ARGUMENTS YARD

by ATTILA; THE STOCKBROKER

  Eventually a deal was thrashed out by which Archer relinquished absolute control, and, to huge cheers, soon-to-be-new chairman Dick Knight took his seat in the directors’ box for the final home game of the 1996-97 season. Archer, and his puke-inducing sidekick and mouthpiece, failed Liberal Democrat MP David Bellotti, would very soon have nothing further to do with our club. But our ground had been sold and for the following two seasons a deal had been signed to share the stadium at Gillingham – a round trip of some 140 miles from Brighton.

  If you’re a football fan, perhaps even if you aren’t, you’ll have noticed something missing in this tale so far: any indication of how the team was actually faring on the pitch. I’ve deliberately left that bit out until now because I wanted to give the background to our plight – but things on the field were just as bad as off it. Having slowly descended through the leagues following our heady four seasons in the old First Division from 1979-1983 and that Cup Final defeat, we had spent much of that 1996/7 season crippled by debt and way adrift at the bottom of the whole Football League, 92nd out of 92, with relegation into the nether world of the Conference looming. Performances were truly dreadful. But as we made progress in the battle against Archer off the field, so we started to do so on it, thanks to the efforts of recently-appointed manager Steve Gritt – and we ended up needing to win the last ever game at the Goldstone against Doncaster Rovers on April 26 1997 to have any realistic chance of staying in the Football League.

  That day was an incredibly emotional one for us all. The previous night I had painted a big banner: ‘RIP GOLDSTONE GROUND 1902-1997, SOLD TO MONEYMEN BY ARCHER – WE WILL NEVER FORGET’. It featured prominently in many of the national press reports of the game (and the events afterwards) and is reproduced here.

  I had also written a poem about my recollections of more than 30 years as a fan. Some of my most cherished memories of my short time with my father were of him taking me to that ground: I wrote it in his memory, and for all of us who were fighting to save our club. I am so proud that it now stands on the wall of Dick’s Bar, our supporters’ bar in our new stadium, and the penultimate verse, written in defiance and absolute belief that we would one day win, can be found at each gangway entrance in the North Stand, now as before my lifelong Albion stamping ground…

  GOLDSTONE GHOSTS

  As bulldozers close in upon our old, beloved home

  and those who stand to profit rub their hands

  so we gather here together in sad, angry disbelief

  and for one last time our voices fill the stands.

  This is no happy parting, but a battle-scarred farewell

  though victory hopes are mingled with the tears

  And I, like you, will stand here as the final whistle blows

  with memories which echo down the years…

  The Chelsea fans threw pennies. Old ones. Sharpened. I was eight.

  A target in the South Stand with my dad

  And he got rather battered as he held me close and tight

  and confirmed my view that Chelsea fans were mad!

  And there, on those old wooden seats, I learned to love the game.

  The sights and sounds exploded in my head.

  My dad was proud to have a son with football in his blood -

  but two short years later, he was dead.

  Eleven. I went on my own. (My friends liked chess and stuff.)

  ‘Now don’t go in the North Stand!’ said my mum.

  But soon I did. Kit Napier’s corner curled into the net.

  Oh god. The Bournemouth Boot Boys! Better run…

  Then Villa in the big crunch game. A thirty thousand crowd.

  Bald Lochhead scored, but we still won the day.

  Then up, and straight back down again. Brian Powney, brave and squat.

  T.Rex, DMs and scarf on wrist, OK?

  And then the world was wonderful. Punk rock and Peter Ward!

  And sidekick ‘Spider’ Mellor, tall and lean.

  The legendary Walsall game. Promotion. Riding high.

  Southampton-Spurs: that stitch-up was obscene.

  The final glorious victory. Division One at last!

  Arsenal, first game, midst fevered expectation.

  Those Highbury gods tore us to shreds; we learned the lesson well.

  Steve Foster was our soul and inspiration!

  Man City came, and Gerry Ryan waltzed through them to score

  And mighty Man United bit the dust.

  Notts Forest, and that Williams screamer nearly broke the net.

