THE STORY of Matthew Edwards scoring for Brighton against Manchester United in the same cup match in which David Beckham made his debut has been told many times, and who wouldn’t be proud of that memory.
The history books can’t take it away from him, nor should they. “Scoring that goal against Manchester United was certainly the highspot of my career. Everyone wanted to talk about it and I was mentioned in all the papers and (I was) interviewed on television,” he said.
While that second round League Cup game on 23 September 1992 stands out, Edwards actually played 78 matches for the Albion after being released by Tottenham Hotspur, where his only first team outings were in testimonials or friendlies.
Albion were a very different proposition in September 1992, just beginning to reacquaint themselves to life back in the third tier of English football barely 16 months after having come close to returning to the top flight.
Big name players had been sold to try to balance the books and manager Barry Lloyd had to turn to free transfers, loanees and young hopefuls to put out a side.
Edwards was in that category and he probably only played in that United match because the respective parent clubs didn’t want loan forwards Steve Cotterill and Paul Moulden to be cup tied. He played alongside Scot Andy Kennedy, a recent arrival from Watford.
The youngster seized his chance and made a name for himself by heading home an Ian Chapman cross to cancel out Danny Wallace’s 35th-minute opener for the illustrious visitors.
Beckham had been sent on for his United bow in place of Andrei Kanchelskis (serenaded by a familiar North Stand chant of ‘Who the f****** h*** are you?’) but the game finished 1-1 at the Goldstone Ground, setting things up nicely for the second leg at Old Trafford (which United won 1-0).
Edwards once again earned a place in the headlines four months later when he scored the only goal of the game in a FA Cup third round win over south coast rivals Portsmouth, a side playing in the division above the Seagulls, and who had reached the previous season’s semi-finals.
Born in Hammersmith on 15 June 1971, the family lived in Brighton for a time and the young Edwards, who first started kicking a football around the age of six, played for local side Saltdean Tigers. At 13, he was on the Albion’s books under the guidance of Colin Woffinden, a former player who became youth coach.
But the family relocated to Surrey and it was while playing schoolboy football for Elmbridge Borough that he was spotted by Tottenham. In an extended interview with Lennon Branagan, Edwards explained how he got his big break courtesy of Fred Callaghan, Fulham’s left-back for 10 years who managed Brentford in the 1980s.
His son was playing in the same side as Edwards and Callaghan recommended Edwards to his friend Ted Buxton, a renowned coach and scout, who was working for Spurs at the time.
“I didn’t know that Ted had come along to watch me and then after one of the games they said: ‘Do you want to come to Spurs?’” Edwards recounted.
He signed associate schoolboy forms and while at Hinchley Wood Secondary School, Esher, travelled up to White Hart Lane on a Tuesday and Thursday night for training on an indoor pitch next to the main reception area.
On leaving school, he was taken on as an apprentice at Spurs and worked through his YTS under the auspices of youth team manager Keith Blunt and coach (and Blunt’s successor) Keith Waldon.
At 17, he signed on as a professional and he was on the books for three and a half years.
“We were quite successful in the reserves and I think that we used to win the league pretty much every season,” Edwards recalled.
It was tours abroad that he remembered most fondly from his time at Spurs, playing in Hawaii and Japan, and he also joined up with the first team squad for tours to Norway, Ireland and Italy.
A rare first team opportunity came in Billy Bonds’ testimonial at West Ham on 12 November 1990.
“I was young and had long blond hair and I can remember getting absolutely slaughtered by the West Ham fans that day,” he said.
In his final year, he went on loan to Reading, where he played eight games before returning to Spurs, and later the same season went to Peterborough on a similar arrangement, although he only played in one cup match for Posh.
He sensed his days at Spurs were drawing to a close, telling an Albion matchday programme: “I knew it was time for me to go when (manager) Peter Shreeves forgot my name!”
He said: “I had three months on loan at Peterborough but didn’t get a league game. Martin Hinshelwood rang me up in May and asked if I would be interested in coming to Brighton.”
One of the first matches he played for the Seagulls was in a pre-season friendly against his former club, a 1-1 draw at the Goldstone on 29 July 1992. In a shocking excuse for a programme for the visit of Croatian side FC Inker Zapresic, a barely recognisable picture of the new signing was included. Thankfully a more professional programme appeared for the opening home league game, against Bolton Wanderers, and Edwards was pictured (left) in action up against his former teammate Justin Edinburgh
After Cotterill and Moulden had returned to their parent clubs because Albion couldn’t afford to make their moves permanent, Edwards started to forge a fledgling forward partnership with Kennedy. But Kurt Nogan took over and his prolific goalscoring saw Edwards have more of a peripheral role, although he ended the season taking over from soon-to-depart Clive Walker on the left wing.
Edwards was in the starting line-up for the first half of the 1993-94 season, won a man-of-the-match award for his performance against Gillingham in the League Cup and scored in a 2-2 draw at home to Huddersfield.
He was the programme cover boy for the Exeter City home game on 2 October (0-0) but, with Albion dangerously close to the drop zone, Liam Brady took over from Lloyd and it soon became quite a different picture for the former Spurs youngster.
He played in the first seven games under the new boss, and scored in a 3-3 FA Cup tie v Bournemouth, but Brady had his own ideas and started looking elsewhere for solutions.
“Me and him didn’t really see eye to eye, or he didn’t particularly fancy me as a player,” Edwards told Branagan.
Although Edwards was a sub three times in March, his appearance off the bench in a home 1-1 draw with Burnley was his last involvement with the first team.
A regular in the reserves in the latter part of the season, at the end of it he was released and joined Conference side Kettering where he had barely got his shorts dirty before suffering a cruciate ligament injury.
“That that was the start of the end of my career as such,” he confessed. “I had a year out of the game.”
On his return to fitness, he had two good seasons for Walton & Hersham, and then Enfield. “My knees just kept on going for me,” he recounted. Over the course of another couple of years, he appeared for Carshalton Athletic, Sutton United, Molesey, Yeading, Bognor and Egham.
But he said: “My knees just weren’t up to playing football, so I had to call it a day and that was the end of the career.”
Interviewed for an Albion matchday programme article in 2019, he told journalist Spencer Vignes he had developed a career in computer software sales and had been a visitor to the Amex on behalf of a ticketing company that worked with the club.
He had subsequently moved on to providing similar expertise for visitor attractions such as zoos, museums, aquaria and cathedrals.
Reflecting on his all too brief career, he said: “I suppose I’m lucky in that I was in the right place at the right time to play for the Albion at the Goldstone, rather than Withdean. Saltdean Tigers to Spurs to Brighton; there can’t have been many people who have done that!”
In parallel lines 