Question for you oldies...

[Nottseagull]

My dad took me along to the Goldstone as a six year old; I've been going ever since. He also first took our son in the early 90's when I was working abroad.

I just happened to be living in Hove at the time I became interested in football. Had I been living in Mansfield at the time, then the Stags would now be my club. Had I been living in Chesterfield.............well, it doesn't bear thinking about!

 

[Questions]

My old man took me as a 6 year old in 1967. All my friends were Albion fans then (and their dads) and I`m still mates with them all now 41 years on. Picked up a few more friends on the way though following this great club.
Of all the lads who went during the Clifton days in the late seventies and eighties, I could still have a pint with any one of them 25 years on.
I only have a few friends who AREN`T Brighton fans come to think of it.

 

[drew]

Started when I was 14. My mate from school use to go with his parents and they asked if I was interested. Saw a few games in the last couple of months of Peter Taylor the First's reign. Start of the following season my dad, sister and brother all went and that coincided with Mullery taking over. The rest was history. Of us all, I am the only one still going regularly but my brother does occasionally take his son. Nothing much will change until we get Falmer.

 

[Nottseagull]

Peter Taylor the First's reign.

 

[Spider]

It is shit at Withdean and that's why I struggle to see how we can attract younger supportes who have no connection to Brighton but enjoy football. I'm getting pretty fed up with it in all honesty, I've got a season ticket, but when I'm at the game I end up pissing around with my mates more than watching it these days.

I bet the people that are unfortunate enough to sit around you love that!

I'm one who started going because of family - we are all Brighton fans. I didn't go at all through the Gillingham years so when Brighton came home it was like supporting a new team and it was really exciting. Nowadays I know the football isn't as good but my obsession is growing rather than waning (mainly through the introduction of away games). To be honest I'm just lucky that the bad football is coming in a time when I'm young and enthusiastic - I can imagine that people who have supported the club for years must be getting pretty sick of the Withdean experience.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

When I came back from Italy, in February 1972, I found myself living in a bed-sit in Hove. The guy in the room next door was an Albion fan and he suggested I went along to a game.

Discovering that going down the Shoreham Road was a pleasant enough experience and the Brighton Aces were pushing for promotion, I just got into the habit. The excitement was enhanced by the possibility that the Albion might overhaul Aston Villa - but, sadly, I have to report that they failed to do so, finishing five points behind them, but still winning promotion.

 

[mchaney]

Mine too was my Grandpa. It was also the closest team to where I was born.. I went to my first game in 70 at the age of five...got to see some special times. Peter Wards first game, I was at the game when David Beckham played his first. And had many great memories in the East Stand next to the pig pen . I am now living in Canada and still listen to every game on Saturday...I will be flying back for the first game at Falmer and the resurgence of our luck....Long live the Dolphins oops I mean the Seagulls too many memories

 

[Brovion]

Well my parents and one set of grandparents were Palace fans so it didn't come from them! (My mum was considered a bit of a 'traitor' as her family were West Ham). So no family interest for me, quite the opposite. I started going to the Goldstone when I moved to Lancing and my new friends used to go and I went with them.

Incidentally even back in the 1960s when there wasn't nearly the amount of TV coverage of football that there is now all my friends supported Brighton AND a 'proper' team, so Sussex kids following Premiership teams isn't a recent phenomena. Pretty much the same teams as now: Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs were the most popular I recall.

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

We moved to Hassocks in 1959 when i was 13 and I went to school in Hove. The first game at the Goldstone was Albion Res v West ham reserves and as I used to live in East Ham and go to upton park I went. West Ham managed to lose 5-0 so i switched to the Albion, but West Ham are still my second team.

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

going to some shed of a ground with good atmosphere...

SHED of a ground? You were lucky...

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

My Dad first took me along in 1958, when the Albion were pushing for promotion... from Div 3 South. Exhilarating stuff for a ten year old, although I didn't have a beer-crate to stand on, so the view was sometimes restricted. I saw some amazing things as a child: that 6-0 Watford promotion game, when Adrian Thorne banged in five... the ground so packed that small kids were passed over the heads of the crowd to sit in front of the advertising boards. And what would Elf'n'Safety make of that, let alone Child Protection? (Back then of course, paedophilia hadn't been invented, so that kind of thing was all perfectly innocuous). And there was the ever-present smell of pipe smoke, wafting across from the nobs in the West Stand, where the young Dick Knight used to sit. I was far too common to be allowed in there, although one day a kindly neighbour took me along to sit with him among the Gods. It felt like being smuggled in to Buckingham Palace, but I knew my proper place was the North Stand, alongside my Dad.

Looking back, there's still a sense of wonderment, enormous pride and gratitude. To think I took my place among the biggest ever Goldstone crowds (over 36,000 for Fulham, 25,000 average in 1976/77), saw the greatest players we ever had (Wardy in his absolute, dazzling prime, Mark Lawrenson, regally commanding, surging through the midfield). To think I witnessed the two very greatest games in the club's history: Newcastle 1979, Wembley 1983. That well of amazing memories, and the inevitable link with my Dad, cements the unbreakable bond that I shall always feel to our home town club.

