Story of Shoreham football legend Bert revived in new Brighton and Hove Albion book

Outside right Bert (1885-1970) played for Brighton & Hove Albion 443 times over a period of 16 years after first helping his home town team Shoreham win the county treble in 1906.

Life-long Albion supporter and award-winning investigative journalist Nic Outterside, who was raised in Shoreham, has published Wet Socks and Dry Bones, which unveils the lives of 50 former Albion players.

And Bert, who was a household name across the south of England in the early part of the 20th century, is among the pick of the former football legends who feature.

The 300-page paperback was inspired by WP Kinsella’s baseball classic Shoeless Joe, which in turn inspired the Hollywood movie Field of Dreams.

Nic’s new book chronologically unwraps the biographies of players from full-back Arthur Hulme, who played for the Albion from 1902 to 1909, right up to Paul McCarthy, who played in the blue and white stripes between 1988 and 1996 – just a year before the Goldstone Ground was demolished.

Nic, who lived in Gordon Road and Newbarn Road as a child, attended his first Brighton & Hove Albion game in 1967 and for 54 years has followed his beloved club the length and breadth of the UK.

His last football book Death In Grimsby, published in 2019, became an Amazon best-seller.

“It was while finishing that book that the blinding flash of light took place, which led me here,” explains Nic.

“The moment was Monday, April 1, 2019… the day I heard the news that my boyhood Brighton & Hove Albion hero Kit Napier had died at his home in Durban, South Africa, aged 75.

“There was a loud howl inside my head, as if part of my own life was gone!