Martin Patterson

Quoted from LocalLadGTFC

Everyone had a connection with Lump, he was just that good. The lower league Bergkamp  

The vision, the touch and the ability to smash someone in the head if needed  

Pato was such an exciting player and really helped lift those post-Slade blues that season.  That summer we completely lose all explosiveness in the side.  Gary Cohen and Michael Reddy were both broken, Cohen never played against and Reddy only made a few appearances where he looked a former shadow of himself.  Isiah Rankin came in but was a completely different player to the one we'd seen a few years before.  The departure of Andy Parkinson and his high energy was one that I think was a bit under valued too.

It really was no surprise that Buckley waited a whole week into his third spell before bringing in Paterson and Peter Till as players with a bit of zest about them.  

At the time we signed Paterson I was dealing with a Stoke fan at work, who simply couldn't believe we had picked him up on loan.  His view was very much that he was above our level and I don't think he was wrong. It took just 12 minutes for his impact to be felt on his debut too.

4 goals in his first 3 games and then the fragilities of the side overall became too much.  That awful run of 7 consecutive defeats, with only Paterson's last minute consolation at Torquay making sure it wasn't 7 games without scoring, was just dreadful.  I genuinely thought we would never score again.  Confidence is a funny thing though as we then went and thumped Boston 6-0 in the next game.

The biggest shame with Paterson's time here was that he was in a largely poor side.  The season before he would have proved the perfect replacement to Reddy, especially post Xmas when he struggled with injury and then even the following season when the side improved under Buckley but just lacked a consistent killer edge (by then of course he was in the Championship with Scunny).  

Quoted from LocalLadGTFC

Everyone had a connection with Lump, he was just that good. The lower league Bergkamp  

I still remember his debut against Torquay, famously spoiled by a late Chris Hargreaves equaliser if memory serves. As he “sprinted” for a loose ball, I remember thinking to myself “what on earth have we signed here?”. I think he’d signed late in the summer window, but Christ, he made Paul Futcher look like an albino Linford Christie.

That was the beauty with Lump, though; like the late, great Futch, his strength wasn’t in his fleet of foot but rather fleet of thought, coupled with a level of skill and finesse that had no right to have graced League Two. You go don’t need to run fast when you’ve got Michael Reddy next to you, anyway.

Despite our mixed fortunes this side of the millennium, we’ve been lucky to witness some great strikers in the black and white stripes. Regardless, it’s hard to think of a more perfect, more complimentary partnership than Jones and Reddy. Just pure, unbridled magnificence.

I still think it’s a travesty that side never made it over the line to promotion. Somewhere in a parallel universe, I wonder, maybe Northampton and Leyton Orient don’t score in the dying embers of our league season, Slade takes us on back-to-back promotions to the second tier, and there’s a gleaming bronze statue of our John standing proudly outside of our state-of-the-art Fentydome.

Perhaps a stretch too far, but our failure to go up that season certainly feels like a sliding doors moment in retrospect.

Quoted from grimps

Great player
I used to work with is Scottish dad on LOR

Were you Frodo or Sam?

Reddy, Paterson, Danny North (look up Lump's goal against Carlisle in the cup)...

All managed an immediate connection with Lump.  A common theme amongst those, I'm convinced he could have made any of us on this forum look remotely decent if paired up front with him.  Easily the best example of a) the first two yards only existing in your head but also b) a lack pace keeping him from playing at the highest possible level.  

Genuinely just an unassuming presence on the pitch.  Didn't look like a footballer, didn't move like a footballer but intercourse me could he play with a football.  Even his retirement was unassuming.  Pretty sure he just disappeared without even announcing it, just decided he had run his course.  Probably didn't even bother actually hanging his boots up - more of a flicked kick off his feet, no doubt both going into the bin off the plastic frame.

Quoted from diehardmariner

Danny North (look up Lump's goal against Carlisle in the cup)...

Quoted from diehardmariner

4 goals in his first 3 games and then the fragilities of the side overall became too much.  That awful run of 7 consecutive defeats, with only Paterson's last minute consolation at Torquay making sure it wasn't 7 games without scoring, was just dreadful.  I genuinely thought we would never score again.  Confidence is a funny thing though as we then went and thumped Boston 6-0 in the next game.

I went to that Torquay game and then turned down the chance to go with a mate to the Boston game as I couldn't face it. Sod's law we would stuff them. Hat-trick from Bore, wasn't it?

Yeah, one of those days were Bore made you think he was going to go onto something very special.  Not enough of those days for him, unfortunately.  I still can't work out if they were just awful or we just clicked that day.  I think it was probably a combination of both.

Looking up that Torquay game, it looks like we had a centre-back pairing of Gary Harkins and Simon Grand, with Nick Fenton on the bench (came on in the first half).  No wonder we got stuffed!

I remember my first ever game, I turned up thinking how on earth is that fat b**tard a footballer... to then just be sat in awe of everything he did for the full 90 minutes. The only player I can liken him to of recent times is Berbatov in the fact he just looked like he couldn't be arsed. He was emotionless and quite cold and that showed on the pitch with just how composed he was.

Quoted from diehardmariner

Reddy, Paterson, Danny North (look up Lump's goal against Carlisle in the cup)...

All managed an immediate connection with Lump.  A common theme amongst those, I'm convinced he could have made any of us on this forum look remotely decent if paired up front with him.  Easily the best example of a) the first two yards only existing in your head but also b) a lack pace keeping him from playing at the highest possible level.  

Genuinely just an unassuming presence on the pitch.  Didn't look like a footballer, didn't move like a footballer but intercourse me could he play with a football.  Even his retirement was unassuming.  Pretty sure he just disappeared without even announcing it, just decided he had run his course.  Probably didn't even bother actually hanging his boots up - more of a flicked kick off his feet, no doubt both going into the bin off the plastic frame.

A lower league Berbatov. Pure quality. Like Poojah said we've been lucky to have had some very good strikers in the last 20 years despite generally being a bit crap. Reddy, Amond, Bogle, Connell, Danny Rose, McAtee. But Lump was the best. As a millennial who has mainly watched Town since our decline started, he is undoubtedly my favourite ever Town player.