  The Norwich quarter-final: win or bust!

  And after Wembley, Liverpool were toppled one last time.

  The final curtain on those happy days.

  And then the years of gradual, inexorable decline -

  sadly for some, the parting of the ways.

  But we stayed true, as glory days turned into donkeys’ years.

  Young, Trusson, Tiltman, Farrington. Ee-aw!

  A Wilkins free-kick nearly brought us hope. ‘Twas not to be.

  The rot was deep and spreading to the core.

  We found our voice and Lloyd was gone. Hooray! But worse to come.

  Though just how awful we were yet to know.

  Dissent turned to rebellion and then to open war

  as on the terrace weeds began to grow.

  The Goldstone sold behind our backs! Enraged, we rose as one

  against a stony northern businessman.

  We drew a line, and said: ENOUGH! And as the nation watched

  the final battle for our club began.

  We fought him to a standstill. Fans United. All for one.

  A nation’s colours joined: a glorious sight.

  And, finally, the stubborn, stony Archer moved his ground

  and made way for our own collective Knight.

  The battle’s only just begun, but we have won the war.

  Our club, though torn asunder, will survive.

  And I salute each one of you who stood up and said NO!

  And fought to keep the Albion alive.

  And one day, when our new home’s built, and we are storming back

  A bunch of happy fans without a care

  We’ll look back on our darkest hour and raise our glasses high

  and say with satisfaction: we were there.

  But first we have to face today. The hardest day of all.

  Don’t worry if you can’t hold back the tears!

  We must look to the future, in dignity and peace

  as well as mourn our home of ninety years.

  For me the Goldstone has an extra special memory

  of the football soulmate I so briefly had.

  He christened me John Charles and taught me to love the game.

  This one’s for Bill. A poet. And my dad.

  I performed it on BBC1’s ‘Football Focus’ before the game. A bugler sounded the Last Post. Then, amidst unbelievable tension, Stuart Storer etched his name into Albion history with the winning goal. And then ten thousand of us descended onto the pitch and literally took the Goldstone Ground home with us. Turnstiles, clock, seats, doors: anything which could be moved, and, of course the pitch. I had a piece of turf from the centre spot. It survived an incredibly emotional evening in the pub. It survived the house move after Robina and I got married in 2000. It finally died about 8 years later. A shame, ’cos I’d have liked to take a bit of it back home on the triumphant day our new stadium finally opened.

  Our ground was gone, but on the pitch we had a lifeline. Relegation rivals Hereford (only one team went down to the Conference back then) had lost their penultimate game, which meant that we needed a draw there in the last match of the season to stay in the Football League. Thousands of us descended on their Edgar Street ground and Robbie Reinelt scored the equalizing goal which kept us up. Forget the Cup Final or promotion to the First Division in 1979: that remains my favourite memory as a Brighton fan, and it was the most important result in our history.

&
nbsp; For me there was a special memory (or not!) that evening. Months before, when we seemed nailed-on certainties for the big drop and Hereford were comfortably in mid-table, I had done what I did as often as possible after Brighton away games and agreed to a post-match gig at the town’s real ale mecca, The Barrels: it was organized by Chris from the Hereford fanzine Talking Bull. So devastated were he and his mates that they didn’t turn up: we ran the gig ourselves, and it equalled the show at the Cricklewood Hotel in London after our FA Cup semi final victory in 1983 in the category of ‘a gig I have done but I have no idea how because I was so pissed and don’t remember a thing about it!’

  Chris and his mates weren’t wrong to be devastated. Hereford went down to the Conference, and although they were promoted back to the League a few years later, they struggled with financial problems, were relegated again and sadly went out of business in December 2014. A new club will soon rise from the ashes, however, with a controlling interest owned by the fans – as it bloody well should be after everything they have had to go through. I know Brighton fans aren’t very popular round there, but I wish them all the very best for the future: their story could have been ours.

  As it was, though, we were still in the League – but the next season we would be playing our home matches at Gillingham, a round trip of 140 miles by road from Brighton, about four hours by train.

