We don’t think there’s much wrong with calling Martyn Thompson the original number one. He was, after all, our stopper at the start of the 1980-1 campaign. And you can’t say fairer than that in our book. But it nearly didn’t happen for him with us. After joining us from BAC, he was a regular fixture in the line-up until injury struck. And that first season was blighted by it; knee cartilage issues making him come close to jacking it all in.
He came back, however. Injury limited him to just three outings between November 1980 and May 1981. But he reclaimed his spot in goal as boss Derek Montgomery kept faith in his original number one. In fact, his association with Stevenage football goes back further than summer 1980 too; Thompson playing understudy to Athletic stopper Mick Gevaux.
Oddly enough, however, he lived quite a different life when playing for BAC. As a striker, he had a ruthless goalscoring streak. But it wasn’t one that Monty could ever turn to; the stopper preferring to keep goals out of our net rather than put them in the opposition’s. It seems fair enough to us – he did a decent job of doing the former to justify that call.
