What happened to the first Brighton team to play at Withdean?
Saturday 7th August 1999. The sun shone on Brighton and Hove and in a leafy suburb on the outskirts of the city, 5,882 people crammed into an athletics stadium to watch the Albion take on Mansfield Town on the opening day of the Division Three season.
Nobody needs any introduction as to what happened next. In their first game back in Sussex after two years of exile playing in Gillingham, the Albion tore their visitors apart to win 6-0 in the most perfect homecoming imaginable.
The Roy of the Rovers stuff didn’t stop with the result, the weather or the performances. Local boy Darren Freeman scored a hat-trick on his debut for his home-town club, fan favourite Rod Thomas got in on the act and there was even a brace for Aidan Newhouse who looked a real talent – for all of 20 minutes.
Brighton would go onto play at Withdean Stadium – their “temporary home”, lest we forget – for 12 more years. But what happened to the 14 trailblazing players who pulled on the stripes for the demolition of the Stags?
Mark Ormerod
The man who recorded a clean sheet on Brighton’s return to Sussex was Mark Ormerod, one of only two survivors from the final season at the Goldstone to have played in the Withdean opener.
Ormerod lost the number one shirt to Mark Walton a month into the season, playing just nine times in 1999-00 before Micky Adams released him the following summer after 85 appearances for the Albion.
Easily the most important of those came on the final day of the 1996-97 season. Everyone talks about Robbie Reinelt’s equaliser which kept Brighton in the Football League and relegated Hereford United, but Ormerod too played his part with one crucial save right at the death. If that went in, we’d all support a very different football club today.
Ormerod went onto play for Woking, Dorchester Town and Worthing after he left the Albion and the WeAreBrighton.com team randomly bumped into him at the Etihad Stadium before England played Iceland in a friendly in June 2004.
Chris Wilder
Chris Wilder had a blink-and-you-missed-it Brighton career which lasted all of 11 games. He was signed on a monthly contract in the summer of 1999 following his release from Sheffield United and played regularly at both right and left back until the middle of October, when Halifax Town came calling.
Wilder had spent his entire career in the north and although he’d been excellent for the Albion, there were rumours that he couldn’t settle in Sussex due to the fact a pint of Tetley’s cost more than £1.25. With only a monthly deal keeping him at Withdean, it was decided that it was best for all parties if he moved to the Shay.
That proved to be a pretty good decision. Not only did Wilder finish his playing career with the Shaymen, but he also went onto manage Halifax for over six years and 300 games. From there, he’s established himself as one of the most underrated coaches in the country having led Oxford United and Northampton Town to promotions before taking Sheffield United from League One to the Premier League.
Keith McPherson
Jeff Wood didn’t do much good during his three month reign of terror, but he did at least sign Keith McPherson. The defender was a cool presence in a pretty ropy Brighton defence towards the end of the 1998-99 season and his efforts were rewarded when Adams handed him a one-year deal for the first year at Withdean.
McPherson was a regular pretty much all the while Adams was using a back three, but the change to 4-4-2 saw the veteran slide down the pecking order behind Andy Crosby and Danny Cullip. He was released at the end of the campaign after 35 appearances and one goal for the Albion and was last seen coaching in the Berkshire area.
Gary Hobson
Gary Hobson was the other survivor from the last season at the Goldstone to make it onto the pitch for the first game at Withdean, although little did we know at the time that he was in the final throes of his Brighton career.
Four months after helping the Albion record their opening day clean sheet, Hobson moved to Chester City on loan. That brought the curtain down on a four year spell with the Seagulls in which he played 113 times after signing for £60,000 from Hull City in 1996 – when £60,000 was a lot of money.
Chester’s relegation out of the Football League – Hobson played against us in that famous 7-1 win at the Deva Stadium – meant that they couldn’t take him on a permanent basis that summer and so he moved to York City.
