Paddy McCourt and the 13 game Brighton career of the Derry Pelé

There wasn’t much to cheer if you were a Brighton and Hove Albion fan in the 2014-15 season. Just 10 league wins, 47 points and spared relegation from League One only because there were somehow three worse teams in the Championship.

Lewis Dunk managed to end the season as second top goalscorer with seven goals. In fact, the regular back four of Dunk, Gordon Greer, Bruno and Joe Bennett combined scored more than the six strikers that the Albion got through in the campaign – Chris O’Grady, Sam Baldock, Adrian Colunga, Leon Best, Darren Bent and Craig Mackail-Smith.

The first four months of the season under Sami Hyypia were dire and even when Chris Hughton took over, it was still crap. Remarkably given everything that Hughton went gone onto achieve, we failed to score for six games under his tutelage and safety was only confirmed thanks to Blackburn Rovers beating Millwall.

Which is why if anybody asks what the highlight of the Albion’s 2014-15 campaign were, you’ll get a two word answer – Paddy McCourt. The man whose talents earned him the nickname the Derry Pelé may have only played 13 times for the club and failed to start a league game, but he was still the most entertaining thing to happen to Brighton that season.

We’d had a glimpse of the talent that McCourt possessed a year before he arrived at the Albion on a free transfer. He’d come to the Amex as a Barnsley player in December 2013 and scored one of the best goals that the stadium has ever seen.

Picking up a loose ball 40 yards out from goal, McCourt dribbled the ball around in a circle which took Liam Bridcutt and Andrew Crofts out the game. Having sufficiently bamboozled those two, he headed towards Matthew Upson, drifting past him with a quick step-over. Next up was Gordon Greer who he poked the ball through the legs of to Marcus Tudgay for a quick one-two. He then ghosted around Stephen Ward before firing the ball into the bottom corner of the goal past Tomasz Kuszczak.

We’ll never know whether the Albion’s decision to sign him the next summer following his release by the Tykes was based solely on that goal, but given that we recruited the likes of Gary Gardner and Aaron Hughes based on nothing more than presumably pulling names out of a hat, it seemed as good a reason to bring him in as any.

Hyypia though never really trusted McCourt. The Derry Pelé had an extreme aversion to defending that was never likely to sit well with a legendary centre back. After McCourt had run the show in a 3-0 League Cup win away at Burton Albion, setting up goals for both Rohan Ince and Mackail-Smith, Hyypia said, “He needs to realise what he needs to do to improve and to be a very important player for the team defensively as well.”

Despite the managers misgivings, McCourt was an instant fan favourite with the Albion faithful almost from day one. A remarkable achievement for a bloke who appeared just 10 times from the bench in the league.

There are many reasons for his popularity. The first was that he already arrived as something of a cult hero. He was revered at Celtic for his knack of scoring wonder goals. The Amex may have reverberated to the sound of “We’ve got Knockaert” in recent seasons, but that song was originally taken from Celtic’s worship of McCourt. “Don’t sell McCourt, Paddy McCourt, I just don’t think you understand, that if you sell McCourt, Paddy McCourt, you’re gonna have a riot on your hands.”

The second was his talent. That goal for Barnsley was fantastic by a mortal players standards, but it doesn’t even make the top 10 on a McCourt Highlight Reel. He would glide past people as if they didn’t exist, caressing the ball as it clung to his foot like a passionate lover unwilling to relinquish itself from the touch of it’s beau.

It was an accepted opinion in McCourt’s native Northern Ireland that he was the most talented player to come out of the country since George Best. He played 18 times for his nation, scoring twice against the Faroe Islands at Windsor Park in 2011, with the second of those being described in the Belfast Telegraph as “one of the best ever witnessed in the famous old ground.”

There was a thread on North Stand Chat entitled “Vicente v Paddy McCourt”, a genuine debate about whether McCourt was technically better than a man who won 38 caps for Spain and who turned down a £31m to Real Madrid in the days when £31m wasn’t just spare change found down the back of a Premier League chairman’s sofa. Both had the ability to produce more moments of magic in 15 minute cameos off the bench than some players manage in their entire careers.

That thread came about because of the impact he had on the pitch when Hyypia finally saw the sense to introduce him, which was the third reason for his popularity. In a desperately poor Albion side, his arrival into proceedings could change games.

Away at Watford, the away end spent virtually the whole second half directing the “Don’t sell McCourt” song at Hyypia and when McCourt finally entered the fray for the final 20 minutes, he created more opportunities than the other 21 players on the pitch had managed in the previous 70 combined. Within five minutes of him being on the pitch, Dunk had equalised as the Albion came from 1-0 down to take a point against the second placed Hornets. With an actual striker who could score actual goals, it could have been all three.

The comparisons with Vicente were as a result of another of McCourt’s appearances from the bench, this time at home to Middlesbrough. Everybody remembers that game against Derby County when the Spanish maestro picked up the ball on the edge of the Brighton box, ran with it past the entire Derby team and then hit the bar with a thunderbolt from 30 yards.

With the Albion trailing 2-0 to Boro, McCourt nearly repeated the trick, dancing past three visiting players on a solo run 60 yards up the pitch before firing just wide. It was from a McCourt corner that Greer did eventually add the Albion’s consolation goal.

The fourth and final reason for his popularity was that he was a maverick. If you saw McCourt in the street with his scruffy hair and shaggy beard, you’d never have guessed that he could do things with a football that most professionals can only dream off. He played the game with such ease despite looking like he’d rocked up having had 15 pints of Guinness the night before, lost a couple of hundred quid in the casino and then fallen asleep in a bush somehow with a half eaten doner meat and chips.

One acquaintance of the WeAreBrighton.com team tells a story that just sums McCourt up. Our man was working as a Sainsburys’ delivery driver at the time and had to visit a McCourt in Cuckfield with a shop that contained rather a lot of Jägermeister.

After completing the delivery to a lovely Irish lady, he plucked up the courage to ask, “Excuse me, is Paddy McCourt your husband?”, at which point Paddy came stumbling down the stairs unannounced for a 20 minute chat and a selfie. A few days later he’d be back at it, dancing past Blackburn Rovers defenders as if they weren’t there.

McCourt’s final appearance in a Brighton shirt came against Reading on Boxing Day. He moved to Notts County on loan just before Hughton was appointed as Albion boss and was released by the Albion in the summer of 2015, having a season at Luton Town under Nathan Jones before leaving Kenilworth Road a year early to return to Northern Ireland after his wife Laura was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Thankfully, she made a full recovery and McCourt has been delighted supporters in the Northern Ireland Football League until his retirement in 2018.

In a day and age in which even the most talented players have a work ethic to match their abilities, McCourt was a throwback to a more simple time. Had he played 20 years previously when strict conditioning wasn’t so important and the super talented could get away without defending, it’s scary to think how far he could have gone.

Much further than being the highlight in one of the most terrible Brighton seasons in recent memory, that’s for sure.