Then you look at the ridiculous bitching and whingeing that goes on here; you stare in disbelief at the spite, the bile and the vitriol expended by NSC 'supporters' over what, in the grand scheme of things is totally trivial, transient fluff. Older fans at least have the chance to reach then for the sense of proportion that comes from experiencing decades of the occasional ups and the far more frequent downs of watching the Albion.

Maybe it's unfair to be so dismissive of today's ever-increasing crop of impossibly demanding, short-memoried moaners - and certainly of the younger ones. There's no doubt that older fans are astonishingly privileged to have seen the very best of times. But when all you've got for Albion memories is the experience of being regularly drenched at a horrible, soulless, freezing Withdean, of paying eye-watering prices to watch players who are paid far too much and who give far too little, it's easy to see how the perspective of younger fans can become so grotesquely distorted.

It's easy for people like me to plead for patience and tolerance; all we can realistically hope for is that results and performances won't be so unacceptably dire as to be terminally damaging, and that we can quickly build a rejuvenated and rapidly expanded fanbase at Falmer.

 

[The Oldman]

Well said Gulliver Travels. Post of the year. I became a regular in 1953 thanks to my Dad. Like Gulliver the memories of my Dad and the fun of watching the Albion over the years are more than just football, they are part of your very existence . I do feel so sorry for those youngsters who have only known the withdean experience or the latter fading years at the Goldstone which by then was a dump.

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

Excellent stuff Gulliver's Travels and really cathartic for me after saturday's trip to Carlisle. As The Oldman says, it's always been (and still is) more than just the football. Thanks guys.
Adrian Thorne - wooooooooooo!!!!!

 

[Brovion]

I'm too young to remember Adrian Thorne! But yes, I agree with GT. Some of this "I went to Carlisle and we were shit, I want all the players shot" stuff is embarrassing. But there you go, we didn't have the internet to moan on after all the dire games we've seen over the years!

Youngsters today, *tch!* They expect everything. I blame Thatcher.

 

[pasty]

As an impressionable 6 or 7 year old I flirted between "supporting" Man Utd and Leeds Utd depending on which of them were winning that week. Then on a holiday to see relatives, my dad took me to my first live match, which was Leicester vs Carlisle. Unbelievably for some of our younger viewers, at the time that game was 1st vs 2nd in the old Division 1 !!

That gave me the bug for live football, so as BHA were our nearest club, thats where dad took me. That was in 1974 and I've been going ever since.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

When I was about 13/14 my school friends used to take the Supporters Coach from Horsham every home game. (there was at least one double decker run every week.) I went along one week and was hooked instantly. Part of the attraction at first was just being with my mates but it soon grew to be more than that.

I think my first game was in about 74, so I was lucky enough to experience the glory years.

 

[The Cardinal]

Got drunk one Saturday lunchtime and mistook the Goldstone for The Bugle.

 

[countrygull]

I moved down to Brighton aged 10 and started going to the Goldstone on the `soccer special` because it's what all my mates did. My parents had no interest in it at all. And it was intoxicating: the crowd, the atmosphere, the buzz, the players - esp Peter Ward. I used to get to the Goldstone at 1.30 and hang on the front wall with growing excitement until 3pm. The difference now - (trying to get my boy to show real enthusiasm for it). Terrible ground, no atmosphere at all, small crowd, no real `hero figure` on the pitch and no real excitement in prospect this year any more than there has been the past 3 years. That's why I really want us to make the JPT final - I really want him to know that watching the Albion can be exciting - he's seen it once in 3 years: Man City. Bring on the Albion at Wembley.

 

[Box of Frogs]

My Dad first started taking me in the days of Brian Powney, Harry Wilson, Eddie Spearritt, Kit Napier, Peter O'Sullivan et al. We used to get the bus from Patcham along to London Road, then walk up The Drove, along Dyke Road then cut through to Old Shoreham Road and get to the ground at about 1.00 so that he could sit me on the wall at the front of the chicken run. He used to stand about 10 feet back from me with a couple of his mates, smoking the occasional Mannekin cigar, knowing that I was safe at the front. Crowds of 25-30,000 were regular occurances.

I later graduated to going with some of my mates, being a season ticket holder in the West Stand terrace, then the North stand.

Saw some great games and some great players. Still enjoy going now but its not the same as it was back then.

Like most kids my age, we had a Div One team we also supported cos they were the only ones you saw on Match of the Day or the Big Match.

But, when all is said and done, Brighton are my team and always will be.

 

[Spiros]

My Dad was a long-time West Stander who started to take me in the early 70s when I was about 7. Although there was the odd league game beforehand the one which stands out in my memory is a cup game against Chelsea which we lost 2-0. Other 'great' early memories included seeing us lose at home to such giants as Leatherhead and Walton & Hersham as well as the 8-2 thrashing we took from messrs Bannister & Warboys of Bristol Rovers. I don't really remember us winning matches at all until in 1975 - at the ripe old age of 10 - I was allowed to go into the South terrace on my own while my Dad sat in the West.

In similar vein to others (Brovion?) my Dad used to divide his loyalties in the 50s and 60s between Brighton and Portsmouth as they played home games on alternate Saturdays, though when the two played each other he alwys wanted an Albion win