The Goldstone Wrap

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.

With his gold chain, classic moustache and impressive goalscoring ability, the lanky marksman Malcolm Poskett became a favourite at the Goldstone in the late 1970s, following a £60,000 transfer from lowly Hartlepool in February 1978. All this despite competition from Peter Ward and Teddy Maybank.

With Maybank facing a cartilage operation, Poskett scored on each of his first two matches for the Seagulls, against Hull and Burnley before a cherished hat-trick at Bristol Rovers in April 1978.

This article is from Shoot! magazine in 1978/79, when Maybank had a firmer grip of the number nine shirt:

Malcolm Poskett’s brilliant goalscoring has been one of the most important reasons for Brighton’s rise up the Second Division table after a poor start to the season.

Yet earlier this term, the £60,000 striker had wanted to leave the Goldstone Ground.

He explains: “I felt I was playing well enough to be in the first team, but I wasn’t getting a chance. Peter Ward and Teddy Maybank had the two striking roles and I couldn’t see how I was going to get into the team. The boss, you see, doesn’t think it works for all three of us to play in the same side. And I couldn’t see either of the other two being dropped. I asked for a transfer and I was actually on the list for a few weeks.”

But then Alan Mullery asked me to withdraw my request and a short time afterwards, I was in the first team,

“I don’t really mind who I play alongside in the forward line, but I do seem to get on particularly well with Teddy Maybank. I prefer playing with a big target man up-front. It’s the way I used to play at Hartlepool.”

“My strengths are my control on the deck, going past people to get into shooting positions.” Incredibly, Poskett is in only his second full season of League football. Having been turned down by Jack Charlton at Middlesbrough as a youngster, he got a job as a plater and played part-time for Whitby.

But he didn’t hesitate when he got another chance of League football in the 1976-77 season even though the club after him were struggling Hartlepool.

Poskett decided to give himself two years to make the grade.

His career was made, he says, by Hartlepool manager Billy Horner. “When I first went there I was a lazy player. At Whitby I just used to hang around goal and wait for the ball to come to me. But Billy made me work hard – almost to the point of exhaustion sometimes. And he told me I’d play in the First Division one day.”

If Brighton’s goal record had been a little better, Poskett would be there now, But they missed out last season because Tottenham had a slightly better margin, though the teams finished level on points.

Even so, Poskett thinks it will turn out to be only a temporary setback. He thinks this season, Brighton will prove good enough for promotion.

“I think we’re as good as anybody in the Second Division, although it’s so close, any of ten teams could go up. There’s been no outstanding side so far, but I reckon Palace will make it: “I just want to keep banging the goals in, so that I stay in the Brighton side. With three of us: competing for the two places, I never believe I’m in the side until I pull the shirt over my head on Saturday afternoon.

“I’ve set myself a target of 20 goals this season. I got 16 in the League last season — ten at Hartlepool and six in 11 full games at Brighton.

“So I don’t think 20 should be beyond me. And if the other front lads get the same, we’ll be pretty sure of a place in Division One.”

In the end, Ward, Maybank and Poskett each hit the target in the League ten times in the 1978/79 season, with Poskett’s hat-trick at Charlton in December showing him at his most prolific. Helped by Brian Horton’s magnificent tally of eleven strikes in Division Two, Albion’s goalscorers provided the perfect platform for Albion to build a successful promotion campaign to Division One.

Poskett did not experience much First Division football with the Seagulls, however. A substitute in the first two matches of 1979/80, he lost his place only to return in a League Cup clash with Northampton, where he hit the winner. Spurred on by this, and Maybank failing a fitness test, Poskett was recalled for the away Division One fixture at West Bromwich Albion, where (below) he nodded in Peter Ward’s cross after 83 minutes. One First Division start, one goal. This was a very impressive ratio.

With no more appearances due to the blossoming Peter Ward-Ray Clarke partnership, Poskett was sold to Watford for £120,000 in January 1980. According to John Vinicombe, ‘Poskett went like a shot to Vicarage Road.’ There, he played his part in the Hornets’ eventual promotion to the top flight in 1982, hitting seventeen goals in 63 League games.

Poskett later had spells with Carlisle, Darlington, Stockport, and Carlisle and Hartlepool again before hanging up his boots. For a man who took a pay cut of £50 a week to play for Hartlepool in his first spell at the club, the striker had certainly grabbed his chance to play professional football.

(And if you wish to relive your days as a, erm, Posketteer, a Malcolm T-shirt could be yours from Cult Zeros).