The stormy story of Mark Walton and Brighton & Hove Albion

Six foot four, 15 stone, a voice so loud that it could crack rock from 100 metres away – Mark Walton shouldn’t have been a footballer, he should have been a wrestler.

The giant Welsh goalkeeper joined Brighton and Hove Albion for £20,000 in the summer of 1998 from Fulham. Given that this was a time when the Albion would try and sign players in exchange for a set of shirts, that was quite an outlay for Brian Horton to spend.

On paper, it looked a good outlay. Mark Ormerod and Nicky Rust had spent the previous two seasons battling for the number one shirt, conceding 136 goals between them. In the two seasons prior to that, Rust had had free reign over the gloves, shipping 122. 258 goals in four seasons. It was Sunday League levels of bad.

And so out went Rust, released at the end of the 1999-00 season and in came Walton. The first thing to notice when he made his debut at Carlisle United on the opening day of the 1998-99 season was that he was huge. The second thing to notice was that he was loud. You could hear virtually every word he shouted from the terraces at the Priestfield so clearly it was as if he was screaming them in your face.

Admittedly, it is a lot easier to be heard in front of a couple of thousand people than with an Amex-sized crowd. But if he was in the Albion side now, you could make a strong case that you’d be able to hear him from the West Upper over the noise of 30,000 people. The front page of the first home programme of the season even had a picture of him bellowing at someone or other with the caption “Goal Mouth”.

His favourite string of phrases to below involved “HOLD, HOLD, HOLD, HOLD, SQUEEEEEEZE”. This was particularly disconcerting for Albion fans who had become accustomed to defenders who struggled to head a ball, let alone attempt to operate a fully working offside trap. Remarkably, said offside trap actually worked.

Goal Mouth started his Albion career relatively well, including a match winning performance in a 1-0 home win over Swansea City in which he produced one incredible save with what can only be described as his bollocks. He was also a bit of a character. Walton told The Argus after that Swans game when asked about the stop, “I thought it was going in, so I just threw my nether regions at it”.

Despite his decent start and the fact he had a bit of personality about him, the Albion faithful never warmed to him. After a 3-1 home to defeat to Plymouth Argyle in which Walton saw Rod Thomas make the save of the game by punching a goal bound effort over the bar for a red card, Ormerod was handed his first start of the season away at Barnet.

That resulted in a 1-0 win in what was largely considered the wettest game in Brighton history and sparked an excellent run of form. The Albion climbed into the dizzy heights of the Division Three play offs with eight wins and a draw from their next 11 games, earning Horton the Port Vale managers job in the process.

Walton returned for a couple of games in the first few weeks of the Jeff Wood era and actually played in Wood’s only two victories, keeping clean sheets against Scarborough Athletic and Peterborough United. He was replaced again by Ormerod after a 3-0 defeat at Southend United and then a hernia operation ruled him out for most of the rest of the season.

He returned a very different man to a very different Albion ahead of the 1999-00 season. It’s no exaggeration to say that Walton’s transformation over the course of that summer was even greater than that of David Stockdale in the summer of 2015 (what is it about Brighton signing overweight keepers from Fulham?) and the Albion now had Micky Adams in the dugout.

Walton had been Adams’ number one at Craven Cottage the season that he’d led the Cottagers to promotion and with so many other Fulham old boys moving to Withdean that summer, it seemed like only a matter of time before Walton would take over from Ormerod, who retained the shirt from the previous campaign.

The change duly arrived just three league games into the season but it certainly wasn’t a popular one. The abuse from the Withdean stands continued and reached its nadir when Walton’s attempted clearance from a back pass cannoned into the back of Paul Watson and into the net for an own goal as Chester City won 3-2 at the Theatre of Trees.

Walton was dropped after that and just over a month later, he submitted a transfer request having got fed up with the stick he was receiving. His toys and other assorted pram items were left scattered around the Sussex area.

He told The Argus “It’s one of those things you cannot really do too much about. I am not the first and I won’t be the last. Everybody hears it. It’s just general abuse from boo boys and it’s the same home and away.”

“It is obviously not the best feeling in the world, but you are paid to do a job and you go out and give your best.” Ironically, he was now trying to run rather than do his best.

When asked where he thought he might end up, Walton showed he was still up for a laugh, saying, “I would like to go to Man United, but I don’t think that will happen.” At least he kept his sense of humour.

Despite his desire to escape the criticism, Walton returned to the side a few weeks later, keeping a clean sheet away at Peterborough. Eight more shutouts in the next 11 games followed and Walton remained number one right the way through until the end of the season, only missing three games through injury and illness.

That form saw Ormerod released in the summer of 2000 and Walton offered a new deal to remain at Withdean as number one for a promotion push in 2000-01 – a deal he gave Adams a verbal commitment that he would sign.

Then Cardiff City came knocking. The Bluebirds were Walton’s local club and he jumped at the chance to represent a side just 20 miles from where he grew up, no doubt also remembering all the stick he had copped from the Albion support over the last two seasons.

Adams was furious, saying that Walton had “left me in the lurch with two untested youngsters.” While Walton’s move to Ninian Park worked out well for him as he helped Cardiff to promotion that season, it actually worked out even better for the Albion, despite Adams’ initial rage.

We ended up Division Three champions that season and had Walton remained at Withdean as number one, one of those untested keepers Adams was so furious at being left in the lurch with might never have been given the chance to play.

Michel Kuipers turned out alright, didn’t he?