What happened to the first Brighton team to play at Withdean?
Saturday 7th August 1999. The sun shone on Brighton and Hove and in a leafy suburb on the outskirts of the city, 5,882 people crammed into Withdean Athletics Stadium to watch the Albion take on Mansfield Town on the opening day of the Division Three season.
Nobody needs any introduction as to what happened next. In their first game back in Sussex after two years of exile playing in Gillingham, the Albion tore their visitors apart to win 6-0 in the most perfect homecoming imaginable.
The Roy of the Rovers stuff did not stop with the result, the weather or the performance. Local boy Darren Freeman scored a hat-trick on his debut for his home-town club.
Fan favourite Rod Thomas got in on the act. There was even a brace for Aidan Newhouse who looked a real talent… for all of 20 minutes.
Brighton would go onto play at Withdean Stadium – their “temporary home” – for 12 more years. But what happened to the 14 trailblazing players who pulled on the stripes for the demolition of the Stags?
Mark Ormerod
The man who recorded a clean sheet as Brighton returned to Sussex was Mark Ormerod, one of only two survivors from the final season at the Goldstone to have played in the Withdean opener.
Ormerod lost the number one shirt to Mark Walton a month into the 1999-00 campaign. He managed just nine appearances across the season before Micky Adams released him the in the summer of 2000 following 85 appearances for the Albion.
Easily the most important of those came on the final day of the 1996-97 season. Everyone talks about that Robbie Reinelt goal which kept Brighton in the Football League and relegated Hereford United.
But Ormerod played his part with one crucial save right at the death. If that went in and the Albion slipped into non league, we would all support a very different football club today.
Ormerod went onto play for Woking, Dorchester Town and Worthing after he left the Albion. And the WAB team randomly bumped into him at the Etihad Stadium before England played Iceland in a friendly in June 2004.
Chris Wilder
Chris Wilder had a blink-and-you-missed-it Brighton career which lasted all of 11 games. He was signed on a monthly contract in the summer of 1999 after being released by Sheffield United and was an Albion regular at both right and left back though the first two months of the 1999-00 campaign.
But in the middle of October, Halifax Town came calling. Before joining Brighton, Wilder had spent his entire career in the north.
There were rumours he could not settle in Sussex, probably due to the fact a pint of Tetley’s cost more than £1.25.
With only a rolling monthly deal keeping Wilder at Withdean, it was decided that it was best for all parties if he moved to the Shay.
Wilder finished his playing career with the Shaymen and went onto manage the club for over six years and 300 games.
From there, Wilder established himself as one of the most underrated coaches in the country. He led Oxford United and Northampton Town to promotions before taking Sheffield United from League One to the Premier League.
Keith McPherson
Jeff Wood did not do much good during his three month reign of terror, but he did at least sign the experienced Keith McPherson.
The defender was a cool presence in a pretty dodgy Brighton defence towards the end of the 1998-99 campaign. His efforts were rewarded when Adams handed him a one-year deal for the first season at Withdean.
McPherson was a regular pretty much the whole time Adams used a back three. But the change to 4-4-2 saw the veteran slide down the pecking order behind Andy Crosby and Danny Cullip.
Adams released McPherson in the summer of 2000 after 35 appearances and one goal for the Albion. He was last seen coaching in the Berkshire area.
Gary Hobson
Gary Hobson was the other survivor from the last season at the Goldstone to make it onto the pitch for the first Brighton game at Withdean. Little did we know at the time that he was in the final throes of his Seagulls career.
Four months after helping the Albion record their opening day clean sheet, Hobson moved to Chester City on loan. That brought the curtain down on a four year spell with the Seagulls in which he played 113 times after signing for £60,000 from Hull City in 1996 – when £60,000 was a lot of money.
Chester’s relegation out of the Football League on goal difference at the end of the season – Hobson was in their defence the day Brighton won 7-1 at the Deva Stadium – meant they were unable to sign him on a permanent basis and so he moved to York City.
Hobson is now a UEFA match agent, which means he negotiates countless pre-season tours abroad for Premier League, Championship and European clubs.
