Last Saturday was a little like May 11th 1991. Back in the days of the Shoop Shoop song (they never played that for me at The Zap) and Twin Peaks ,The Albion had to win their last game at home to Ipswich to guarantee a play off spot or draw and hope unfashionable Barnsley slipped at home to Middlesbrough.
I don’t recall anyone leaving the Goldstone before Dean Wilkins whipped in that free kick, also against Ipswich back in 91. Did people leave the Cup Final early? I wish I had, although me and Gordon have now made it up. I do remember quite a few were heading up Withdean Road and down Tongdean Lane when Adam ‘you know’ Virgo popped that header in against Swindon, where were these people going?
Poyet, the 8th most famous Uruguayan in the world turned up at the Albion in November 2009 with one target,to get the club to the Championship in time for the first league game at Falmer. Once during a press conference his watch alarm went off,quick as a flash, he quipped, ''don't worry it's not my heart''
.......if the Albion make the play-off final it will be exactly thirty years and one day since the 1983 Cup Final replay and 21 years, eleven months, 3 weeks and 6 days since their last appearance at Wembley
Name some one famous from Hangleton. Dear old Dave Sexton? The jockey Ian Mongan? Peter Ward once upon a time. One can beat all of those. Dean Saunders probably the famous man ever to live in Hangleton. Well Hangleton Road anyway
Tell any Albion fan at 3:55pm on the 3rd May 1997 that in 16 years time the club would be four wins from the Premier League and playing regularly in front of 28,000 at home in Brighton, they would have laughed sarcastically in your face and had you sectioned.
There could be more people at the Amex Stadium than at on Friday night, than voted the Green Council in Fiveways Village. That’s what they call it up there. The visit of Sheffield Wednesday could eclipse the 25,030 that crammed into the Goldstone in March 1983 (research see, research) to see the Albion take on Liverpool.
The saga of the summer is of course will the Seagulls re-sign Vicente Rodriguez.
The Saturday before the Cheltenham Festival in 1997, Brighton & Hove Albion were staring oblivion in the face, not at the foot of the queue at Alton Towers, but in reality at the foot of the old League 2.
We thought thrashing Leyton Orient Five Nil on News Years Day was good, and it was it’s always fun to thrash O’s. They were of course a rival a few years ago; My point is the curve of 2011 just went up and up for Albion fans. It usually goes up a little or even quite high like 1983, then comes down quite drastically, relegation or threat of expulsion from the league that sort of thing.
