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| Going
up... Promotion was not long in coming for Albion after their League Cup win, but the mastermind it was not at Eton Park to witness the success he had engineered. Peter Taylor had been lured to Hartlepool to the job of Assistant Manager to a former Middlesborough and Sunderland player by the name of Brian Clough. |
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| Future Stamford Bridge idol Ian Hutchinson (light strip) bears down on goal in front of a packed Popside - note the advert for now forgotten Trumans Beer |
| The pair of
them would go on to win the Championship with Derby County, and two European
Cups with Nottingham Forest, but Taylor would go down in Eton Park folklore
as the man who presided over one of the most fondly remembered teams in their
history, while his managerial partner would much later enjoy a connection
of his own with the club. Meanwhile, the team Taylor had built was storming towards promotion in the 1965-66 season, with that famous forward line at the height of their devastating powers. Stan Round notched up 59 goals, Richie Barker 56, as Albion finished the season unbeaten at home to clinch the third promotion spot, behind Barnet and Hillingdon Borough, to what, in those pre-Conference days, could claim to be the premier league of non-league soccer. Albion, still a young club barely out of their adolescence, were now competing with the long established giants of the non-league scene, including future Football League clubs Wimbledon and Cambridge United, and the Brewers found themselves struggling for air at this new high altitude. After just about climbing to a respectable mid-table berth in their first season, the Brewers only escaped relegation the following year thanks to Stevenage Town going bust. And Albion came close to such a fate themselves, as financial worries once again threatened the club's future. Stan Round was sold to Worcester City, and though exciting young striker Ian Hutchinson (a future First Division star with Chelsea) arrived as a replacement, Richie Barker was summoned to Derby County where Clough and Taylor were now installed. As a new golden age was beginning 11 miles down the road at the Baseball Ground, at Eton Park it was the end of an era. Top |
| The
see-saw 70's
When ex-Leicester
City star Richie Norman took over as player manager in the New Year of 1970,
the Brewers were already heading for relegation from the Premier Division,
and the new man, hampered by the continuing financial storm under which the
club had to operate, could do nothing to steer a course to safety in his
first season. |
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| Norman worked
hard to build a team to revitalise the club's fortunes, bringing in players
such as keeper Mick Allsopp and tough defender Phil Annable, who would give
years of service to Albion. Annable in particular, a Nottinghamshire miner,
went on to chalk up a record 567 appearances in over a decade at the club. The Brewers missed out on a return to the Premier Division at the first attempt by the skin of their teeth, but made sure of promotion the following season. However, following a pattern which would prove all too familiar throughout the seventies, the Brewers lasted only one season back in the Premier Division, and Norman resigned, after receiving a vote of no confidence from the board. Albion, under Norman's successor, tough disciplinarian Reg Gutteridge, continued to have something of an up and down existence, as they immediately bounced back out of Southern League Division One (North) in 1974, with a determination this time not to come back. Gutteridge strengthened his squad for Premier Division football by bringing in two of the star names of the seventies - young forward Pete Ward, another Eton Park striker who went on to bigger and better things with Brighton and later Nottingham Forest (the Clough-Taylor connection evident again), and, most sensationally of all ex-Forest star Ian Storey-Moore. Moore had hit the headlines in 1972 when - that man again - Brian Clough had introduced him to the Baseball Ground crowd as his new signing, only for Forest to veto the move. Moore ended up signing for Manchester United in a £200,000 deal. However, his promising professional career as one of the top wingers in the country had been cut short by injury, and in signing for Albion, Moore was taking his first tentative steps back into competetive football. However, the winger still had the sublime skills and blistering pace to make him one of the most talented players ever to tread the Eton Park turf. Top So near, and yet so far
Manager Gutteridge
did not last until Christmas of that first season back in the Premier Division
- he resigned over a row with directors over the transfer of Ward, and another
highly rated young player Frank Corrigan, to Brighton. It would not be the
last time behind-the-scenes wranglings would drive a manager from Eton
Park. |
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