Twenty years ago this season, I covered Brighton home and away as they played in Europe.

Not in the elite competition from which the champions of the continent would be crowned.

READ MORE: SPECIAL DATE FOR ALBION'S EUROPEAN DEBUT

But in a very strong second tier knockout including powerhouse outfits (such as Real Madrid) who had not made the main event this time, champions from smaller leagues and up-and-coming clubs.

We went to Athens. Nea Filadelfia actually, the neighbourhood Albion will visit to play AEK.

(I went to see AEK’s ground but found only some fenced-off wasteland where it had been demolished).

We went to France for a day longer than expected due to fog cancelling our return flight.

And we saw one of the most experienced and successful coaches in Europe sacked because his Lithuanian team had just lost at home to Brighton.

(We knew something was up when they stopped translating his answers into English during the post-match press conference).

Of course, this wasn’t Albion. They were otherwise engaged at Withdean, heading to what would be success in the League One promotion play-offs.

Tomorrow, Lewis Dunk and the Seagulls will fly the flag.

Back then, it was the slam dunkers of Brighton Bears who took the plunge and entered basketball’s ULEB Cup, the equivalent of the Europa League, because champions Sheffield Sharks declined.

It was a memorable and eye-opening experience.

Flying at the crack of dawn from Stansted or Luton, watching practice at the match venue on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, discovering different cities and then covering the game itself on Tuesday evening.

Brighton were small-time trying to look bigger than they really were.

That was why I was persuaded to double up as their press officer.

Head coach and club owner Nick Nurse invited a couple of friends from the national media in an attempt to get more coverage.

He told them to take suits and ties so he could list them as assistant coaches and put them on the bench, making it look like he had a big staff rather than just him and fresh-faced intern Pat Connelly (now of the Chicago Bulls).

I recall helping Nick hunt hurriedly through cupboards and drawers in the Bears’ tiny office very early one Monday trying to find a full set of kit before we drove to the airport.

It was a six-team group. The Bears were always competitive but took a while to work out how to win.

They lost their first five games, throwing a couple of them away, before victory in a somewhat austere old arena just up from the waterfront in Split kick-started a run of four victories from the last five.

With only two teams going through, they came up just short.

They led at half-time in all five away games but only won two.

We went to Cholet, Ionikos (Athens), blizzard-swept Sopot (on the Baltic seafront, right next to Gdansk), sun-drenched Split and a very snowy Vilnius.

Lithuania was said to be the only country in the world where basketball was the No.1 sport.

The European tie was front page news (well, the club owned the national newspaper) and a huge banner was hung across the main bridge in the capital to advertise Lietuvos Rytas versus Brighton Bears.

I turned two of the games into longer trips, which I’d guess many Albion fans will do. Split and Athens were my choice for that.

For Nurse, the four wins with minnows from England were a good addition to a CV which now includes an NBA title with the Toronto Raptors.

So good for him. But I genuinely believe he thought the exposure would grow the club, attract sponsors and lead to bigger things.

That didn’t happen. Basketball, certainly back then, in this country was somewhere people took the kids to see the slam dunks and the cheerleaders. To see their team score 100 points.

Not enough people wanted to watch a highly technical, tactical and probably low-scoring affair with a foreign team they had never heard of at 8pm on a school night.

The European adventure cost Brighton Bears dear.

They entered again the following year but withdrew after the draw had been made.

Two years later, the Bears had ceased to operate.

English football and Albion are big enough, established enough and well-enough supported to do what Nurse wanted - use Europe as a way of growing the club and its name.

Back then, my biggest concern for the Bears was that the demands of the ULEB Cup in midweek would make it impossible for them to secure an elusive league title.

Instead, being in Europe raised standards and was inspirational for players. They won the league with a few games to spare.

Going to basketball did not carry the warnings we have seen for Marseille, although the team had a police escort to whisk their bus through Athens, something which never happened when they went to Milton Keynes or Bracknell.

In fact, the few Bears fans who travelled had their best time in France, at Cholet.

Following Albion in the Europa League will be very different but some of those experiences will be valid.

Expect it to be tiring. Expect it to be a big commitment. Expect some (understandable) grief at home from time to time.

Expect it to be expensive but expect it to be an education.

Expect brilliant memories which will endure long after you’ve forgotten how much it cost (unless you do something really stupid!).

There’s a clever line there somewhere about this being Brighton’s first Dunk in Europe for 20 years.

Or about Albion hoping for a few three-pointers in the group stage.

Don’t expect Roberto De Zerbi to be hunting for kit in a filing cabinet before setting off for the airport.

But DO expect this to be potentially another launchpad for the Seagulls.

There will only ever be one first European campaign.

It may well be tough at times but it is there to be savoured.