Tag: Workington

Bobby Moore’s Dear mate netted five in seven for Albion

A STRIKER who once scored five goals in 20 minutes for West Ham took slightly longer when playing for Brighton but still netted five in seven games.

Brian Dear (nicknamed Stag, geddit?) won the European Cup Winners’ Cup with West Ham in front of 97,974 fans at Wembley in May 1965. Only the month before, he’d netted in the 44th, 53rd, 56th, 59th and 64th minutes of West Ham’s 6-1 demolition of West Brom in front of 27,706 fans at the Boleyn Ground.

Dear scores one of his five v WBA

Two years later, 23-year-old Dear found himself travelling to Workington to make his debut for Third Division Albion. The train journey there had been made worse by a derailment that meant Albion only arrived at the Borough Park ground 45 minutes before kick-off. Although Kit Napier scored against his former club, a sparse crowd of just 2,863 saw the visitors beaten 2-1.

Quite some change in fortunes for Dear, who had joined Brighton the previous day – transfer deadline day – in March 1967 when manager Archie Macaulay, a one-time Hammers player, went back to his old club to secure the forward’s services.

“No fee was paid at the time of the transfer. This will be discussed at the end of the season, and from now until then, it is up to Brian to prove his worth as to whether there will be a place at the Goldstone Ground for him in the future,” Macaulay wrote in the matchday programme.

Albion were bumping along in the lower half of the old Third Division at the time so it was quite a step down for Dear, but Brighton were keen to make his move permanent.

It wasn’t long before he showed what he was made of; Dear scored twice in his third game, on Easter Saturday, as Scunthorpe United held the Albion to a 2-2 draw at the Goldstone. Two days later he scored the only goal of the game as Albion beat visitors Watford 1-0. He was on the scoresheet again when Albion visited Boundary Park, Oldham, but the home side rallied in the second half to end up 4-1 winners.

Back at the Goldstone the following Saturday, he scored Brighton’s opener in a 2-0 win over Oxford United (top picture), but that was the end of his scoring in Albion’s colours. He missed three matches in April and his last game for Brighton was in a goalless draw away to Shrewsbury.

His hoped-for permanent signing didn’t happen and he returned to West Ham where the following season he went on to enjoy the most consistent spell of his Hammers career, scoring 16 goals in 29 matches (plus one as sub). The East Londoners finished in mid-table: a season in which Manchester City were champions, two points ahead of second-placed Man Utd.

Dear rises to get in a header at the Goldstone Ground, with the West Stand in the background

“As a fan watching him, he was frustrating at times but he had the natural talent required for the top level and he certainly knew how to score goals,” said Tony Hanna, of the excellent fans website West Ham Till I Die.

Born in Plaistow, London, on 18 September 1943, Dear joined West Ham straight from school at the age of 15 and was an England schoolboy international who played against Scotland, Wales and Ireland in 1959.

On 29 December 1960, he scored twice for an England Youth XI when they beat an AFA Public Schools XI 8-0. Phil Beal and Bert Murray were among his teammates.

Dear made his league debut for the Hammers away to Wolves on 29 August 1962 but there were only two more first team appearances that season.

The following season, which culminated in West Ham beating a Preston North End side captained by Nobby Lawton 3-2 (Alex Dawson scored one of Preston’s goals), saw Dear struggle to get into the side and he made just three league appearances.

That five-goal haul v West Brom – when the crowd taunted the Baggies with a rendition of  ‘Oh Dear what can the matter be’ – helped take his 1964-65 season stats to 14 goals in just 15 appearances but he was part of the XI who won the European Cup Winners Cup 2-0 at Wembley. He scored four goals in previous rounds but it was outside right Alan Sealey who scored both Hammers goals against TSV Munich 1860 in the final.

Dear once again spent most of the 1965-66 season in a back-up role, featuring in just 10 first team matches while Hammer of the Year Geoff Hurst scored an impressive 40 goals in all competitions before going on to cement his name in English football history with a hat-trick as England won the World Cup in July 1966.

Hurst went one better the following season, netting 41 times, while Dear ended the season exploiting an opportunity to play competitive football with the Albion.

Throughout it all, Dear became a close friend of the legendary Bobby Moore, and in April 2021 West Ham invited the former striker to talk to the club’s academy players about the man he first met when he joined the club in 1958, the year Moore made his first-team debut against Manchester United at the tender age of 17.

“After that first period, that’s when we began to become friends,” Dear told the schoolboys. “We were all mates. You are all different ages at the academy, but you all know one another, how you play, what you do – it’s the same as us.

“Bobby was a bit shy. Once he felt comfortable with you, that was it. You had everything he could give, and he’d give everything to you. He was an amazing fella.”

