Former Albion captain Gordon Greer announces his retirement
Former Brighton and Hove Albion captain Gordon Greer has announced his retirement from football at the age of 37 following his release from Kilmarnock at the end of last season.
Greer revealed the news on the Amex pitch at half time of Friday night’s 1-0 win over West Ham United. Greer was interviewed by That Man Richie Reynolds during the break having been invited to be part of the BBC Radio Sussex commentary team.
The Scottish international has a claim to being Brighton’s greatest ever captain. He skippered the side 234 times under four different managers, leading the Albion to the League One title in his first season and three top six finishes in the Championship.
Despite that, there were plenty of supporters who never fully took to Greer, which also gives him a claim to being the Albion’s most underrated player ever.
He was pivotal to the style of football Gus Poyet instilled in the side. Brighton hadn’t had a ball playing centre back in the Greer mould for generations before he was signed from Swindon Town for £250,000.
Culture when it came to Brighton centre backs went as far as Danny Cullip screaming “LET’S ‘AVE A WINNER” or shouting at the top of his voice “PETHICK YOU F**KING UGLY BASTARD” at random intervals when things got quiet at Withdean.
Greer was something we’d not seen before with his ability to collect the ball from the goalkeeper and actually pass it to someone else in blue and white.
That proved vital with so much of the football played under Poyet starting from the back and its doubtful whether we’d have enjoyed so much success without a player like Greer there.
He didn’t get off to the best of starts at the Albion. Greer arrived already suspended thanks to a red card picked up in Swindon’s League One play off semi final of the previous season which ruled him out of captaining the Robins at Wembley in the final.
It took him less than an hour of his Brighton debut to pick up a red card for an off the ball elbow against Rochdale which also gave Gary Jones the opportunity to score Dale’s first goal of a game which ended 2-2.
We didn’t see Greer again until mid-October and the trip to Charlton Athletic. Brighton were already top of League One by this point but Greer’s return to the side instantly led to an improvement in what were already some very impressive performances.
That game at the Valley saw second placed Charlton blown away 4-0 and two weeks later there was an even better 3-0 win away at Peterborough United who had overtaken the Addicks to become the Albion’s nearest challengers.
Greer was an automatic pick in the side from that point on right up until he picked up his fifth booking of the 2015-16 season away at Brentford. In the intervening period, he scored five goals and had seven hair transplants.
That yellow at Griffin Park triggered a one-game suspension and then shortly after he returned from that, he limped off in a 2-0 defeat away at Rotherham United. Lewis Dunk and Connor Goldson were in impervious form from that point on and Greer started only three more games that season before being released.
He spent the 2016-17 season with Blackburn Rovers before returning north of the border with Kilmarnock for whom he played 20 times last year before leaving the Fir Park club.
Greer won 11 caps for Scotland with Gordon Strachan calling him a “rock star defender”. A rock star he may not have been, but Brighton’s greatest ever captain? He certainly has a claim to that.
