The People’s Player Rod Thomas
When the furore kicked off about Premier League PPV in the autumn of 2020 and Brighton deputy chairman Paul Barber sent an ill-advised email to one concerned supporter saying “Unfortunately, fans will always want everything for free”, one former Albion player came instantly to mind – Rod Thomas.
The Brighton that Barber knows and which pays him a salary in excess of £1 million per year can throw £20 million on a single player.
The Brighton that Thomas knew could only afford to sign him for £25,000 from Chester City because Albion supporters paid the fee themselves. Buying players for our own club. Not exactly wanting everything for free, is it?
It was 1998 and Brighton were homeless and broke. Forget a transfer budget, the Albion could not even afford to pay someone to work the bar in the executive lounge at the Priestfield Stadium.
Players not selected for the day’s game often found themselves channelling their inner Peggy Mitchell and serving beers.
Stuart Storer might have been handy at scoring goals which lifted Brighton off the Football League, but he could not pull a pint of Worthington’s for love nor money. Which was just as well, as there was none of that.
That was until Dick Knight revived a concept first used by the Albion in the 1970s by manager Pat Saward – the Buy a Player Fund.
It was a pretty straightforward idea. Saward asked Albion fans to chip in whatever they could to allow him to reinforce his struggling Division Three squad.
Schoolchildren across Sussex took part in fundraising events and adults donated their hard earned cash. £10,000 was raised and three months after Saward first launched the fund, that supporter money was spent turning the loan of Bert Murray from Birmingham City into a permanent deal.
Brighton were 23rd out of 24 teams in the third tier when the fee was paid. With Murray a full-time Seagull, the Albion won nine and drew three of their final 17 matches to climb to 14th by the end of the campaign.
28 years later and Knight decided to go the public again, pleading with them to help him give his manager a budget which might allow Brighton to do something other than finish 91st in the Football League, as they had in the 1996-97 and 1997-98 campaigns.
The response to Knight’s appeal was even stronger than it had been to Saward’s, despite Brighton playing a division lower and attracting barely 2,000 supporters to home games a 150 mile trip away in Gillingham.
It was now up to Brian Horton to invest the money wisely. His choice was Rod Thomas, one of the most exciting and enigmatic wingers in the lower leagues. Brighton fans were only too familiar with Thomas having been terrorised by him playing for Carlisle United and Chester.
And so £25,000 wound its way to the Deva Stadium in exchange for Thomas heading south. It was a shrewd move from Horton as Thomas was the perfect candidate to become the People’s Player.
If you are going to spend cash adults have earned through a hard day’s labour and donated to the Albion or kids pocket money they have willingly handed over, then it should go on a player who gets those people who paid for him out of their seats.
Thomas certainly did that. When coming through the ranks at Watford, he gave a dazzling individual display for England Schoolboys which led the media to dub him the new John Barnes. Comparisons for a young Hornets player in the 1980s did not come any bigger than that.
He had pace and trickery. He could beat a man and cross a ball. He was the sort of player who, on a good day, elevated those around him. And crucially for a Brighton side used to struggle, he would walk into most other teams in Division Three, based on talent at least.
Why then was he playing for the Albion and not a better club or at a higher level? The answer was his attitude. It would eventually bring about the end of his Brighton career but for his first seven months at least, Rod Thomas was brilliant for the Albion.
He wasted no time in making a mark, scoring on his debut on a Friday night at Cambridge United. It was a wet evening and the old open away terrace at the Abbey Stadium left nowhere to hide.
Nobody in blue and white was complaining by the end though. Even the walk back to the Liz Costa Love Bus afterwards, through that infamous field in the pitch black attempting to dodge cow shit scattered all over the path was done with smiles on faces.
For Thomas tore Cambridge apart as the Albion won 3-2, ending a sequence of five consecutive defeats in which they had only scored once. A brilliant three points against a side who would end the season winning automatic promotion.
Thomas’ goal summed him up perfectly. Horton described it as “a bit of class”, his new £25,000 acquisition snaking his way in one-on-one before showing the composure to dance around home goalkeeper Arjan van Heusden and finishing.
That win at Cambridge sparked an incredible run of form. Nine wins from 14 matches including a club-record five consecutive victories on the road lifted the Albion into a playoff spot by mid-January.
The promotion charge which nobody had foreseen happening could be traced back to that moment Rod Thomas arrived at Brighton. He was proving money well spent.
When Thomas and Jeff Minton were on form, the Albion possessed two of the best midfielders in Division Three. They were both mercurial talents who needed the right manager to bring the best out of them.
Horton was clearly that man. Minton played the best football of his career in that 1998-99 campaign. Thomas was excellent all the while Horton was at the helm but struggled from the moment that Nobby left the Albion, as we are about to find out.
