The pacey front man from Leeds was top scorer in three of his four full seasons at The Goldstone and his energy and never-say-die attitude were recognised by the fans with the player-of-the-year award in 1986/87.
He might also have some inside info on this weekend’s opponents Wolves, where he was manager, assistant manager and coach during more than 13 years at Molineux. Currently assistant to Ireland manager Mick McCarthy, he is helping to look after the international development of Albion youngsters Aaron Connolly and Jayson Molumby.
Born in Leeds, he won England youth international honours and helped the Three Lions win the European Youth Championship behind the old Iron Curtain in 1980 .
“I had two campaigns and we won the Championships in East Germany,” he says. “We took our own provisions, biscuits and all sorts, because we weren’t sure what it was going to be like over there. But it was interesting, to say the least.”
He had already made his first-team debut for Leeds United, scoring the only goal of a 1-0 win over West Bromwich Albion in the old first division in 1979.
“I left school when I was 16 and joined Leeds that summer. I was 17 on the 9th November and my first game was on the 17th. It will always stay in my memory, playing against Cyrille Regis, Brendan Batson and, I think, Laurie Cunningham.
“I had to come on when Paul Madeley was injured and in those days there was only one substitute so we had to shuffle the team around so that I could play up front.
“They always liked home-grown players at Leeds and I got a fabulous reception from the home end when we all went out to warm up and they knew that I would be involved. I didn’t really know what to do but Trevor Cherry, who was captain, told me I needed to give them a little wave, so I did and they roared.
“I was so nervous that I was terrible for 15 minutes and everyone must have thought ‘Who have we brought on here?’ But Arthur Graham settled me down by taking a throw-in and throwing it straight at my chest so that I couldn’t miss it and I knocked it back to him and he gave me a thumbs-up and it was all right after that.”
He made 108 appearances for Leeds over four seasons, scoring 22 goals, but the club was in the second tier when he moved to Albion in March 1983 in a straight swap for Andy Ritchie, each player valued at £500,000. That was a step back up to the top flight but it hardly seemed that way to Terry.
“In a way I was a bit too young to understand everything,” he says. “My heart was still with Leeds and I couldn’t really understand, having watched the team of the 1970s with Johnny Giles, Billy Bremner and Mick Jones, how they could be in the second division. And to this day I still feel that it is a slight that I was part of a Leeds team that was relegated.
“The manager, Eddie Gray, was a hero of mine, and when he told me I was going to Brighton I couldn’t really take it in. I couldn’t believe he didn’t want me to play for Leeds anymore. It was really hard to accept.
“Nowadays, of course, you’d have an agent who’d look after you and it wasn’t until I was older that I realised that you didn’t necessarily have to do what a club told you. I was only 20 and Andy wasn’t much older and the clubs made the decision. I remember I saw Andy getting off the plane that I was going to be getting on to fly down to Gatwick.”
At The Goldstone, Terry struggled at first to find a role in a team that was distracted by the run to the 1983 FA Cup final, for which he was ineligible. “I’d played against Coventry in the fourth round despite just having had my appendix out so I was cup-tied. Everybody was pre-occupied with the semi-final against Sheffield Wednesday at Highbury so I was told to go home for a few days while they prepared for that match.
“And after we won, everyone was getting ready to play at Wembley which I have still never done. At the same time, we were in the bottom three and needed wins to have any chance of staying up.”
He scored his only top-flight goal for the Seagulls off the bench in a 1-0 home victory over Coventry City on April 23rd, but there were not enough of those wins and relegation followed. But at least it meant that Terry’s Albion career could start in earnest.
“It took me about six months to get used to the fact that I wasn’t playing for Leeds anymore, but that summer I got married to my wife, Jan. She’s been the best thing in my life and we started our married lives in Brighton. We’d got engaged in Leeds, we got married there in May and after we came back from the honeymoon we packed up our belongings and drove down for pre-season training.