  I can still remember the first League game of that 1997-8 season at Gillingham at ‘home’ to Macclesfield. The Albion is the only major professional football club in Sussex: in the Seventies we often had crowds in excess of 20,000 at our home games and these days, I’m happy to say, we always do – long may it continue. But they often declined into four figures during the last days of the Goldstone era, and the Gillingham era was definitely the lowest point in our history: the combination of a truly appalling team and ‘home’ games played 70 miles away in a different county meant that only two or three thousand made the trip on average.

  That first time, to make the experience more bearable, I’d got to Gillingham early and sunk a few pints in the Roseneath pub. (This would become a regular pre-match haunt for me and many other real ale-loving Albion fans: it sadly closed in 2008.) I made my way to the Priestfield Stadium a few minutes before kick off just in time to hear the Gillingham stadium announcer declaim, with all the enthusiasm of a rather sleepy sloth who had just taken a whole bottle of Valium, ‘And now please welcome Brighton & Hove Albion…’ The game was awful. It finished 1-1: a lot more beer was needed afterwards to take the taste away!

  But the next ‘home’ game brought a new development in my life as a Brighton fan - one that would last about fourteen years.

  Like me, our new chairman, Dick Knight, watched the game from the terrace in the Gillingham ‘home’ end, where our more vociferous element would gather to give what support we could. I’d got to know him well through all the battles against Archer and was standing next to him as the stadium announcer repeated his sloth imitation. ‘Bloody hell, Dick, that was pathetic!’ I said. ‘I could do better than that! And I’d play better music too. Some punk and ska would liven this place up a bit!’

  ‘Great idea. A friendly voice from home. Ok, John, you’re on!’ he said.

  Simple as that. We got clearance from the Gillingham authorities, the stadium announcer was happy to be supplanted (his name’s Doug, he’s a fine folk musician and a nice bloke: I don’t blame him for being unenthusiastic, we’re not his club!) and I turned up for the next home game armed with a bunch of CDs. It meant altering my pre-match routine though. Instead of getting to Gillingham at about 1pm, having about 6 pints in the Roseneath and then heading to the ground about 2.45, I put everything back an hour so that the six pints were consumed between 12 and 1.45 and I got to the ground about 2 to do the P.A. On that first occasion, Doug was there to point everything out to me, and then I was on my own, with a load of punk, ska and reggae CDs and 6 pints inside me - the new stadium announcer for Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club.

  For those unfamiliar with football, my ‘job’ (I did it for free, it was an honour, the club was skint and given my inebriated state I couldn’t have asked for payment with a straight face) was to play music to entertain the crowd before the game, read out the teams, announce substitutions during play and do birthday dedications and such at half-time. I was obviously used to performing in public and once I’d worked out what buttons to push and when, I think I did OK despite the six pints before the match: the only problem was timing the odd dash to the toilet, and as the weeks passed I managed to work that out pretty well without compromising my beer intake.

  But I knew I needed a hand: not just because of the beer aspect, but because a few times a season overseas tours or faraway gigs meant I’d have to miss a game. So I gave my BISA colleague Paul Samrah a ring, he agreed readily, and for the next fourteen years, at Gillingham and then Withdean, our temporary stadium in Brighton, we did the PA as a double act: the accountant and the punk poet, which sums up the diversity of our fanbase. He’s a lovely bloke, is Paul, and he has done more for BHAFC than people will ever know.

  I didn’t just play punk stuff, but obvious references to our ‘exile’ status too, tracks like ‘We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place’. ‘We Shall Come Home’ by the Oysterband became our theme tune. Every week, I tried to come up with a couple of musical jokes or comments to cheer up and encourage our faithful fanbase. And then came the fateful game. Boxing Day 1997, at home to Colchester.

  The tunes I’d been playing pre-match had been going down well with the Albion fans I’d talked to, and the whole idea of playing music that was as energetic as possible to try and create some sort of pre-match atmosphere in a ‘home’ ground 70 miles away was a hit with Dick Knight and the club. It was an early kick-off on Boxing Day: we were bumping around second from bottom of the whole Football League, with a team perhaps even worse than the one we’d had the previous season. We’d obviously had to set off really early to get to Gillingham in time for the game and everyone was a bit bleary-eyed. So, for the first time, I decided to play ‘Anarchy in the UK’ by the Sex Pistols. It had been on for about a minute when a policeman burst into the box.