Andy Crosby
The 6-0 win over Mansfield was Andy Crosby’s Brighton debut. He would go onto become one of those classic, no-nonsense players around whom so much of the Albion’s success under Adams was built.
Crosby cost £10,000 that summer from Chester but that instantly looked like money well spent. He played 41 times in 1999-00 and followed that up with 39 appearances the following season as part of the Division Three title winning side.
Long before Inigo Calderon was scoring goals with his face, Crosby was doing so with his ear when netting what proved to be the winner in a 1-0 success over Blackpool at Withdean.
Simon Morgan’s arrival in the summer of 2001 proved to be the end of Crosby’s Brighton career. After 85 games for the Albion, he joined Oxford and then Scunthorpe United.
It was at Glanford Park that Crosby first encountered Nigel Adkins and the two developed a very successful partnership. Crosby served as assistant to everyone’s favourite David Brent tribute act at the Irons, Southampton, Reading, Sheffield United and Hull City.
Crosby most recently spent 10 months in charge at Port Vale, his first managerial role.
Jamie Campbell
An often overlooked candidate when people put together their lists of worst players to ever play for Brighton, Jamie Campbell was a left back who surprisingly lasted as long as one season with the Albion.
Adams brought Campbell in on a free transfer in the summer of 1999 from Cambridge United. Despite it being quite obvious quite quickly that Campbell was shit, Adams persisted with him for the first four months of the season.
That was until Campbell picked up a wonderfully ridiculous red card after just 25 minutes away at Swansea City, made even better by the fact that a flu bug had swept through the ranks.
17-year-old’s Shaun Wilkinson and Chris McPhee were in the squad as a result. The last thing that the Albion needed was to have to play against the eventual Division Three champions for the majority of the game with 10 men.
That little incident belatedly opened Adams’ eyes to the fact Campbell was woeful and he played just two more league games before being released to join Exeter City.
Charlie Oatway
The first game at Withdean also happened to be the first Brighton game for a man who would go onto become an Albion legend over the course of the next decade.
Charlie Oatway signed that summer from Brentford for £10,000, an astonishing piece of business even before you take into account the fact that the price included Paul Watson as well.
Oatway would go onto play 248 times for the Albion. He became club captain, won two league titles and one play off final.
A broken ankle forced him into retirement in 2007 but his Albion story wasn not done as he returned to the club as first team coach under Gus Poyet.
Oatway and Poyet struck up the most unlikely of friendships. One was a Uruguayan central midfielder with all the flair and talent that you expect from a South American.
The other a bloke from Shepherds Bush who did time for actual bodily harm and common assault following an incident outside a fish and chip shop in Essex.
Oatway has subsequently followed Poyet to Sunderland, Shanghai Greenland Shenhua, AEK Athens and Real Betis. His relationship with Poyet means that the Albion also choose to pretend Oatway no longer exists. A real shame for a bloke who gave so much to the club.
Paul Rogers
It says much about Paul Rogers that in a team which Adams was determined to pack with as many leaders as possible, it was Rogers who was signed to captain the side.
Despite the fact he was 35-years-old when he arrived at Withdean from Wigan Athletic, Rogers went onto become one of the crucial components as Brighton swept to the Division Three title.
He missed just two league games in the 1999-00 and 2000-01 seasons combined on his way to making 139 appearance and scoring 16 times.
Rogers retired at the end of the 2002-03 campaign, going onto take up a position in the club’s marketing department as part of Dick Knight’s ‘Jobs for the Boys’ policy.
Rod Thomas
Thomas was the People’s Player, bought in October 1998 by Brian Horton for £17,000 from Chester using money raised by supporters contributing to the Buy a Player fund.
Thomas was exactly the sort of signing that fans’ hard earned cash should be going on. He was a maverick, a skilful entertainer and somebody who could get people on their feet with a piece of magic every time he had the ball.
Whilst that may have been what Horton wanted, it certainly was not what Adams wanted. Thomas goal against Mansfield proved to be his only of the campaign.
