As the 1978/79 season approached, Teddy Maybank had high hopes of forming a deadly strike force with Peter Ward:
A partnership that has got fantastic potential ~ but hasn’t really fulfilled any of it as yet. That’s how I’d sum up our partnership at the end of last season.
I can’t deny it’s been a bad time for me since I went to Brighton. I cost them £238,000 from Fulham and I suppose people expected miracles for that sort of cash. But it took me longer to settle than I anticipated and then I got a bad knee injury, which put me back even further.
About the same time, Peter was going through a rare lean spell and even dropped into the reserves for a couple of games to try and find his goal-touch once again.
It all meant our partnership, which had looked so promising, wasn’t getting off the ground. But I can promise the Brighton fans – we’ll get It together next season.
What we can do together is unlimited and I’m vary excited about the potential.
I will play as the Brighton target man with Peter feeding off me. But I’ll try and use my skill on the ground, too, so I take a bit of attention sway from Peter and give him some room to score goals.
I can’t waIt to start fresh next season. Peter has got tremendous skill and is a natural goalscorer; you can see that the way he nips in to score goals all the time. His ability, and the desire to play alongside him, was one of the main reasons why I went to Brighton in the first place.
I’d always fancied playing upfront wIth him after seeing him score so often earlier in the season. I jumped at the chance to join but I’ve had to put up with a lot of frustrations and disappointments, mainly through injury and my poor form. But I still believe in my own ability ~ make no mistake about that.
Peter Ward can be a world beater. He’s got great skill on the floor and we were Just beginning to show what we could do together, when I got my knee injury. That wrecked it but I’ll be back.
My strength and his skill, speed and ability to snap up any half chances can really do things for Brighton next season.
After Albion fired two blanks in their opening two fixtures, against Wrexham and Cambridge, a purple patch of ten goals in the eight matches between Maybank and Ward suggested the partnership was finally beginning to gel.
With Maybank bearing the brunt of the physical battle and Ward feeding off the scraps, the duo were able to find the way to goal, despite the former Fulham man not being blessed with the same touch and technique and ‘Magic’ not always being as selfless in the partnership. After a wonderful team performance against Burnley at Turf Moor in the League Cup, when Maybank got one and Ward grabbed two, including a rare one with his head, the goals suddenly dried up.
While Ward showed his goal touch against Nottingham Forest in mid-December, it took until a Boxing Day hat-trick for Maybank to hit the net again. By that point, it appeared to Mullery that a Maybank-Poskett (below) partnership was a better bet during the winter months.
The Goldstone Wrap 