“There was no M25 in those days so neither of us could exactly run home to mum and dad, we were both only 20 but we just had to make it work and, touch wood, we have done ever since. The M25 was just a dotted line on the map but we didn’t know that when we came off the M1. After five miles we were among cranes and heaps of rubble and going through Leatherhead and Woking and all these places. When we passed Gatwick, I thought we must be close but it took another hour. We didn’t have a clue. The whole journey took about 12 hours!
“But we settled in and Steve Foster, Tony Grealish, Gary Howlett, Chris Ramsey, who I still know very well, were all fantastic and made me feel welcome very quickly.”
Being newly married, he was not so easily led astray by social organiser Jimmy Case. “I think I caught the back end of Jimmy although I can’t say he was slowing down. Yes, I was at some of the outings with people like Joe Corrigan, but I usually exited stage right. I couldn’t keep up!
“But Jimmy and Tony Grealish were great at keeping morale up and making sure that we stayed together as a group, and you could see how that had taken them to the cup final. As long as you knew when to make your excuses and bail out you were all right.
“Later we had Danny Wilson, Chris Hutchings, Dennis Mortimer, Justin Fashanu and Dean Saunders and, of course Frank Worthington who I had played with at Leeds – Frank me and Peter Barnes up front.”
Once he had settled in to the team and his surroundings, Terry found that the goals began to flow, none more memorable than his 1984 strike against Liverpool in the FA Cup fourth round tie at The Goldstone as he charged towards the North Stand before swerving his shot past Bruce Grobbelaar to complete a 2-0 victory. That win denied the Reds an unprecedented quadruple as they also won the League Cup, League Championship and European Cup that season.
“Grobbelaar could make fantastic saves so I didn’t try to be too clever,” Terry recalls. “I was clear and I thought if I took it early and hit it with a bit of pace I had a chance to score before he could read my mind. I hit it true and luckily for me it flew past him before he was completely ready.
“Gerry Ryan, who was very versatile, played up front with me and scored the first goal. We were up against Mark Lawrenson and Alan Hansen who were both world class and we made it hard for them, chased them when they had the ball and tried to keep looking for passes in behind when we had it.”
Terery’s momentum as he celebrated almost carried him over the photographers and into the crowd. “I still get people who produce that famous picture and ask me to sign it,” he says. “After I scored, I must have run to the North Stand and jumped up in front of the fans because I’m in mid-air. Seeing it always brings back memories and people always say, ‘What a day that was.’
Like so many of that squad he recognises that it under-achieved. “We had so many good players but the club didn’t seem to have one person taking it forward and providing direction.
“Everyone who played there loved it and so did their families because it’s a great part of the country. But there was a very different feel from Leeds. There, the people worked hard all week to afford to go watch the team on the Saturday. Nobody had been out sailing or been up to London to see a show. At Brighton the fans applauded the opposition if they played well, which would never happen at Leeds.
“We were good players and under Chris Cattlin we finished seventh, eighth, but perhaps we needed to focus a bit more on what really needed to be done. We were competitive but just didn’t quite have that edge.”
He won an England under-21 cap as an over-age player and scored against Yugoslavia in 1986. He scored 51 goals in 156 appearances before leaving Albion as they dropped into the third tier in 1987.
“We lost Alan Mullery as manager and Barry Lloyd took over. The team broke up and we went our separate ways. The season had petered out and maybe the thinking was that the club would follow a different route of getting less expensive players.”
After Albion’s relegation in 1987 he moved to Portsmouth, newly promoted to the first division, then on to Swansea, where he captained the side to victory in the Welsh Cup, beating Cardiff City in the final.
“It meant that we went into the Cup Winners’ Cup, and we were drawn against Monaco who, I now realise, were managed by Arsene Wenger. The first leg was at the Vetch and they beat us 2-1 but I was transferred before the away leg, so I missed out on playing in Europe.”
After an injury-plagued spell at Bristol City he moved on to Yeovil Town before going into coaching at Swindon and, under John Ward, at Bristol Rovers, Bristol City and then Wolves.
He coached at Molineux under a succession of managers before Mick McCarthy promoted him to assistant in 2008. Wolves went up to the Premier League in 2003 under Dave Jones, lasting one season in the top division, and then again in 2009, hanging on for three seasons.
