Frank McAvoy, the Brighton captain who threatened to kill the manager
Frank McAvoy was Brighton & Hove Albion’s first ever captain and first ever top scorer. A fiery Scottish forward, he also remains the only Seagulls player to have been sacked from the club who then sought and threatened to kill the manager as a result.
While there have been many great falling outs between Brighton bosses and their players down the years – Mark McCammon ranting about Mark McGhee live on BBC Southern Counties, take a bow – not many of them have descended into actual violence. And none into the player in question going to the manager’s home and telling his wife that she’ll be lucky to see her husband alive again.
Which must give Frank McAvoy and John Jackson the accolade of most heated relationship of any Brighton player and manager in Albion history.
McAvoy was a fiery Scotsman who had moved south of the border to Woolwich Arsenal from his hometown club Ayr in 1895. A versatile player, he appeared in seven different positions for the Gunners in 44 Football League games before being suspended by Arsenal in March 1898.
There appears to be so no record of what McAvoy did to earn the wrath of the Arsenal management, but given what was to come once he was an Albion player four years later, it was probably some right bastard behaviour to do with violence.
Two other Gunners were suspended at the same time as McAvoy; Gavin Crawford for one week and John Caldwell indefinitely, just like McAvoy.
While Caldwell and Crawford both went onto play for Arsenal again – Crawford making over 100 appearances for the club – McAvoy’s career with the Gunners was done and he signed for Brighton United two months after being banned.
McAvoy spent two seasons with Brighton United, the forerunners to the modern day Albion and played 69 competitive games before the club folded in March 1900. That total made him the joint-record appearance holder for United alongside Willie McArthur.
The majority of McAvoy’s appearances came at centre back as United struggled along for two seasons in Southern League Division One, finishing 10th out of 13 in the 1898-89 campaign. United were bottom of the table the following season when they withdrew from the league on March 29th 1900 with crippling debts eventually leading to their liquidation.
That wasn’t the end of McAvoy’s footballing relationship with Brighton however. He moved onto Gravesend United following United’s demise but once Brighton & Hove Albion were formed in 1901, Frank McAvoy was tempted back to Sussex by his former Brighton United manager Jackson, who had taken up the same position with the new club. Not only that, but McAvoy was appointed the Albion’s first ever captain by Jackson.
He was also given a new position; Jackson preferring to use McAvoy as a half back rather than the centre back he’d been for United.
This provided dazzling results as McAvoy racked up nine goals in 15 appearances in the 1901-02 Southern League Division Two season, enough for him to finish as top scorer despite missing the final five games – a quarter of the season back in those days.
McAvoy’s final outing came in a 1-0 defeat away at Southall on Saturday February 15th 1902. The attendance for this game was rather quaintly recorded as being ‘good’ rather than having an actual figure attached to it.
Shortly after the defeat to the London based club, Jackson and MvAvoy were involved in an incident which resulted in Jackson being set upon by McAvoy who struck him to the ground.
This wasn’t the first coming together between the two either; at Christmas, they’d been involved in what was described as a blazing row.
McAvoy could be a scary character, so much so that Jackson lived in constant fear of what the Scot might do to him even after McAvoy was told that he wouldn’t play for Brighton again.
Those fears proved to be well founded. Six months after McAvoy’s final game for the club, he and another ex-Brighton player Clem Barker went looking for Jackson at the Farm Tavern in Farm Road, Hove, which the Albion manager owned.
Fortunately, Jackson was in Lewes at the time. A seething McAvoy apparently informed Mrs Jackson, “We are going to the station to meet your husband and you must consider yourself lucky if he is brought home alive.”
This threat was enough to get the police involved and McAvoy and Barker were convicted of threatening behaviour at Hove Police Court a few weeks later. They were bound to keep the peace for six months in the sum of £10 – or £1,237.22 in today’s money.
Clearly, McAvoy’s time in Brighton was over. After all, you can’t really hand over £1,000 as a guarantee that you won’t try and kill the local football team’s manager and expect everything to go back to normal afterwards.
McAvoy subsequently moved to Watford one month after the incident at the Farm Tarven, spending a season with the Hornets before returning to Scotland where he played for St Mirren and Ayr once again.
His time at Brighton shouldn’t just be characterised by threats of violence however. He also managed to save a drowning man’s life while a United player during the 1898-99 season.
McAvoy and goalkeeper Leo Bullimer were in Portslade when they spotted a man who had got into trouble in the sea. They both dived in without a second thought, pulling him from the water. Bullimer ruined his pocket-watch in the process and McAvoy lost a ring to the English Channel.
Inspired by their bravery, United supporters opened a fund for the pair to raise money to replace the items. The fans duly achieved this and at a smoking concert shortly afterwards, the Mayor of Hove presented Bullimer with a new silver watch engraved with his initials and McAvoy received an engraved gold signet-ring.
Quite the character, Brighton & Hove Albion captain Frank McAvoy.