Thomas provided quite the supply line for Richard Barker and Gary Hart, the classic big man-little man partnership. Barker in particular thrived on Thomas beating his man and crossing into the box, like a lower league, slightly less good version of the Anthony Knockaert and Glenn Murray link up which dragged Brighton into the Premier League.
No article about Thomas can ignore his role in one of the most ridiculous moments in Brighton history, either. Plymouth Argyle at the Priestfield was a rare off night for the Albion in that impressive autumn sequence, the Pilgrims winning 3-1 on Tuesday 20th October 1998.
Still, Thomas did at least provide some entertainment for the 1,793 Seagulls supporters who made the midweek trip to Gillingham, producing an outrageous full length save to tip a shot over the bar.
If prime England number one of the time David Seaman had made it, the media would have described it as one of the greatest saves ever – especially as Thomas stood only 5’6 tall.
Unfortunately of course, he was not Brighton’s actual goalkeeper and despite doing superbly to bail out Mark Walton who had gone walkies, it was a straight red card and a three game ban for Thomas.
The efforts of Thomas, Minton, Barker, Hart et all in turning the Albion into a side challenging for a top six spot did have one major downside – alerting other clubs to the outstanding job Horton was doing.
It did not take long for one of these other clubs to make a move. Division One Port Vale came in and the lure of Vale Park and the chance to manage another club he had once played for proved too much for Horton.
The man who captained Brighton from third tier to first back in the club’s 1970s heyday under Alan Mullery was Stoke-on-Trent bound quicker than it takes Robbie Williams to say Millenniummmmmmmmmmm.
Two weeks before Horton departed, Thomas had picked up an ankle injury which would leave him on the shelf from December until January.
That meant that Brighton had not only lost their manager ahead of the final four months of the season, but they also had to do without their best player.
Jeff Wood was woeful as Horton’s replacement, winning two games in caretaker charge before overseeing two draws and nine defeats in 11 matches following his permanent appointment.
Brighton tumbled from playoff contention to looking over their shoulders at the battle to avoid the Conference. You do have to wonder though if the Wood horror show might have turned out a little different with Thomas available and pulling the strings.
Thomas made his comeback in the final game of the season against Rochdale, by which time Wood was gone and Micky Adams in charge.
Adams steadied the ship and safety had been assured long before that last home match at Gillingham, a 1-1 draw against Rochdale on Saturday 8th May 1999.
The reception Thomas received from the Albion crowd when he came on for a 25 minute cameo was as if Peter Ward had just returned, a sign of the high esteem that he was already held in after just three months of playing time in a Brighton shirt.
There was a real sense of anticipation every time he got the ball on the left flank, again comparable to Knockaert receiving possession in that 2016-17 season.
The home support expected something to happen and Thomas did his best to live up to it, throwing in stepovers and tricks galore.
Little did anyone at the Priestfield that day know, but it would be the last time the presence of Thomas would cause such excitement and a shot of electricity through supporters.
A maverick like Rod Thomas was never likely to be an Adams favourite, the new Brighton manager favouring solid professionals who would fight for him in the trenches over a showman with a wizard’s sleeve.
Although Thomas started and scored in the first game at Withdean when Mansfield Town were beaten 6-0, it was steadily downhill from there.
Adams only trusted him to sit on the bench and make late cameos when games needed changing, something which left a player of Thomas’ talent and attitude frustrated.
That frustration eventually boiled over into an incident which all-but ended his Brighton career. Adams gave him a rare start away at Mansfield on Tuesday 1st December 1999 but Thomas blew it, getting sent off after just five minutes.
Adams was apoplectic with rage afterwards and their already strained relationship was as good as done. Brighton battled manfully with 10 men but getting a result whilst playing shorthanded for so long proved just beyond them, a Tony Lormor penalty with 13 minutes remaining securing a 1-0 win for the Stags.
Thomas never recovered from that. His first team opportunities became even more limited and as a result, he lost fitness and form. Thomas played just 11 more times in 18 months as his Albion career came to an end with a record of four goals in 56 appearances.
He was released at the end of the 2000-01 Division Three title winning season. Unable to find another club, he retired a few months later.
In an interview with the Watford Legends website, Thomas revealed that he left the professional game altogether following his departure from Withdean, instead helping his brother run salsa and comedy workshops. That sounds like a bloody brilliant job.
The Brighton career of Rod Thomas will always be full of ‘What ifs?’. What if Horton had never left and Thomas had continued to thrive under a manager who got the best out of him in a team flying up the Division Three table?
What if Thomas had not missed the entirety of Wood’s reign injured? What if he had developed a better relationship with Adams? What if that red card against Mansfield had never happened?
Thomas had all the tools to go onto become a Brighton great. He showed that in those dazzling first three months when the Albion were transformed from strugglers into playoff contenders.
It might not have worked out as well as it could have done, but that £25,000 worth of supporters’ money was well spent for the excitement and buzz that Rod Thomas generated as a Brighton player. Just do not tell Barber about it… after all, we only want everything for free.
