“Anyone fancy going in goal today?” – When Brighton faced Watford in 1943

Wartime football threw up all kinds of weird and wonderful scenarios for Brighton and Hove Albion.

There was the time in 1941 that centre half Peter Trainor turned up at Highbury, all ready to take on the mighty Arsenal with the Albion in the second leg of the War League Cup. Only problem being that the Gunners were now playing their home games at White Hart Lane, and nobody had thought to tell Trainor.

Then there was the game against Chelsea in 1942. Brighton striker Jock Davie turned up 10 minutes after the game had kicked off, yet still managed to net five times in the Albion’s 8-2 win at the Goldstone Ground.

Arguably the best of the lot though came when Watford visited in the final game of the 1942-43 season on Saturday April 10th. The Football League South competition had finished some two months earlier with the Albion in a respectable 12th place out of 18. The Football League South Cup which had been played in the six weeks since the end of the regular campaign had been a complete disaster however.

Brighton sat bottom of their group with just one point from a possible 15 and having conceded 22 times in five games. If that was bad, then things were about to get a whole lot worse ahead of the visit of the Hornets.

Brighton’s outstanding player that season had been 19-year-old goalkeeper Jack Ball. Ball had already played a couple of times for the first team since making his debut against Queens Park Rangers in 1941, but he found himself thrown in at the deep end four games into the season when regular number one Gordon Mee’s duties as a Police Reserve saw him called away from Sussex.

Ball played 29 times, earning himself a professional contract with the Albion in February that year. A month later he was called into the RAF and that left the Albion with a bit of a conundrum going into the game with Watford.

Brighton boss Charlie Webb only found out the 11th hour that he would be without Ball’s services. There were no emergency loans in 1943 which meant no David Yelldell dressed in pink to ride to the rescue. The only thing that Webb could do was ask his outfield players if anybody would be happy to volunteer to go in goal.

It was popular right back and captain Stan Ridson who found himself taking on the unenviable job, and it became even more unenviable when the Albion came in at the break with Ridson having conceded five times. Webb and his team had seen enough of Ridson’s efforts in goal, and so inside-right Ernie Reid took over. Remarkably, Reid went onto record a clean sheet in the second half, much to his delight.

Both Reid and Ridson played in goal on one other occasion each during war time football. Reid’s second experience between the posts was far less successful than his shut out against Watford as six months later he conceded six times away at Crystal Palace.

As for Ridson, he had to wait until October 1944 to be trusted to don the number one shirt again. He managed to last the full 90 minutes on that occasion as the Albion went down 3-1 away at Aldershot.

All three of the protagonists would go onto be considered Albion greats of the era. Ridson racked up 251 appearances across 12 years of service, scoring 13 times. Reid played 87 times throughout the war as a guest player from Norwich City while Ball completed his RAF duty and returned to the Goldstone, making 164 appearances between 1940 and 1953.