Hobson is now a UEFA match agent, which means he negotiates countless pre-season tours abroad for Premier League, Championship and European clubs.
Andy Crosby
This was Andy Crosby’s Brighton debut and he would go onto become one of those classic, no-nonsense players around whom so much of the Albion’s success under Adams was built.
Crosby cost £10,000 that summer from Chester but that instantly looked like money well spent. He played 41 times in the 1999-00 season and followed that up with 39 appearances the following season as part of the Division Three title winning side.
Long before Inigo Calderon was scoring goals with his face, Crosby was doing so with his ear, netting what proved to be the winner in a 1-0 success over Blackpool at Withdean.
Simon Morgan’s arrival in the summer of 2001 proved to be the end of Crosby’s Brighton career and he left after 85 games for Oxford before joining Scunthorpe United.
It was at Glanford Park that Crosby first encountered Nigel Adkins and the two have been pretty much inseparable since, with Crosby serving as assistant to everyone’s favourite David Brent tribute act at the Irons, Southampton, Reading, Sheffield United and Hull City.
Jamie Campbell
An often overlooked candidate when people put together their lists of the crapest players to ever play for Brighton, Jamie Campbell was a left back who surprisingly lasted as long as one season with the Albion.
Adams brought him in on a free transfer in the summer of 1999 from Cambridge United and doggedly persisted with him for the first four months of the season, right up until he picked up a wonderfully ridiculous red card after just 25 minutes away at Swansea City.
This was made even better by the fact that a flu bug had swept through the ranks. 17-year-old’s Shaun Wilkinson and Chris McPhee were in the squad as a result and the last thing that the Albion needed was to have to play against that season’s eventual Division Three champions for the majority of the game with 10 men.
That little incident belatedly opened Adams’ eyes to the fact Campbell was woeful and he played just two more league games before being released to join Exeter City.
Charlie Oatway
Withdean’s first game also happened to be the first Albion game of a man who would go onto become a club legend over the course of the next decade.
Charlie Oatway had signed that summer from Brentford for £10,000, an astonishing piece of business even before you take into account the fact that the price included Paul Watson as well.
Oatway would go onto play 248 times for the Albion, becoming club captain as well as winning two league titles and one play off final.
A broken ankle forced him into retirement in 2007 but his Albion story wasn’t done as he returned to the club as first team coach under Gus Poyet.
Oatway and Poyet struck up the most unlikely of friendships, one being a Uruguayan central midfielder with all the flair and talent that you’d expect from a South American; the other a bloke from Shepherds Bush who’d done time for actual bodily harm and common assault following an incident outside a fish and chip shop in Essex. Oatway has subsequently followed Poyet to Sunderland, Shanghai Greenland Shenhua, AEK Athens and Real Betis.
Paul Rogers
It says much about Paul Rogers that in a team which Adams was determined to pack with as many leaders as possible, it was Rogers who was signed to captain the side.
Despite the fact that he was 35-years-old when he arrived at Withdean from Wigan Athletic, Rogers went onto become one of the crucial components of the Albion’s Division Three success. He missed just two league games in the 1999-00 and 2000-01 seasons combined on his way to making 139 appearance and scoring 16 times.
Rogers retired at the end of the 2002-03 season, going onto take up a position in the club’s marketing department as part of Dick Knight’s ‘Jobs for the Boys’ policy.
Rod Thomas
Rod Thomas was the People’s Player, bought in October 1998 by Brian Horton for £17,000 from Chester using money raised by supporters who had contributed to the Buy a Player fund.
Really, Thomas was exactly the sort of signing that fans’ hard earned cash should be going on. He was a maverick, a skilful entertainer and somebody who could get people on their feet with a piece of magic every time he had the ball.
While that may have been what Horton wanted, it certainly wasn’t what Adams wanted. Thomas may have scored the Albion’s third against Mansfield, but it ended up being his only goal of the campaign.