  ‘Take that off! Take that off! NOW!’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. But I could see that he was REALLY ANGRY. So I did, and put the Clash on instead.

  ‘You can’t play that record at a football match. It’s banned. It’s on the LIST!’

  ‘What list?’ I asked. ‘No-one has ever told me there was a list of records I couldn’t play!’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it!’ he shouted. ‘It’s OBVIOUS!’ I stood there, the Clash playing in the background, perplexed. It evidently wasn’t ‘obvious’ to me; the fact that he needed to explain further made him even more angry.

  ‘IT INCITES VIOLENCE IN THE CROWD!’

  I thought for a few seconds.

  ‘Well, Officer’ I said. ‘I bought two copies of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ in the black sleeve on EMI Records on the day that it came out in 1976. I have played it and heard it many, many times since and not once has doing so given me violent thoughts of any kind whatsoever. I have also been to all 92 Football League grounds and every time I have heard ‘In The Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins I have had to restrain myself from committing serious acts of criminal damage!’

  He didn’t get the joke, and a couple of days later Brighton & Hove Albion FC received a formal letter from Kent Police banning me from doing the P.A. at Gillingham any longer. Dick Knight phoned me up. ‘I’m not having that, John!’ He spoke to them, and the ban was rescinded, on condition that I didn’t play ‘Anarchy in the UK’ again. So I didn’t.

  I did play ‘Smash it Up’ by the Damned and ‘I Fought The Law’ and ‘White Riot’ by the Clash in the next couple of weeks though. No policeman appeared in the box. Obviously those three weren’t on the LIST.

  Over the years we had some moments in the PA box at Gillingham and then Withdean: some of the ‘themed’ pre-match mu
sical selections we came up with were a right laugh. My favourite is probably 2000-2001. Chesterfield were our main promotion rivals, but as the season progressed it became obvious that their then chairman Darren Brown was involved in some seriously dodgy financial dealings (he ended up going to prison for four years). When we played them at home we started with ‘Taxman’, followed by ‘Take The Money & Run’ and ‘Money Money Money’ and were just heading into ‘Money’s Too Tight To Mention’ when there was a message from then manager Micky Adams to stop the money theme – it was winding up the Chesterfield players. There would be many more such incidents…

  The campaign to get the club back to Brighton from Gillingham began more or less straight after the Hereford game. Once the one obvious site had been identified – Withdean Stadium, a rather dilapidated athletics track in a leafy, suburban area of Brighton – the main task was to persuade local residents that we should be granted permission to play football in our home city again, even though it would be near their expensive properties. Every conceivable stereotype related to football fans was unearthed in their campaign to stop us, but the relentlessly polite, often be-suited and totally unprovokable ‘Bring Home The Albion’ campaign, led with aplomb by Adrian Newnham, made them look frankly ridiculous and we made slow but steady progress. We’re a good bunch of fans at BHAFC. We even promised litter patrols around the stadium - and once we’d moved there, we did them.

  As for the council: many members were supportive of the move back to start with, and once we started talking about a Seagulls’ Party intervention at the local election with candidates standing against any councillors who opposed it, that was that, really. We have a lot of passive support in the area alongside our active fanbase, and it was obvious to the councillors that opposing our return would be electoral suicide. So we got a vote in favour, the athletics stadium was equipped for league football as much as a rickety old stadium of its nature could be, and having survived two seasons at Gillingham we moved back to Withdean for the start of the 1999-2000 season, and in our first League match beat Mansfield Town 6-0. Needless to say, Paul and I carried on doing the PA. In the 2000-2001 season I added another string to my bow by becoming the Albion’s Poet in Residence, sponsored (for one year) by the Arts Council and enthusiastically supported (for his entire tenure up until 2009) by chairman Dick Knight.