The West Ham website said: “Dear and Moore were also inseparable off the pitch, enjoying a close friendship for over three decades before the icon’s tragic passing on 24 February 1993, at the age of just 51.”

Dear told the schoolboys: “You would have loved him if you’d have met him. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, and you lads should be very proud that you’re involved in the club that he was a part of.”

West Ham through and through, Dear did eventually leave Upton Park in February 1969, scoring seven times in 13 appearances for Fulham but they were relegated to the Third Division. He swiftly moved on to Millwall but only managed a handful of games before returning to West Ham in 1970.

However, his short-lived second spell is best remembered for his involvement in a curfew-busting drink before a FA Cup tie at Blackpool on 2 January 1971. Having been told icy weather would most likely mean the match would be called off, Dear, Moore, Jimmy Greaves, Clyde Best and physio Rob Jenkins went out late to ex-boxer Brian London’s club in the seaside resort.

Unfortunately, the game went ahead, West Ham were surprisingly beaten 4-0 by bottom-of-the-league Blackpool, and someone dobbed in the errant Hammers group.

Dear’s appearance as a sub that day was his last involvement in professional football. Manager Ron Greenwood turfed him out, along with Greaves, while Moore and Best were fined. Best later told his version of the story to the Knees Up Mother Brown website.

Before hanging up his boots, Dear played briefly for non-league Woodford Town. Football was in his blood and he became catering manager at Southend United and later worked in its commercial department.

West Ham Till I Die writer Tony Hanna concluded: “By Brian’s own admission he ‘enjoyed life’ more than most professional footballers. His stocky build was more often likened to being overweight and he enjoyed a beer after training, and also after matches.

“Being left out of the team, especially if he had scored the previous week, only further demotivated him in a career where he never really cemented a first team place.”

Shankly ‘disciple’ George Aitken coached Mariners and Seagulls

MEDIA-friendly Jimmy Melia stole all the limelight as Brighton stormed to the final of the 1983 FA Cup but a quiet, wavy-haired Scot alongside him played a big part in the achievement.

George Aitken was joint caretaker manager with Melia for three months after Mike Bailey’s dismissal in December 1982, and he’d previously been in the dugout alongside Alan Mullery and Ken Craggs during Albion’s rise through the divisions having originally been brought to the club by Peter Taylor.

.When he died aged 78 in August 2006, Jimmy Case told the Cumbrian Times & Star: “George was a great character, a great friend and coach right the way through my time at the club. “Jimmy Melia was in the front line with his white shoes but George was right there in terms of the workings of the club and picking the team. He was well respected for his knowledge of the game.”

Mark Lawrenson also paid tribute in an interview with Argus reporter Paul Holden, telling him: “George never got carried away. He had seen it all before. He was a very wily old fox. He was from the old school, a good, honest, true, loyal man.

“He knew his football, knew his players and liked a laugh. He had one of those infectious laughs.”

Micky Adams said: “He was a great football man, George. When I first joined Brighton as manager, he was one of my biggest allies. He always popped into the office to chew the cud and talk football. He loved Brighton and was a well-respected man who loved the game.”

Holden also reported that at Aitken’s testimonial dinner in 1988, former Albion secretary, Stephen Rooke, said: “He may never have reached the dizzy heights attained by many of his friends and acquaintances over the years but he represents a rare breed, in fact the very lifeblood of our national game.

Aitken tiler sully 78

Aitken puts Ken Tiler and Peter O’Sullivan through their paces in pre-season training in 1978

“Deep down George is a very private person but his reliability and honest, down-to-earth approach has, quite rightly, earned him enormous respect throughout the football world.”

Aitken had been a manager in his own right at Workington, and he and Melia had both been players under one of the game’s legends – Bill Shankly.

Shankly managed Workington between 6 January 1954 and 15 November 1955, when Aitken was a strong and commanding centre back for the Cumbrian side, and five of Melia’s 10 years playing for Liverpool were under Shankly’s managership.

Born in Dalkeith, Scotland, on 13 August 1928, Aitken was educated at Dalkeith High School and played football for Midlothian Schools.

His step up to senior football came at Edinburgh Thistle, which was essentially a feeder side for Hibernian.

David Jack, remembered as the first player ever to score at Wembley, had become manager of Middlesbrough in 1944, and took Aitken to Ayresome Park after the war.

“I was 20 at the time and it took me two seasons to reach the first team,” Aitken recalled in an Albion matchday programme article.

“Middlesbrough had a great team at the time and I played alongside the likes of (England internationals) Wilf Mannion and George Hardwick.”

