Another one of Brentford’s stars of yesteryear will be inducted in to the Brentford FC Hall of Fame this weekend. Steve Phillips will be a guest at the Brentford FC Player of the Year Dinner tomorrow, Sunday 5 May, and will also be at the game against Preston North End earlier in the day. At the dinner he will be presented with a special commemorative salver by Brentford FC Chairman Cliff Crown and officially receive a place in the Hall of Fame.

Steve is most famous at Brentford for his strike partnership with Andy McCulloch and joins the other half of that big-man-little-man duo in the Hall of Fame. Steve was bought by The Bees from Northampton Town in February 1977 having made a breakthrough at Birmingham City when he was just 17. He was also an England youth international and scored the winner in the 1793 UEFA European Under-18 Championships.

Steve’s goals helped Brentford away from the bottom of the Fourth Division in 1977 and he went even better the following year. Steve scored 36 goals in all competitions as The Bees won promotion back to the third tier in 1978. He was top scorer for the following two seasons as well before heading back to Northampton in August 1980.

Steve left Brentford having played 167 games in all competitions. He scored 69 Brentford goals in three-and-a-half years in West London and went on to play for Southend United and Peterborough United among others. His goals in the 1977/78 season won him the Golden Boot for scoring the most goals in the country.

Steve, 65, is one of four men to be put in to the Hall of Fame this week, with three more posthumous inductions. All three were goalkeepers for The Bees during the first half of the last century – Joe Crozier, Ted Gaskell and Ted Price. All four join an ever-growing Brentford FC Hall of Fame which also includes Malcolm MacDonald, Joe James, Ken Coote, Dean Holdsworth, Terry Evans, Peter Gelson and current First Team Assistant Coach Kevin O’Connor. The Hall of Fame is administered jointly by the Club, and The Brentford FC Former Players’ Association and there will be further inductions as Brentford prepares to move to a new stadium in the summer of 2020.

Joe Crozier joined Brentford in 1937 and was the man between the sticks for some of the Club’s greatest days. He played for The Bees either side of World War II after joining from East Fife and missed only one Football League game for Brentford between September 1937 and December 1947, albeit he did not feature in many Wartime games. Joe was a Scotland Wartime international, winning three caps, and played 223 games for Brentford in a career that would have been even great but for World War II, when he would probably have been at his peak. Joe was later made a Freeman of the City of London.

Ted Gaskell was at Brentford at the same time as Joe and deputised for his fellow goalkeeper for more than a decade. Ted joined The Bees in 1937 and only played 38 games in a 15-year spell in West London, having to wait a decade for his debut. He moved in to coaching at Brentford after hanging up his loves and continued to serve the Club well in to a third decade.

Ted Price never played a Football League game for The Bees but was the first-choice goalkeeper before, during and after World War I. He was the goalkeeper when Brentford won the London Combination in 1919, which paved the way for The Bees to earn a Football League place in 1920. Ted’s Brentford career spanned 1912-1919.