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| Broken
dreams and unkept
promises The immediate post-Wembley years were a time of almost constant upheaval at Burton Albion Football Club. A seemingly never-ending succession of managers came through the revolving door at Eton Park promising great things, and claiming to have landed "the best job in non-league football", only to have gone within months, or even less. |
| Wembley boss Brian Fidler managed to cling on to his job into the New Year of 1988, but with Albion having moved back to the Southern League (now called the Beazer Homes League) to maintain regional balance, his team looked unsuited to their new, more refined habitat. |
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| The Brewers
briefly promised a repeat of some of the glory of the previous season
by taking York City to an Eton Park replay in the First Round of the FA Cup,
but as the Wembley team began to break up (Paul Groves going to Leicester,
Paul Bancroft to Kidderminster for £12,000 each), it was clear that
a change was needed if the club was to acheive the potential which had been
evident in the far off days of that magical May. The man brought in to replace Fidler was the Burton-born hero of Sunderland's FA Cup giant killing of Leeds in the 1973 Cup Final - Vic Halom. And Halom also wrote himself into Albion history... as their shortest-lived manager ever, lasting just 21 days before challenging chairman Sam Brassington to sack him - he did. Amongst the candidates Halom had beaten off for the job was a certain Martin O'Neill. He would go on to take Wycombe Wanderers from the Isthmian League to the Second Division, leaving an interesting 'what if' post-script in the Brewers history. Meanwhile, Halom's successor, former West Bromwich Albion man Bobby Hope also did not see eye to eye with Brassington. He resigned just weeks into the 1988-89 season. Brassington, the charismatic Chairman who had, in his own words 'saved the club' from financial ruin in 1986, was a familiar sight in the local press and matchday programme predicting Conference, or even League football at Eton Park 'within five years', promises which he could never hope to deliver, as a continuing stream of Albion managers splashed around money on players, without ever finding a winning formula. Bobby Hope had brought in a clutch of top quality signings, including classy defender Alan Kurila and strikers John Gayle and Mark Whitehouse, and his successor, Chris Wright, moulded the team he'd inherited into a force to be reckoned with in the Beazer Homes League. But by the time the 1989-90 season got underway all had gone, Eton Park resembling a railway station as arrivals and departures continued to flow through the club at pace. Powerful centre forward Gayle, along with one of Brian Fidler's last signings Steve Cotterill, went on a big money deal to First Division Wimbledon, Whitehouse and Kurila were sold off to Kidderminster after Albion refused to meet their pay demands, and promising winger Darren Carr was sold to Crystal Palace for a record £60,000. Life was never dull at Eton Park. Chris Wright had been sacked for financial misconduct (he'd been paying players out of his own pocket), and when former Albion favourite and Brian Fidler's old assistant Ken Blair was appointed manager in September 1989, he found himself with money to burn in an attempt to satisfy the insatiable appetite for success at the club. The merest sniff of Cup glory brought the part-time fans out in force - 4,135 turned out in driving rain to witness a re-run of the Trophy Final against Kidderminster in a Second Round replay of the competition in 1989. And the Kidderminster connection was again evident in the arrival of Jon Pearson and Rob Jones from Aggborough for £10,500 each, making them the club's record signings. Altogether, more than £40,000 was spent on players, but still Albion could not produce a side which would seriously threaten an assault on the title. When Ken Blair was ordered to trim his wage budget, yet another clash between manager and Chairman ensued, and in January 1990, Blair walked out. By now, many fans were of the opinion that the problems in the club were not in the dressing room, but the board room. Ten coachloads of fans made the trip to Telford to see another FA Trophy campaign fall at the first hurdle on January 13th, and by the end of the game "sack the board" was the chant ringing around the Buck's Head ground. Amazingly, there was still a line of candidates queueing up to take on what must now surely have resembled the impossible job of non-league football, and former Derby County player Steve Powell was the next to accept the challenge, after a short spell in charge by Caretaker boss Frank Upton. The 1990-91 season was enlivened by two big local cup derbys. An all-ticket crowd of 2,500 watched the FA Cup 4th Qualifying Round replay at Tamworth, to see Albion take a seemingly unassailable first-half lead thanks to two goals from Simon Redfern (the brother of Wembley hero Dave Redfern), only to lose 3-2 in Extra-Time. And the old rivlary with Nuneaton Borough, a club by now well and truly in the doldrums and playing in the Beazer Midland Division, was restored in the FA Trophy in December. Albion won 2-1 on an incident-packed day at Manor Park which included sendings-off, penalties, and a brick through the Albion team coach window on the way out! Again though, the Brewers failed to hit the Trophy glory trail, crashing out at a snowbound Stroud (aka Forest Green Rovers) in February. And before the season was out, Steve Powell was out too. Top The lives of Brian
By the time the
1991-92 season began, Sam Brassington had finally parted company with Albion,
after presiding over five of the most eventful years in the club's history. |
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Local
businessman Jock Gordon was now Chairman at the club and his first managerial
appointment needed no introduction to Albion fans - it was Brian Fidler! The man who'd earned a place in the club's hall of fame by taking them to Wembley obviously didn't believe in the old football saying "Never go back". Perhaps he should have done - he was out of the door again by February. |
| The frantic
comings and goings at Eton Park had by now calmed down to something resembling
calm, and new manager Brian Kenning, a blunt-talking Brummie lasted a whole
season before being shown the exit. The highspot of his reign was probably
the 4-0 thrashing, on Boxing Day 1993, of Albion's upstart neighbours
from across the border in South Derbyshire, Gresley Rovers, promoted to the
Southern League Premier Division for the first time in their history. 2,409 crammed into the Moat ground for the first Albion-Gresley league derby since the Birmingham league days of the 1950's, witnessing the start of a renewed rivalry between the two clubs. Another red-letter day of Kenning's managership was August Bank Holiday Monday of 1993, when Nuneaton, promoted back to the Premier Division, and managed by a certain John Barton, received a 6-1 drubbing at Eton Park. |
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