The return game with the Stags four months after Brighton ran out 6-0 winners at Withdean had a huge bearing on his Albion career. Thomas managed to get sent off at Field Mill after just five minutes of what ended up being a 1-0 defeat.
Adams was apoplectic with rage afterwards and their already strained relationship was as good as done. 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.
Thomas retired upon his release from Withdean and has since gone onto help his brother running salsa and comedy workshops, which sounds like a bloody brilliant job.
Gary Hart
Oh Gary Hart. He may not have scored in the Withdean opener against Mansfield, but Hart’s performance alongside Freeman pointed to the prospect of a special Brighton strike partnership brewing.
Sadly, said partnership never really got off the ground.. Freeman’s rotten luck with injuries did not help, but Adams also decided that a better way to make the most out of Hart’s pace and tenacity would be to move him out to the right wing.
It proved to be an ingenious decision as Hart would go onto spend the majority of the next 10 years playing out wide for the Albion.
And what a 10 years it was. A club-record four promotions, 417 games and 46 goals. Hart would also go onto be the only man to play for Brighton in all 12 Withdean seasons.
Darren Freeman
The star of the opening day show, Freeman was well known to Brighton fans before Adams signed him on a free transfer in the summer of 1999.
With his flowing locks, his eye for goal and the well-documented fact that he was from Brighton, we had seen Freeman score many-a-time against the Albion for Brentford and Fulham.
He would always celebrate said goals with great gusto. And the celebration of his historic Withdean hat-trick were marked with even more enthusiasm on what was arguably the best Brighton debut ever.
Freeman’s first arrived on 14 minutes. His second on 20. His third on 70. He left the pitch, job done, to a standing ovation on 73, to be replaced by Newhouse.
Brighton 6-0 Mansfield was the undoubted highlight of Freeman’s Albion career. He went onto end the 1999-00 campaign as top scorer with 13 goals.
We also got to see Freeman’s nasty side as he picked up two red cards in the space of four games in November. A stickler for discipline, those incidents left Adams disappointed.
It was not though indiscipline, but injuries which ultimately did for Freeman. After only 62 games, his Brighton career was over.
He has since gone onto have a decent managerial career on the Sussex non-league circuit as boss at Whitehawk and Lewes and is now an agent. He sports substantially less hair these days.
Dave Cameron (Thomas 67)
Ah, Dave Cameron. The Scottish striker paid to get himself out of the Army to sign for the Albion.
His reward? A six month career encompassing 22 games and no goals, ended when Alan Cork described him in post-match press conference as being “Useless, full stop.”
Perhaps the writing should have been on the wall after Cameron’s debut against Mansfield. Whilst all the Albion’s other strikers filled their boots, Cameron failed to trouble the scoreboard at all. Summed it up, really.
Aidan Newhouse (Freeman 73)
Two goals in 17 minutes from the bench on your debut should point to a long and glorious career ahead. But not if you are Aidan Newhouse.
Signed on a free from Swansea City six days before Mansfield came to town, this was as good as it got for the striker. He made just two starts and 10 more substitutes appearances before being released in December to join Sutton United.
Newhouse became a maths teacher. His claim to fame – aside from scoring twice in the first game at Withdean – is that he taught former Liverpool youngster Ben Woodburn.
Paul Armstrong (Oatway 80)
Before Brighton became an established part of the Premier League, Armstrong was a rare example of an Albion youth product who went onto earn international hours.
He won won a couple of caps for Republic of Ireland Under 21s during the Albion’s exile at Gillingham, just reward for being a decent player during those dark days in Kent.
Armstrong was able to play at both full back and in central midfield. Even with that versatility, Adams’ summer 1999 squad overhaul saw Armstrong slip down the pecking order.
His 10-minute cameo in the first game at Withdean was one of just six appearances he made for Brighton during the 1999-00 campaign before being released.
Armstrong can now be found either running at Preston Park Parkrun on a Saturday morning or drinking in Quench Bar & Kitchen in Burgess Hill on a Saturday night.
Remarkably given he played 55 times for Brighton, the WAB team still appear to be the only people who have ever asked him for s selfie in Quench.
