fortunately it fell into the path of the onrushing Storer who managed to scramble it over the line among a sea of flailing Doncaster Rovers legs.

That moment on 26 April 1997 is often brought up with Storer via media interviews or simply when bumping into Brighton fans while on his travels. The goal is featured in the pre-match video montage shown on the TV screens at the Amex, so it has been seen by various generations of fans.

“I’m proud that people hold me in so much esteem and I’m very fortunate to be part of the club’s history,” Storer told Brighton & Hove Independent in an April 2017 interview. “Younger people that I teach watch the video and take the Mickey but they’ll never kill my pride. I’m very proud of that moment.”

Storer provided the photographers with plenty of action shots

The goal ensured a vital three points were secured in the fight to avoid relegation from the lowest tier in the Football League. In the one remaining game the following week, Albion managed to get the point needed to stay up while simultaneously relegating Hereford United.

Those crucial matches were just two of more than 150 games Storer played for the Albion under six different managers during an extraordinarily turbulent time for the club.

It was, though, a rather curious playing career all round that saw some of the game’s biggest names – Liam Brady, Alan Ball, Howard Kendall and Ron Saunders – sign him for their clubs. And he carried on playing until he was 42.

In 2006 and 2007, he was part of Everton’s Masters’ six-a-side team in the televised tournament featuring veteran players. Storer’s teammates included the likes of Neville Southall, Adrian Heath and Alan Harper.

Storer had been at Goodison Park the last time the Toffees were the English league champions. However, he didn’t make a first team appearance, invariably being the 13th man in the days when there was only one substitute.

He’d arrived on Merseyside as a transfer makeweight in a £300,000 deal Kendall struck with Birmingham City to sign Wolverhampton-born striker Wayne Clarke – the youngest of five brothers who played league football.

Clarke’s former club, Wolves, were convinced Storer had been included in the deal simply to lower the sell-on amount they were due as part of a previous agreement.

Clarke scored five goals in 10 games – including a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Newcastle United on Easter Monday – to help Everton win the League Championship. Storer had made only 12 appearances for City in three years so his chances of making an impact with the title-chasers were slim.

Although Storer was on Everton’s books for nine months, he never crossed the white line for the first team and went on loan to Wigan Athletic, making his debut on the opening day of the 1987-88 season in a 4-4 draw away to Notts County (Garry Birtles scored two of County’s goals).

Storer was no stranger to a 4-4 draw. He played in two for Albion in 1997 – on 8 March at home to Orient and on Boxing Day later the same year when they drew at Priestfield against Colchester United (Paul Emblen got a hat-trick for the Seagulls).

Storer started nine games for the Latics and came on as a sub three times under Ray Matthias but they didn’t have the funds for a permanent transfer. Instead, the loan was cut short and, on Christmas Eve 1987, Everton sold him to then Fourth Division Bolton Wanderers for £25,000. He scored his first goal for the Trotters four days later in a 2-1 home win over Stockport County.

He enjoyed seven seasons at Burnden Park as they progressed from the basement division to the third tier under former Liverpool and England full-back Phil Neal.

His time with the Trotters included two trips to Wembley. He was a late substitute in the Wanderers side captained by Phil Brown who beat Torquay United 4-1 in to win the Sherpa van Trophy in 1989. And he was a starter in the Wanderers side who lost the 1991 Third Division play-off final to Tranmere Rovers.

Having broken an ankle and seen Neal switch to become Steve Coppell’s assistant manager at Manchester City, Storer was sold to Exeter City in March 1993 by Neal’s successor Bruce Rioch. Storer made 177 appearances for Bolton, but Rioch’s signing of David Lee had signalled the beginning of the end of his time there.

It was former World Cup winner Ball, then boss of Exeter City, who paid £25,000 for Storer’s services. He made 75 appearances (plus two as a sub) for the Grecians, initially under Ball and then his successor, former Leeds and England left-back Terry Cooper in the 1994-95 season.

Financial problems at the Devon club led to his departure. Early negotiations with a view to a transfer to Brighton initially broke down but Brady finally managed to secure his services for £15,000 in March 1995.

Ironically, he then suffered an injury during his first day’s training with the Seagulls, delaying his first appearance until 29 April. But it was memorable as he scored in a 3-3 draw away to his former club, Birmingham.

He recalled in a March 2019 interview with Michael Walker for the Daily Mail: “I was in an untenable situation at Exeter because they were going into administration. I had to get out. It was from the frying pan into the fire.”

However, Storer said, at the time he signed, he was unaware of the tensions going on around the Albion, although he knew he was the first player signed after a transfer embargo had been lifted. Not for the first time in the club’s history, fans dipped into their pockets to help buy the player.

“I think the fans just wanted to buy a player, any player, and they chipped in,” said Storer.