Aitken made his debut against Fulham in 1951-52, but only made 18 top division appearances and, in July 1953, was sold to nearby Workington for £5,000.

It was the beginning of a long-standing relationship with a club who in those days played in the basement division of the Football League and is now in the Northern Premier League – the seventh tier of English football.

Aitken amassed 262 league appearances for Workington and, in the 1957-58 season, played against the famous Busby Babes at home in the 3rd round of the FA Cup in front of a record 21,000 crowd – just a month before the Munich air crash. Dennis Viollet scored a hat-trick for United in a 3-1 win.

“The game was an experience that I’ll never forget,” said Aitken, who kept on the wall of his house a picture of him with United’s skipper that day, Roger Byrne, who not long after that match perished in the Munich air crash.

Aitken retired as a player in 1960 but he stayed on at Borough Park as a coach, initially under Joe Harvey, who later enjoyed success at Newcastle United, and then Ken Furphy, who went on to manage Watford, Blackburn and Sheffield United before moving to the USA and taking charge of four different clubs.

Aitken had a brief spell as Workington manager between March and June 1965 (stepping in after Keith Burkinshaw – later famously boss of Spurs – had left) but then followed Furphy to Watford in 1965 as his coach. During that time, Watford, then in Division Two, famously beat Shankly’s Liverpool 1-0 in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup before losing to eventual winners Chelsea in the semi-finals.

The lure of Workington was to draw him back to the north west, though. When the manager’s job became vacant in 1971, Aitken took over and stayed for three seasons, eventually leaving in October 1974.

grimsby 75

In the 1975-76 season, he was trainer-coach during Tommy Casey’s spell managing Grimsby Town (where, as in picture, one of the players was former Albion defender Steve Govier), but left the Lincolnshire outfit to join Peter Taylor’s coaching set-up at Brighton in 1976. The Scot ended up staying for 10 years.

Aitken and wife Celia had three children and I well remember one of them, Bruce, appearing for Worthing FC.Aitken 2

George was clearly football daft, and in a matchday programme feature of September 1985, Celia told Tony Norman: “Football has always been his hobby, as well as his way of earning a living. He really loves the game. It’s not unusual for us to be driving somewhere and to stop because George has seen a game going on in a park by the road. He can’t resist watching for a while.”

During Chris Cattlin’s reign as manager, Aitken was the reserve team manager and chief scout, and in the programme article he said: “I can look back on some very happy memories. I was assistant manager when we took the club to Wembley and that experience is something I’ll never forget. But that is all in the past and what really matters to me is the future for Brighton Football Club. So, I enjoy going out to look for youngsters who could do a good job for us in years to come.”

After being sacked by Brighton, Aitken did scouting work for Graham Taylor during his spells at Watford and Aston Villa and then had three years working for the FA during Taylor’s reign as England manager. His last football role  was at Bolton Wanderers when Colin Todd was the manager.

end shot aitken armchair

Pictures from a variety of sources including the matchday programme, online sites and the Argus.

Kit Napier top scorer for Brighton in five of six seasons

FORMER Newcastle United centre forward Kit Napier, who moved from the Magpies to Brighton in 1966, was playing up front alongside Alex Dawson when I first started watching the Albion (in 1969).

Kit Napier at full stretch to score against Bournemouth in front of a packed Goldstone Ground on Boxing Day 1971

Born in Dunblane on 26 September 1943, Kit’s promise as a schoolboy prompted his headmaster to put his name around as a future footballing talent and he left Scotland to join Blackpool (then playing in the top tier) as a junior before turning professional in 1960. But he only played twice for the Tangerines before moving on to Second Division Preston North End in 1963-64. Things didn’t work out there either, though, and he dropped down a further division to Workington, where it all started to click.

Workington were newly-promoted to the Third Division and Napier was on the scoresheet during what has been described as the club’s proudest night, a 5-1 win in a Football League Cup 3rd round replay against First Division Blackburn Rovers on 22 October 1964.

In a team managed by Ken Furphy, who later enjoyed success as manager of Watford, one of Napier’s teammates was Keith Burkinshaw, who several years later would become manager of Tottenham Hotspur.

The Workington archive also recalls the fifth round tie, on 25 November 1964, when Workington hosted Chelsea at Borough Park.  At the time, Chelsea were riding high in the top flight of English football and were unbeaten on their travels when they arrived in west Cumbria.  Reds were fourth in the old Third Division at the time.

“In front of a record League Cup attendance (17,996), Reds gave Tommy Docherty’s Chelsea the fright of their lives by holding them to a 2-2 draw having been 0-2 down early in the game,” the archive records.  “Dave Carr and Kit Napier scored for the Reds and we had a ‘goal’ disallowed late in the game for an offside offence.

