Mayo the penalty hero as the Albion won in the Lions’ Den
The Johnstone’s Paint Trophy have never been a competition that has meant much to supporters unless their club happens to find itself a couple of games from a possible appearance at a Wembley final.
Managers don’t take it seriously and neither do fans. In the 2006-07 season, Boston United brought a grand total of nine (NINE) supporters to Withdean in the first round, quite literally two cars full of people with room to give a lift to a hitch hiker en route. MK Dons fared slightly better in round two, bringing 142 fans to Sussex.
This lack of interest exists across the board – unless the draw throws up a trip to Millwall away, and then just shy of 900 Brighton supporters will suddenly find their attention piqued by a Tuesday night out at the Den.
That’s what happened after the Seagulls dispatched of Boston and McDons and found themselves paired together with the Lions in the Southern Section Quarter Finals. The Albion weren’t even very good that season and the final wasn’t even at Wembley with the rebuilding of the national stadium still ongoing, yet still a huge number of Brighton supporters made the trip to South Bermondsey.
Millwall fans may love the Den’s reputation as somewhere nobody wants to go because it’s scary, but the fact that 899 Albion supporters were happy to travel there on a Tuesday night four weeks before Christmas for a game in a pointless competition makes a mockery of that. Hence why the away end was responsible for over a quarter of the total attendance of 3,659.
It’s actually one of the safest away games you can go to these days and because of it’s location an hour away on a direct train and just a short hop from the countless brilliant pubs around London Bridge, it’s also one of the best.
Millwall certainly weren’t expecting such a crowd. There was no hot food on offer on the concourses, no beer had been ordered and the stewards had to scramble to open more and more blocks in the top tier of North Stand as people continued to pour through the turnstiles. They told the hoards of Albion fans paying on the gate that they’d only be expecting a couple of hundred visitors from Sussex at most and were now completely overwhelmed.
Those who made the trip to the Den may have missed out on a pie and a warm bottle of Carlsberg, but that was more than made up for on the pitch as they were treated to a priceless moment in Albion history – Kerry Mayo scoring the winning goal in a penalty shoot out.
Mayo was a loyal servant over 14 years in which he made 412 appearances across three divisions and under more managers than Mark Walton had hot dinners. Despite this, you’d be hard pushed to find an Albion supporters with any particularly strong memories of Mayo in the stripes. He was just a solid professional, a bloke living every fans dream of playing for the team they support, but one who hardly left too much of an impression.
Except on this night at Millwall, when Mayo became the most unlikely of heroes as the match winner from 12 yards. “Nerves of steel” is how The Argus described it and although that seems a little over the top for a Paint Pot penalty in a stadium with less than 3,500 people in attendance, it was a great moment for a man who fully deserved this rarest of moments in the spotlight.
That the game even made it so far as penalties was a miracle in itself. The Albion played for 70 minutes with only 10 men after Guy Butters was sent off in the first half for a last man foul on Ben May on the edge of the box. That was one centre back gone. A second followed on the hour mark when Adam El-Abd was stretchered off with a gash on his calf so deep that it looked like a gunshot wound.
Those setbacks should have handed Millwall a significant advantage but they failed to real take advantage of it. The Lions managed to score just once and that was as a result of a typically chocolate-handed moment from Wayne Henderson.
The young Republic of Ireland international had already developed quite the reputation for flapping at things and pushing shots straight back to opposition strikers and Millwall’s goal was another one for that impressive catalogue as he made a right hash out of trying to deal with Chris Hackett’s corner, allowing home captain Paul Robinson to drill the loose ball home four minutes before the break.
Still, it looked like that goal would be enough as Millwall led right up until the 88th minute when Jake Robinson struck late to send the tie to penalties. Dean Cox was the architect, playing a raking cross field pass to his best mate Robinson who brought the ball down, cut inside and hit a powerful shot in from the tightest of angles for his 11th goal of the season. Jake Robinson. 11 goals. In a season. It did actually happen.
That sent the game to penalties, to be taken in front of an intimidating crowd of around 39 people in the Cold Blow Lane Stand. For the Albion, skipper Dean Hammond and Jake Robinson were successful with Cox and Joe Gatting missing. Millwall’s Darren Byfield missed the target and Henderson went some of the way to atoning for his earlier flap by pulling off a brilliant one-handed stop from Charlie Lee.
Zak Whitbread then fired the Lion’s fifth penalty over the bar which presented Mayo with the chance to be the hero. The Ginger Prince had only been introduced from the bench on 70 minutes in place of Tommy Fraser and had hardly had a kick in his 20 minutes on the pitch but that mattered not as he strode forward like a man whose been taking pressure penalties all his life before burying the ball past Chris Day to give the Albion a 3-2 shoot out win.
As soon as it hit the back of the net, Mayo was wheeling away. For a player who wasn’t exactly blessed with pace during his career, he made it from the Cold Blow Lane End to the Albion supporters at the other end of the stadium in a time that Usain Bolt would have been proud of. He was joined by his jubilant team mates, who rather ridiculously began performing Klinsmann dives in celebrations, as if they’d just lifted the World Cup rather than won a Paint Pot Southern Quarter Final in front of a similar sized crowd as a school nativity draws.
Mayo said afterwards, “It’s not often that something like that happens to me. I’m usually at the other end stopping goals, but it was a great feeling. The Johnstone’s Paint Trophy has proved a great competition this season and it’s bringing a little bit of money into the club.”
That money Mayo was referring to was the princely sum of £9,000, taking the Albion’s winnings from their three games in the competition to £18,000. It’s absolutely mind boggling to think that now, the Albion could pick up £94m even if they lost every one of their 38 league games in a season and finished stone cold bottom of the league.
Back then however, £9,000 was a lot of money. But it still wasn’t as valuable as the memory of Kerry Mayo scoring the winning goal in a penalty shoot out. That’s priceless.
Millwall Chris Day, Zak Whitbread, Mark Phillips, Zoumana Bakayogo, Paul Robinson, Marvin Elliott, Chris Hackett, Charlie Lee, Darren Byfield, Ben May, Gavin Grant.
Subs: Danny Senda (Grant), Liam Trotter (Elliott), Chris Zebroski (Bakayogo), Poul Hubertz, Lenny Pidgeley.
Scorers: P Robinson 41.
Albion: Wayne Henderson, Andrew Whing, Adam Hinshelwood, Guy Butters, Joel Lynch, Adam El-Abd, Dean Hammond, Tommy Fraser, Dean Cox, Alex Revell, Jake Robinson.
Subs: Alastair John (El-Abd), Kerry Mayo (Fraser), Joe Gatting (Revell), Tommy Elphick, Michel Kuipers (unused).
Scorers: J Robinson 88.
Attendance: 3,659