Born in the village of Harborough Magna, just north of Rugby, on 16 January 1967, he was raised in the village of Dunchurch, just south of Rugby, attending its local junior school before moving on to Bilton High School, where his footballing ability was recognised with selection in the Rugby Boys and Warwickshire Boys representative sides.

Wolverhampton Wanderers scout John Jarman spotted him and he went along to Molineux during the Ian Greaves managerial reign. When a takeover at Wolves saw Jarman and Greaves depart for Mansfield Town, they took the young Storer on as a trainee at Field Mill.

He began playing for their youth side but he was given his Mansfield first team debut aged only 16 in a 4-0 win over Hartlepool.

Storer and Julian Dicks at Birmingham City

Released after only a year with the Stags, he was offered another chance to build a league career by Birmingham who he joined in July 1984, initially signing as a trainee and then becoming a professional. But after limited first team opportunities at St Andrews, Saunders’ successor, John Bond, sold him to Everton as part of the Clarke transfer.

After Storer’s crucial part in keeping Albion in the League, he remained at the club until 1999, playing a total of 152 games and being part of the side who had to spend two years playing home games at Gillingham.

He moved back to Warwickshire on the day the Seagulls played their first friendly at Withdean on 24 July 1999,signing for Southern League Premier Division side Atherstone United, but he was only there for two months before moving to Kettering Town, who were playing in the Football Conference, the tier just below the Football League.

In May 2000, Storer signed for Isthmian League Premier Division side Chesham United and spent a season with them, before moving nearer to his Midlands base and signing for Hinckley United in March 2001.

Storer was made club captain, and as he approached his late 30s, he got more involved with coaching. At the age of 40, Storer was a member of the Hinckley team that achieved their highest ever league position of fourth in the Conference North, losing in the play-off final to deny them promotion.

After eight seasons, he had made more than 300 appearances for the part-timers of Hinckley while working as a PE teacher at various colleges in Coventry.

Storer continued to play until he was 42 and since 2013 has managed Bedworth United, where he is still in charge and also runs academies for boys and girls and A Level courses. He said: “I played until I was 42 at Hinckley in the Conference and then my legs gave way and I had to do something else in football.”

There’s a Michael Portillo style to Storer’s attire here and he admitted in a matchday programme article to having a penchant for “having a bizarre choice in clothing” as well as being an avid collector of hats.

‘Mad Dog’ Kennedy’s eyes weren’t always on the ball!

A Ken shot

IN A ‘10 worst Albion strikers you’ve seen’ list, Andy Kennedy would be a leading contender.

On the rare occasions he scored, he would celebrate with an exaggerated swagger befitting scoring the winning goal in a cup final – all rather out of place in a humdrum third tier league match!

The disdain in which the supporters of Watford hold him is hilariously summed up by Darren Rowe in an article on Blind, Stupid and Desperate.

“If an opposing team wanted to keep him under control, they did not need to mark him, merely make sure that he was offside, which, for long spells of the game, he would be,” opined Rowe. “Andy always seemed to have forgotten to put any studs in his boots. If ever he felt he could get away with it, his legs would give way at the edge of the box.”

In the same online title, author Chris Stride is a little more appreciative, before putting the knife in!

“He had good control, strength, ball skills and packed a powerful shot. In his early days at Blackburn, I saw him score a magnificent 25-yard curler and have an all-round blinding game against Aston Villa in the FA Cup.

andy kennedy - wat“When he signed for Watford I was hoping for more of the same. All we ever got was one long range effort away to Southend in the First Round of the Coca-Cola, and a couple of seasons of strolling around the pitch preserving his hairstyle and energy for (page three model girlfriend) Maria Whitaker.”

A Blackburn Rovers fan, posting in February 2018 under the name Drog on roversfans.com, also shared an amusing recollection of Kennedy’s time at his club.

“My main memories of Walsall though are from an occasion at homely former ground Fellows Park where Andy Kennedy netted a brace in a 2-1 win.

“My travelling companions and I managed to gain admission to the less than Babylonian splendour of something exotically named the Terry Ramsden Suite, after a colourful but ill-fated owner, where I was hoping to perhaps pass my congratulations on to Andy and his then-paramour, a lass named Maria Whittaker whom I greatly admired but sadly she had not made the trip to the Midlands.

“I can’t remember exactly what she looked like but the captions which accompanied her frequent newspaper appearances always made me think she’d make a sparkling conversationalist.”

It seems the shapely Ms Whitaker must have occupied Kennedy’s mind quite a lot. Non-League Paper contributor Liam Watson, once a player with Witton Albion, recalled in a 2013 article: “We also signed the striker Andy Kennedy – long dark hair, good looking fella – and he was knocking off the page three girl, Maria Whittaker, at the time. That was all he talked about.”