“We eventually lost the replay, 0-2, but the crowd at Stamford Bridge was 10,000 fewer than the gathering at Borough Park.”

Napier scored 25 goals in 58 games for the Cumbrian side which attracted the attention of the Geordie giants at St James’ Park. He was still only 22 when they paid £18,000 for him.

KN NUFCHe made his Newcastle debut on 6 November 1965 in a 2-0 home win over Blackpool. But it probably didn’t help his cause that Newcastle lost six of his seven other games, and drew the other!

His last game was in the Tyne-Wear derby game on 3 January 1966 when Sunderland triumphed 2-0.

Toon1892.com, a veritable mine of Newcastle history, says of Napier: “He was seen as a forward who had great potential. Unfortunately, he struggled to come to terms with the First Division and despite having all the ‘tricks’ he could not put the ball into the net.

An autographed Evening Argus photograph of Kit Napier from the 1970-71 season

“Being given only eight games to prove himself, one wonders whether he was given a real chance or not, but the arrival of (Welsh international) Wyn Davies settled any argument and Kit was off to Brighton.”

That move came early in the 1966-67 season when Brighton – bottom of the league table at the time – paid £9,000 to bring him south. He made an instant impression, scoring twice on his debut in a 5-2 win over Peterborough.

It was the perfect start to what was to be the most successful period of his career.

Over Easter in 1971, Napier scored in all three of Albion’s matches – a 1-0 home win over Aston Villa on Good Friday, a 2-0 home win over Reading the following day, and a 3-2 away win at Bradford City on Easter Monday.

The matchday programme for the following home game declared: “This gift of marksmanship blends very nicely with his ball control and general skill in possession. Not to mention the times when he lets fly at goal from outside the penalty area.

“We’ve seen some thrilling thunderbolts from him, including several during 1967-68 season when he broke Albion’s post-war individual scoring record with 30 goals, 24 of them in the league.”

He was top goalscorer in five of his six seasons with the club and, by the time he left, he’d netted 99 goals in just short of 300 appearances, including 19 in the 1971-72 promotion-winning side. Against Shrewsbury at the Goldstone, on 30 October 1971, he netted his 100th career league goal (see below). At that time, his Albion tally was 75.

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The superb The Goldstone Wrap blog did an extended piece on him in which they said: “Kit Napier is rightly considered an Albion legend. He was a ball-playing attacker, skilful with both feet, and with tremendous talent for goalscoring. At the Goldstone, Napier’s class and quick-witted play endeared him to the crowds.”

Aside from the goals, three things about him stand out in my memory:

• Kit had an amazing talent for scoring direct from corners: quite some skill. The first came in a 2-0 home win over Bury on 27 December 1969.

• In a game against Preston, on 27 February 1971, when Napier was shaping to take a penalty in front of the South Stand, Alan Duffy, promptly stepped forward, pushed his teammate out of the way and took the penalty himself – and missed!

• The following season, in a home game against Wrexham, Napier had been having a bit of an off day and the crowd were getting on his back. Eventually manager Pat Saward subbed him off and, as he trudged towards the tunnel, rather than the polite applause that tends to accompany today’s substitutions there were lots of ironic cheers to greet his withdrawal. Napier responded by waving a two-fingered salute to all corners of the ground! I’m pretty sure nothing came of it although, of course, in this day and age he’d no doubt have been hauled before the powers that be.

irvine napier saward

Kit Napier celebrates promotion with Willie Irvine, left, and manager Saward.

With Albion promoted, Saward knew he needed to strengthen the side and he clearly didn’t think Napier was up to playing at the higher level and put him on the transfer list.

Although he made a handful of starts in the 1972-73 Second Division campaign, by the end of August he’d been sold to Blackburn Rovers (who were in the Third Division at the time) for £15,000 as Albion sought to recoup some of the £29,000 record fee they spent bringing former England international Barry Bridges to the club from Millwall.

Napier had two seasons at Ewood Park and brought down the curtain on his English league career with a further 10 goals in 54 appearances. When he returned to the Goldstone with Rovers, he was made captain for the day. “I still get goosebumps and feel emotional at how the whole crowd gave me a standing ovation,” Kit remembered many years later.

He moved to South Africa to play for Durban United and, after packing up playing, had a very successful career as a Ford car salesman in the city (he was national sales manager of the year seven years in a row) alongside his former Albion teammate Brian Tawse. An Albion matchday programme reported how they both also turned out for a local Sunday league side in Durban.

Napier’s later years were blighted by emphysema and he died in Durban on 31 March 2019 at the age of 75.

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