It was in fact the return game with the Stags that had a much greater bearing on his Albion career as he managed to get sent off at Field Mill after just five minutes of what ended up being a 1-0 defeat.
Adams was apoplectic with rage afterwards and their already strained relationship was as good as done. Thomas played just 11 more times in 18 months as his Albion career came to an end with a record of four goals in 56 appearances.
Thomas retired upon his release from Withdean and has since gone onto help his brother running salsa and comedy workshops, which sounds like a bloody brilliant job.
Gary Hart
Oh Gary Hart. Although the forward didn’t begin his second season as a professional with a goal, his partnership with Darren Freeman in the Mansfield demolition pointed to the prospect of something special being on the horizon.
Sadly, it never was. Freeman’s rotten luck with injuries didn’t help, but Adams also decided that a better way to make the most out of Hart’s pace and tenacity would be to move him out to the right wing. That proved to be an ingenious decision as he’d spent the majority of the next 10 years playing out wide for the club.
And what a 10 years it was. A club-record four promotions, 417 games and 46 goals. He would also go onto be the only Albion player to play for the club in every season at Withdean.
Darren Freeman
The star of the opening day show, Darren Freeman was well known to Brighton fans before Adams signed him on a free transfer in the summer of 1999.
With his flowing locks, his eye for goal and the well-documented fact that he was from Brighton, we’d seen Freeman score many-a-time against us for Brentford and Fulham. And he’d usually celebrate with great gusto.
The celebrations of his historic Withdean hat-trick were marked with even more enthusiasm than all those goals which had shattered Brighton dreams in the past.
Freeman’s first goal arrived on 14 minutes, the second on 20 and the third on 70. He left the pitch, job done, to a standing ovation on 73, to be replaced by Aidan Newhouse.
This was the undoubted highlight of Freeman’s Albion career. He ended the campaign top scorer with 13 goals and we also got to see his nasty side as he picked up two red cards in the space of four games in November.
It wasn’t indiscipline but injuries which ultimately did for him and after 62 games, his Brighton career was over. He’s since gone onto have a decent managerial career on the Sussex non-league circuit as boss at Whitehawk and Lewes, although he sports substantially less hair these days.
Dave Cameron (Thomas 67)
Ah, Dave Cameron. The Scottish striker paid to get himself out of the Army to sign for the Albion. His reward? A six month career encompassing 22 games and no goals which was ended when Alan Cork described him in post-match press conference as being “Useless, full stop.”
Perhaps the writing should have been on the wall after this debut against Mansfield. While all the Albion’s other strikers filled their boots – Newhouse with two, for crying out loud – Cameron didn’t trouble the scoreboard at all. Summed it up, really.
Aidan Newhouse (Freeman 73)
Two goals in 17 minutes from the bench on your debut should point to a long and glorious career ahead. But not if you’re Aidan Newhouse.
Signed on a free from Swansea City six days before Mansfield came to town, this was as good as it got for the striker. He made just two starts and 10 more substitutes appearances before being released in December to join Sutton United.
Newhouse is now a maths teacher with his claim to fame – aside from scoring twice in the first game at Withdean – being that he taught highly-rated Liverpool youngster Ben Woodburn.
Paul Armstrong (Oatway 80)
One of the few Brighton-produced players who has gone onto earn international honours, Paul Armstrong won a couple of caps for Republic of Ireland Under 21s during the Albion’s exile at Gillingham.
He was a decent player too during those dark days in Kent, able to play at both full back and in central midfield. Adams’ squad overhaul saw him slip down the pecking order and his brief cameo in the first game at Withdean was one of just six occasions in which he played in the 1999-00 season before being released.
Armstrong can now be found either running at Preston Park Parkrun on a Saturday morning or drinking in Quench Bar & Kitchen in Burgess Hill on a Saturday night. Remarkably given that he played 55 times for Brighton, we still appear to be the only people who have ever asked him for selfie in there.