Born in Stirling on 8 October 1964 the son of an engineer father and beautician mother, Kennedy went to Wallace High School in the town and first gained football representative honours at under 13 level. It was his performances for Stirling Boys Club that caught the eye of Glasgow Rangers scout Davie Provan.

In those days he was a winger but after going through the ranks at Ibrox and signing professional at 17, he was converted into a central striker. He eventually broke through into the first team in 1982.

He mustered 20 games for the Scottish giants, scoring three times, but also spent some time on loan at Seiko in Hong Kong. Clearly it was time to move on from Glasgow!

In March 1985, Birmingham City were faltering as promotion candidates in the chasing pack at the top of the old Second Division when manager Ron Saunders took on the 20-year-old Kennedy at St Andrews.

Andy-Kennedy           Kennedy displays a more conventional goalscoring celebration for Birmingham

On 8 April, with regular striker David Geddis suspended and Blues trying to end a run that had seen just one win in the previous six games, Kennedy was called up for his debut at home to Sheffield United.

And what a start he made! Not only did he score with a header past former Villa ‘keeper John Burridge, he also set up Wayne Clarke to make it 3-0 and Blues went on to win 4-1.

Kennedy’s good form continued as he scored four in seven appearances and the stuttering Blues went from fourth to second and won automatic promotion back to the elite.

Kennedy was leading goalscorer the following season….but with just nine goals that didn’t say much, as the Blues went straight back down!

Throughout the course of his three-year contract with Birmingham he made 76 league appearances but scored just 18 goals and, in March 1987, was loaned to Sheffield United, where he scored once in nine games.

In the summer of 1988, he was on the move again, this time to Blackburn Rovers for a £50,000 fee. To be fair, the Ewood Park faithful probably saw the best of him as he netted 25 goals in 59 appearances during his two years at the club.

Watford were his next club and he joined for a fee of £60,000 in August 1990. But he failed to make an impact and was loaned out to Third Division Bolton Wanderers. Unfortunately, a back injury curtailed his time with the Trotters and he only managed one game before returning to Vicarage Road.

In his unhappy time with the Hornets, he made just 25 league appearances and scored only four goals.

A KenIt was a ‘phone call from Barry Lloyd‘s no.2 Martin Hinshelwood that heralded his arrival at the Goldstone. He joined Brighton for a nominal fee in September 1992, making his debut as a substitute for Steve Cotterill in a 1-0 home defeat to Reading on 26 September 1992.

“I am delighted to be here with a great bunch of lads and now I am determined to play my part in scoring goals and getting the club promotion,” he told the matchday programme.

A skip through recollections of Kennedy on North Stand Chat hardly stand as a ringing endorsement to his contribution in the stripes, the most complimentary coming from Austrian Gull, who maintained: “He wasn’t always that bad – we’d been spoilt by the beast that was Mike Small and Kennedy could never come close to reaching that level. Wasn’t the most hardworking but him and (Kurt) Nogan were okay. We certainly had a lot worse than Kennedy to come.”

Meanwhile backson reckoned: “Frustrating player. When we played United in the cup at Old Trafford, I seem to remember he was genuinely fouled in the box but went down so damn theatrically, like he’d been shot, it wasn’t given.”

Others recall him through that nickname ‘Mad Dog’ (first coined in a News of the World article about his affair with Ms Whittaker). Gwylan said: “Mad Dog wasn’t that bad – he was just lazy and looked unfit. If he had the attitude of Gary Hart, say, he’d have been an excellent player for us as he had a fair degree of ability.”

Pinkie Brown also observed: “Certainly had ability when he felt inclined. Sadly, as he had a bad attitude and was lazy, supporters saw little of that ability. One of those players who could have gone further had he been more focused.”

Several fans remember how he didn’t react well to observations from the terraces pointing out his shortcomings. Bladders was amused to recall: “One time, when he lazily chased a ball that went out of play, my old man told him to ‘put some bloody effort in Kennedy’. Kennedy then threatened to jump into the South Stand and smash his face in if he gave him any more lip.”

I must say on checking with the record books, I am staggered to discover he scored 10 times in 42 games for Brighton – although I do remember those over the top celebrations.

It’s said he left the club in 1994 after Liam Brady told him he wasn’t good enough to play for the reserves in the Sussex Senior Cup Final.

He ended his English league career with a cameo at Gillingham and at the age of 30 tried his luck in Hong Kong again, this time with Tsing Tao, before returning to the British Isles to play in Northern Ireland with Portadown and Shelbourne in Dublin.

As he was not the sort of player likely to be invited back to the club to reminisce over old times, he appears to have slipped below the radar in recent times.

However, Kennedy has linked up as a coach with the Rangers Soccer Schools programme at home and in North America. In 2005, Kennedy was part of a team of Rangers coaches who ran soccer schools in Canada. According to a Birmingham Mail report in 2015, Kennedy stayed in Canada at Ajax FC.