“I spent 14 seasons there and Jez Moxey, the chief executive, was the main figure behind that. He made the point that you work for the club, not for a particular manager, and he was true to his word by keeping me on when some managers didn’t do so well and had to leave.
“He wanted to maintain a continuity in the coaching, especially for the benefit of the younger players. He insisted that new managers judge me on what I could do and not on whether I was one of their people.
“We went up in 2003 after 19 years out of the top division and we battered Sheffield United 3-0 in the play-off final. We got all three in the first half and had played brilliantly but a penalty save by Matt Murray from Michael Brown, I think, early in the second half was the turning point, because United had come back from 4-1 down in the semi-final and if they had scored, who knows?
“In 2009 Mick had come in and made me his assistant which was the first time anyone had given me that title, and to get back up and work hard to stay there was a massive challenge for us. But that was all Wolves had ever wanted during all those years under Sir Jack Hayward – to be back where they believe they belong.
“The tradition at the club is something you can almost touch – the place is so steeped in history, all the legends. The Billy Wright statue outside the main entrance, the stands named after Stan Cullis, the memories of those big European nights in the 1950s. In Wolverhampton you don’t see Chelsea or Manchester United shirts, it’s only gold and black. I actually chose not to live in Wolverhampton because it is so all-consuming when you are there.”
Terry took over as Wolves manager from McCarthy after the latter’s dismissal in February 2012 but was unable to prevent them from dropping down to the Championship. His feeling for the club was evident in an emotional press conference after defeat by Manchester City confirmed their relegation.
“Everyone connected with the club loves it so much and when we were relegated I felt it strongly. They had let Mick go i and I had been going to go with him, but they asked me to stay on for a few days because they didn’t have anyone else lined up, and then it was until the end of the season.
“So I was in charge when we were relegated. I knew it was a massive thing for the fanbase and the city but also for people who would lose their jobs through no fault of their own. They weren’t the ones who had lost matches.
“It was hard to take that when I wasn’t a seasoned manager, but a microphone is thrust in your face and you have to do your best. All I could do was try to be me and a lot of emotion came out in a two-minute interview. It was hard, but I wasn’t going to stonewall or pretend.
“So I’m very pleased to see both Wolves and Brighton where they are now. It’s a different climate at Wolves with different financial clout competing at a high level with some top players.
“Would we have liked that money to spend? All I can say is that you do the best you can with the circumstances you are in. If you have money, fine. If you haven’t, you do the best you can. Now they have the Chinese owners and the Portuguese manager so it is different, but it is very successful. It has put Wolves where they feel they should be and good luck to them.
“As for Saturday, shall we shake hands on a draw now? I was at the game last season and it wasn’t the best in terms of football. I’d known Chris Hughton for a long time and what he did to get his point was tactically very good. He stifled Wolves’ creativity very well.
“I know that Brighton want a more open and progressive style with Graham Potter and there is a different feel about the way they play. I just hope that the club can survive and prosper in the future.”
And of course, we want Albion’s Irish youngsters Aaron Connolly and Jayson Molumby to represent their country in the future as Premier League players. Terry can help influence that in his present job as Ireland’s assistant manager, having followed Mick McCarthy after six seasons with the Yorkshireman at Ipswich Town.
“We watch them carefully. Aaron forced his way into the full squad with his two goals against Tottenham and Jayson is doing well on loan at Millwall. We have got a few good young players coming through and we face a decision on picking 23 players to get us through the play-off games for Euro 2020 that we have coming up later this month.
“Both Aaron and Jayson have found that it is a big jump from under-23 football playing against their peers to first-team level and playing with and against professionals with vast experience.
“But they can use that to their advantage, to learn what you have to do to get results when it really matters, both in and out of possession. Aaron has obviously moved up to Brighton’s first-team squad and Jayson has found his feet at Millwall and they are players for the future.”
Whether or not either is involved, we wish Terry and Ireland the best in their play-offs against Slovakia on 26th March and – we hope – either Bosnia or Northern Ireland on 31st March. And we hope to be cheering him, and possibly Aaron, in the finals this summer.