Busby Babe to terrifying Brighton opponents – the Alex Dawson story

Type the name Alex Dawson into Google and one word crops up with startling frequency from supporters of Manchester United, Preston North End, Bury, Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford to describe him – terrifying.

What a great adjective. Terrifying. It conjures up visions of opposition defenders and goalkeepers quaking in their boots at the physical battering they are about to take at the hands of an old-fashioned, take-no-prisoners centre forward.

Which is why it is such an apt description for Dawson. He was a big, bustling presence who scored wherever he went, racking up 212 goals from 393 career appearances.

He could head a ball with more power than he could kick it and he would run through a brick wall for his team. If somebody tossed a cross into the box, Dawson would find a way to be on to the end of it no matter how many innocent opponents he had to rampage through to get there.

If Dawson played in the 21st century, he would pick up a red card every game for his sheer physicality. This was the 1960s though and he was the perfect centre forward for his time as a goal-laden three years at the Albion and enduring popularity with the Goldstone Ground crowd was testament too.

Alex Dawson arrived at Brighton in December 1968 with the club deep in relegation trouble, one place off the bottom of the third tier. Archie Macaulay had resigned as manager with his place taken by former Manchester United player Freddie Goodwin.

It did not take Goodwin long to identify the Albion’s problems – scoring goals and a lack of physicality. He needed even less time to formulate a solution, paying £9,000 to Bury to make his one-time Old Trafford team mate Dawson his first signing as Brighton boss.

To say that the pair had been through a lot together at United would be a slight understatement. Dawson was one of Matt Busby’s Babes, making his debut for the Red Devils as a 17-year-old towards the end of the 1956-57 season and marking the occasion with a goal in a 2-0 home win over Burnley.

He scored in his next two appearances as United beat Cardiff City and drew with West Bromwich Albion to win the title. Dawson remained on the fringes of the United first team in the 1957-58 season, travelling with the senior squad on a couple of their European engagements prior to the trip to Red Star Belgrade on Wednesday 5th February 1958.

Had fate taken a different turn, both Goodwin and Dawson might have been sat on the plane at Munich airport waiting to return home from the 3-3 draw in Yugoslavia.

Dawson said in an interview many years later, “I had a passport and visa all ready but the boss just told me I wasn’t going this time.”

“I had already been on two or three trips just to break me in. I know now how lucky I was to be left in Manchester. The omens were on my side.” Goodwin meanwhile had been dropped, an equally lucky break.

With United’s team decimated by the Munich Air Disaster, Dawson was one of the young players who was asked to step up and fill the void. In United’s first game following the accident, he scored as Sheffield Wednesday were brushed aside 3-0 in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

He scored again in the quarter finals of the competition against West Brom and then notched a hat-trick in a 5-3 semi final replay win over Fulham at Highbury. At just 18-years-old, Dawson still holds the record as Manchester United’s youngest ever hat-trick scorer.

Against all the odds and thanks largely to Dawson’s goals, United had made it to the FA Cup final just three months after losing 11 players and staff in Munich. Sadly, the fairytale ended at Wembley in a 2-0 defeat to Bolton Wanderers.

Dawson remained a regular scorer at Old Trafford over the next three seasons, scoring 54 goals in 93 appearances. Despite that impressive record, there has always been this feeling that he could have achieved much more at United.

How different might things had been had he not been thrown in at the deep end as a teenager, trying to cope with the loss of so many colleagues at the same time as being charged with replacing his good friend Duncan Edwards in the starting line up?

Those challenges may have impacted on Dawson in ways nobody will ever know. They did however help form his quirky, positive personality as a man who was grateful for the opportunities that came his way.

Preston was his next port of call and after being sold to the Deepdale club for £18,000 in October 1961, he scored 114 goals in 197 matches for PNE, whose supporters dubbed him The Black Prince of Football in honour of his jet black hair and his talents in front of goal.

Dawson notched in the 1964 FA Cup Final for Preston, picking up his second runners up medal as second tier PNE fell to a 3-2 against a West Ham United side led by Bobby Moore.

21 goals in 50 matches for Bury followed for Dawson and it was from Gigg Lane where Goodwin acquired him. It didn’t take the new man long to make an impression in Sussex, scoring on his home debut as Reading were beaten 2-0 on Saturday 20th December 1968.

The goals flowed from that point on. Over the next three years, the sight of Alex Dawson in a Brighton shirt scaring the life out of a visiting goalkeeper with his powerful finishing with either feet or head becoming a staple part of an afternoon at the Goldstone.

Dawson always played with a smile on his face. You could just about see it peeking out from under an alarmingly large nose which had more angles than a decago, a result of countless breaks from brave challenges.

Imagine that nose bearing down on you, attached to a man so visibly pleased at the impending misery he was about to inflict either to your body or your goal. It is little wonder that the word terrifying crops up so often in relation to Dawson.

Despite only being present for half of the 1968-69 season, Dawson still managed to finish the campaign as top scorer with 17 goals from 23 appearances. Included in that total was a four-goal haul as the Albion won 5-2 away at Hartlepool on Saturday 22nd February 1969.

Having sat 23rd in Division Three South when Dawson arrived, Brighton ended the campaign in 12th spot. That upward trajectory continued in the 1969-70 season when Dawson and Kit Napier formed a partnership which for much of the year looked like it would fire the Albion to the title.

As late as Good Friday, Goodwin’s Seagulls topped the table until a spectacular collapse saw them win one and lose four of their final five games, blowing promotion to fall away and finish fifth.

Goodwin departed for Birmingham City come the end of the campaign and his replacement Pat Saward, didn’t fancy the look of Dawson, despite his obvious goal scoring talents.

Dawson featured only three times under the new manager in the 1970-71 season, joining Brentford on loan where he scored six goals in 10 outings.

The Bees were going through financial hardship at the time and despite wanting to keep Dawson, they were unable to match Brighton’s asking price.

As a result, Dawson was stuck in the reserves at the Goldstone for most of the campaign. It was an unedifying way to treat a player who had never given less than 100% in his time with the Albion.

Dawson being Dawson, he of course took it all in his stride. He was released in the summer of 1971, spending the next two seasons with Corby Town. Needless to say, he top scored for the Southern League club in both those campaigns before retiring to become their trainer.

You can imagine what he passed onto the amateur players of Northamptonshire in that role. How to head as if your skull is made from cement. How to finish with both feet into the bottom corner. How to become universally popular yet frighten the life out of opposition goalkeepers and defenders at the same.

And above all else, how to be terrifying. They don’t make strikers like Alex Dawson any more.