The Messiah's Replacement

[melrose]

The end of a magical era in the Spring of 1985 saw the lord god Lineker move on to new pastures blue. It left his second in command "Smudger" Smith without the worlds best strike partner.

Come August, panic over for Smudge and the concerned Filbo Faithfull! Enter the saviour, price a loss less than 850,000 big ones.

As I remember it at the time, Mark Bright had extremely large boots to fill but it has to be said he disappointed big style!

As the months of a Brighty baron spell wore on and the Blue Army finally lost patience, he found himself out on his ar*e.

Bright's reasons for his rejection from the field of dreams, as I recall, was not one of him failing to deliver bulges in the opposition's onion bag, but of racist chants directed towards him during that season of 85/86.

I would like to hear of anyone's memories of that time and do people know of any other city player that was sh1t and blamed their departure on a load of bollox?

[nickm]

i seem to remember brighty coming here with a scorers reputation-wasn't it about the same time his then strike partner ian wright went to arsenal?

brighty came with a good reputation-didn't score but moved on and scored plenty with his next club-was it sheff wed or somebody?

we do seem to be good at signing good scorers and turning them into rubbish ones-akinbadbuy, benjamin, fryatt, collins john, cort--how many more have there been or have i just got it wrong?

[Ultra]

The end of a magical era in the Spring of 1985 saw the lord god Lineker move on to new pastures blue. It left his second in command "Smudger" Smith without the worlds best strike partner.

Come August, panic over for Smudge and the concerned Filbo Faithfull! Enter the saviour, price a loss less than 850,000 big ones.

As I remember it at the time, Mark Bright had extremely large boots to fill but it has to be said he disappointed big style!

As the months of a Brighty baron spell wore on and the Blue Army finally lost patience, he found himself out on his ar*e.

Bright's reasons for his rejection from the field of dreams, as I recall, was not one of him failing to deliver bulges in the opposition's onion bag, but of racist chants directed towards him during that season of 85/86.

I would like to hear of anyone's memories of that time and do people know of any other city player that was sh1t and blamed their departure on a load of bollox?

Bright was indeed the Elvis Hammond of his day.

He actually made his debut for us in August 1984 against newly-promoted Newcastle. The toon army were somewhat less racially aware than they are nowadays, and gave him some horrendous abuse. His confidence suffered from this and he went an entire season without finding the net. Fortunately the rest of the forward line (Lineker, Smith and Steve Lynex) were so prolific that it didn't matter.

The first game of the 85-86 season saw Lineker make his debut for new club Everton, ironically at Filbert Street. Even more ironically. he went scoreless that day as City ran out 3-1 winners, with Bright scoring his first two goals for City. Sadly this proved to be a false dawn for both player and club, as a 5-0 hammering at Oxford the following week saw us quickly sucked into another relegation battle.

Although we eventually survived, beating the geordies 2-0 in our last game, gates slumped to as low as SEVEN thousand, and many of those that did turn up were unforgiving in their abuse of those they deemed unfit to wear the shirt. In Bright's case, it has to be said that a lot of the stick was racially motivated, although Laurie Cunningham, who also played for us that season, was generally well-treated by the faithful.

Bright's unhappy spell with us was finally terminated in 1986/87 when he was sold to Crystal Palace and quickly struck up a successful strike partnership with Ian Wright, showing far more ability in South London than he usually did for us.

But given that the rest of our side (Alan Smith and a young Gary McAllister apart) were so poor in the seasons after Lineker left, it is likely that ANY young striker, black or otherwise, might have struggled.