Banished in Burnley: When Mark McCammon was kicked off the Albion bus
Which town in England would you least like to be abandoned in? Probably not a question many people have pondered, but Burnley would surely have to be up there. Which makes the tale of when Mark McGhee chucked Mark McCammon off the Brighton & Hove Albion team coach 295.4 miles away from home in Burnley one of our favourite Albion stories.
April 16th 2005 was the date and the Albion were fighting for their lives alongside nine other sides for Championship survival.
Just five points separated Plymouth Argyle in 15th spot from Nottingham Forest in 23rd with four games of the season remaining.
In the mix for relegation into League One were the Pilgrims, Leicester City, Watford, Coventry City, Gillingham, Cardiff City, Crewe Alexandra, Brighton and Forest. Bottom club Rotherham United had been doomed to the drop long ago.
Which made the trip to Turf Moor very important for McGhee and his Brighton charges. The Albion had looked relatively safe at Christmas time until Dick Knight decided to cash in on Darren Currie and Danny Cullip, without then replacing two of the club’s best performers from the first half of the season.
A run of just four wins since the turn of the year had followed. McGhee was beginning to feel the pressure after Brighton had lost six and drawn one of their seven fixtures going into the Burnley game, a terrible run which included defeats to fellow relegation candidates Coventry and Plymouth and a home stalemate with Leicester.
All of that came to a head at half time at Burnley. The Clarets had nothing to play for, their season winding to a close with mid table mediocrity assured.
Not that it looked that way in the first half. Burnley clearly wanted it much more than their relegation threatened visitors. They were first to every ball, fighting as if their lives depended on it. Brighton meanwhile went through the motions as though they were the side who had their minds already on their summer holidays.
One-time Albion loanee Ade Akinbyi was having a field day. He opened the scoring for Burnley with 23 minutes played, turning Graham Branch’s downward header from future Brighton loanee Dean Bowditch’s cross past Alan Blayney in the Albion goal.
Without the interventions of Blayney, Burnley could have been out of sight in the first half. He made four outstanding stops to ensure it was only 1-0 going into the break, the best of which came when he somehow kept out a Branch effort from point blank range.
Which leads us nicely into half time and the first flash point between McGhee and McCammon, eventually leading to the Brighton striker being chucked off the team coach in the middle of Burnley.
To say McGhee was not happy with his side’s performance up to that point would be like saying Josef Stalin was a slightly nasty man.
McGhee was livid, and you do not want to be on the wrong side of an angry Scotsman who drinks a pint of whiskey with his cornflakes.
Nobody was spared the wrath of McGhee. McCammon and strike partner Chris McPhee were told they weren’t holding the ball up well enough. Dean Hammond was criticised for only being on the periphery of the game. Paul Reid was informed he looked like he was in a daze.
Every Albion player accepted the criticism of their performance except one – McCammon. According to the Daily Telegraph, the striker argued back in a fiery exchange with McGhee.
McCammon blamed his lacklustre showing on the lack of service he’d received from Charlie Oatway – because Oatway was obviously a Paul Scholes-esque creator of opportunities throughout his career – which he felt was the main reason behind the first half shambles.
This infuriated an already pissed off McGhee and as a result, McCammon’s afternoon was at an end. On in his place came 18-year-old Jake Robinson, fresh from a one month loan spell at Aldershot in which he’d scored four times and earned rave reviews.
With the fearlessness of young Robinson on the pitch, Brighton were a different side in the second half. It took them just seven minutes to equalise and it was two players on the receiving end of McGhee’s wrath who combined for the goal, Reid crossing for Hammond to volley home.
Hammond nearly had a second a couple of minutes later when his header from a Richard Carpenter free kick hit the post. There were countless other chances to grab a winner which the Albion failed to take but even so, the performance in the second 45 was a world away from that dreadful first half.
When McGhee dealt with the press afterwards, he came across as a much happier man. He felt that one win from the final three games would now be enough to keep Brighton up and with already relegated Rotherham in their run in, that looked an eminently achievable target.
The Brighton boss also had praise for his players. He said of super-sub Robinson: “We say when people get their chance they have to take it and I thought he took it absolutely brilliantly. He was different class.”
McGhee described McPhee’s second half showing as: “Probably his most complete performance as a centre forward since I came to the club, a vital performance in terms of us getting a result.”
As for goal scorer Hammond: “We said to Dean before the game he needed to come out of his shell and play a big part. He did to a degree in the first half, but in the second half he was superb.”
All of which might have lead you to believe that McGhee was in a better mood. And he might well have been until he spotted McCammon on the team bus.
Having had 45 minutes longer than his teammates to shower and change following his early withdrawal, McCammon was the first Brighton player on the coach for the journey home from Burnley.
He was also the first off. As soon as McGhee boarded, he spotted his erstwhile striker and decided he would not be coming home with the rest of the team.
McGhee told Sky Sports news a few days later: “After the match I told him I didn’t want him travelling back on the team bus with the rest of us and that he was to return home with two other members of staff in another club vehicle.”
Those two other members of staff were Ken Barnard and Matt Hicks and the other club vehicle was the van transporting all the players’ used kit back home.
A weekend that had begun with Knight paying for all the players to enjoy a two-day stay in a luxury Cheshire hotel was set to end for McCammon in a 300 mile, five hour journey home in a cramped little van full of smelly kit.
He preferred to make his own way home, traipsing out of Turf Moor looking bewildered. And so rather than travel to Brighton with his teammates, McCammon ended up catching the train in full Albion tracksuit amongst some very confused supporters, although sadly without a crate of Strongbow and a doner kebab meat pizza as is tradition after Burnley away.
McCammon apologised to McGhee afterwards and eventually earned a first team return a few weeks into the 2005-06 season.
Not that he was back for long; he managed just seven games of the campaign before calling into the BBC Southern Counties Radio fans phone in after host Ian Hart had described him as not being good enough, ironically after another game with Burnley.
A shell-shocked Harty was forced into defending his description of McCammon while the striker again blamed his teammates for a lack of service, before adding that he and McGhee had issues.
It was local radio at its absolute best. Needless to say, McCammon was sent packing on loan to Bristol City a few weeks later.
As for McGhee, well McCammon at Burnley away wouldn’t be the last player that the Brighton manager threw off the team bus.
A month prior to McCammon’s radio rant, McGhee repeated the trick by attempting to dump Leon Knight in the middle of the New Forest before a 2-1 defeat away at Southampton.
That came after Knight got involved in a blazing row between Michel Kuipers and McGhee after the Albion manager delivered the news that French goalkeeper Florent Chaigneau would be starting at St Mary’s.
At least the New Forest, with its picture postcard scenery and ponies running free, would have been a much better place to be chucked off the Brighton team coach than in Burnley – just ask Mark McCammon.
