Albion fans stood to applaud the late Peter Brackley while their team were beating Wolves.

It was the last tribute to the life, career and general good humour of a much-loved broadcaster and Albion fan.

Peter was providing voiceovers for the Seagulls’ media department until shortly before he died.

Until very recently, he wrote a weekly column for The Argus.

Thursday became Brackers day in these pages as he delved into his memory banks or shared opinion, always with a laugh or two thrown in.

Here at the sports desk, we soon became aware Peter wasn’t just rattling something off in a few minutes as he produced these 400-word columns.

Thought and planning went into it. He would sometimes email in advance to ask whether what he was writing was suitable.

The Argus:

And then, one day, he emailed to say he wasn’t feeling so good and wasn’t really up to writing anything that week.

Peter talking about his ill health was like Chris Hughton discussing a poor refereeing decision against Albion.

After a while you would come to know how his hugely under-stated style worked and realise the meaning between the lines.

Peter died on the weekend which immediately followed Albion’s 1-0 win over West Ham.

His last column for us had appeared on September 6 and included, of course, an appearance from his favourite character, Jose Moaninho.

We thought it was the last one he had ever written but that turns out not to be case.

Peter’s son-in-law Nic Bauer forwarded us an unfinished work he found and which, we can only assume, was to have been his next contribution to these pages.

It was written about three weeks after his final published column and was very nearly complete.

He had not finished his comments about Albion’s defeat to Tottenham but otherwise it looks like it was ready to go.

As a final tribute to Peter, and with his family’s blessing, we are printing his final Thursday column today – written as it was found after his death. And we do so with a thought.

When I congratulated him on the Goldstone Days show he staged at the Theatre Royal, I finished my email by saying it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime occasion.

He didn’t agree with that and replied: “We are thinking about doing another one - and for other clubs too maybe - but it would be slanted differently!”

We don’t know whether there is a half-written script lying around somewhere.

Actually, it doesn’t really matter.

Even if he never wrote them down, you can bet there were plenty of ideas bouncing around his head to top even that special night at the Theatre Royal.

As it is, we bring you Peter’s final, almost finished work.

It is Thursday, after all….

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THE FINAL PETER BRACKLEY COLUMN

The sharper-eyed regulars among the avid readers of this column in print and online may have noticed something unusual about the last three-weeks’ contributions - there wasn’t one.

(Editor’s note: My PA’s cousin spotted it was missing a couple of Fridays ago but didn’t think it was worth mentio.....”

Peter...”yes, alright, alright...”)

Anyway - I’m afraid my ongoing medical issues have meant constant daily hospital visits, but with no solutions yet, I’ve had to give the column a restwhile trying to restore some concentration levels and work out what on earth Bodyguard was all about.

I continue to lug around buckets of unwanted excess fluid on my legs which isn’t helping – (“Hi, Michelin man,” was my ‘skating on thin ice’ Albion matchday chauffeur and sponger Jack’s greeting when I rang to welcome him back from his latest holiday) – and while the excellent/fastidious team at Worthing heart failure unit are doing all they can, they need me to shift a lot of kilos. My suggestion, though, that Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar could be the man for the job didn’t seem to go down well.

I’ve had endless blood tests, the first from nurse Lorna, who confessed this was only the second day of the newly opened ward in Worthing.

“You’re one of our guinea pigs,” she told me.

However, as she lunged forward with the needle, Lorna had more interesting news to catch my attention: “I’m a huge Seagulls fan,” she gushed,” and she was the first Albion ball girl in the early 80s!”

She’d have been/was at the Amex for the Spurs game, but I had to settle for BT’s excellent coverage at home. Ex-Spurs midfielder Jermaine Jenas reckons Albion showed Spurs too much respect, but you can’t give them them space (this part of the column then tails off but the notes Peter left include mention of Anthony Knockaert and “nice to see Andone”. It then continues with a section about boxing).

WHAT a splendid ambassador for boxing, and indeed, sport in general, Anthony Joshua is - so dignified and of course, a true world champion. Although he never achieved that status, Henry Cooper was held in similar esteem in his heyday and it was a privilege to spend time with him for BBC Radio at the 1980 Moscow Olympics when I was a reporter-presenter and he covered the boxing. Not sure what he’d have made of Tyson Fury and his outrageous claims after “A.J’s” triumph, but there was a fair bit of banter? around in Henry’s time, too, and the promoters rivalry just as feisty.

None more so than the, well, let’s say, controversial boxing characters Micky Duff (count your fingers after you’ve shaken hands with him) and his old adversary from America, Don King. You know Don, the one who looks from his outrageous spikey hair as if he’s just put his fingers in a live electricity socket? Micky was seated next to heavyweight Carl “The Truth” Williams at a pre-fight event when Don bawled at him: “Hey, Micky - is this the closest you’ve ever been to the truth?”