LowKarate
New member
In response to this exchange of posts between myself and [MENTION=638]Bigtomfu[/MENTION] a few months ago about our time at Gillingham in 97-99…
Me: We kept going to games then so that we could have a chance of where we are now. Those games at Priestfield were so bad they barely deserve description and the reward is so much sweeter for having seen them
Bigtomfu: "You're wrong there, it's exactly because those games were so bad that they DO need/deserve description"
… and in contrast to the season ahead, for Bigtomfu’s benefit and anyone else interested this is what it felt like watching home games at Gillingham 20 years ago when we were 91st – 92nd in the league, with no home ground and initially only 2k fans.
I know that others have posted their views of the Priestfield years in another thread recently, but this is my attempt to sum up more of the complete experience that I had. I don’t know whether you’ll get a sense of this, but bleak as it was, it was a real journey of discovery and a hell of a lot more fun than most would have thought possible.
In the last year at the Goldstone when the possibility of our club being wiped out was very real, I was asked what would I do if Brighton no longer existed and my view then was that I would ideally follow a newly formed Brighton club in the lowest league and if that didn’t happen then maybe I would pick another friendly team like Charlton. Better than either option would be that The Albion would survive and I would keep watching us.
That oblivion situation never occurred thankfully, but watching us as the 91st club in the league, playing terrible football a long way from home was the biggest test of loyalty and patience.
96/97 finished and we avoided relegation to The Conference. The club was just about alive as we did at least have access to Priestfield to play our games and surely 97/98 would be a season of recovery and a chance to make our way back up the league.
Well it wasn't like that at all. 97/98 was the absolute pits on the pitch. Statistically worse than 96/97 and it showed. We had a collection of cheaply assembled journeymen players, some with higher league experience and others just starting their career and many with little evident skill.
The initial 1-2k of fans who went to the first few games were to a man, woman and child, born optimists. The lack of numbers and the desperate state of playing so far from home affected the players though and so many of them panicked and could not complete even the simplest of passes to each other. It really wasn't much better than county football and if you want to see just how bad we were then I recommend that you get a copy of The Priestfield Tapes.
I had been to Gillingham before, but for the first home game it was totally different. It was a home game and I was now a home fan there, so I really should have known the best route, where to park, drink, stand, etc… but I didn’t know any of this and I had to start gathering this knowledge from my first game.
I could not convince any of my albion mates to make the long journey with me often (they didn’t have the stomach for it and I honestly could not blame them). Driving across the border into Kent, it always seemed (to me) as if the skies were greyer and it rained more. Maybe our desperate state influenced my view of the weather, but Kent never felt like the ‘Garden of England’ to me.
Finding a good place to park would be a challenge (or so I thought from my experiences elsewhere), but with so few fans travelling it was easy to park within two streets of the ground and it remained that way for most of 97/98.
The club shop was comical. As far as I could tell it was a quickly purchased burger van type of set-up, parked outside Priestfield, with very little room for more than a few programmes, a few trinkets left over from the Goldstone shop and when they eventually got some, a few football shirts with huge stick-on felt-like white panels with Sandtex plastered on the front. I still have mine.
Wins and even goals were scarce and after a few months of poor football and with the realisation that the quality was going to be worse than ever before, the 'gallows humour' set in. I think the Wardy Wonderland song stemmed from Priestfield as we dreamed of a better team. Someone may correct me if it started at The Goldstone, but we certainly sang it a lot at Priestfield.
Heroes were rare. Nicky Rust Rust Rust was lauded anytime he got near the ball. Peter Smith (fast / gangly), Jeffrey Thompson Minton and Rod Thomas were averagely skilled and treated like superstars just because they weren’t completely rubbish. Barker and Hart when they arrived made more of a difference up front and slowly over the two years we started to re-build spirit on the pitch and off it. Having an Albion Stalwart in Brian Horton as manager helped a lot as I think many of us had faith that somehow he would make it work and he sort of did.
In 98/99 the football improved and our attendances rose above 4K by the end of the season. Parking became slightly harder and I often ended up 6-7 streets away, nearer The Cricketers pub, which became the regular pre-match haunt. This was, I think, the biggest pub in the area and with the most bar space and a garden, it attracted lots of our fans. Queuing 4-5 deep around the large bar became common and helped build the camaraderie.
Other highlights that stick in the memory, were:
1. Standing to the left of the goal during pre-match warm-up with my girlfriend (now wife) at her first game in 1998 and the players were raining shots at Nicky Rust (I think) in goal and missing the target regularly. One wayward attempt was heading straight towards my girlfriend's face and as she froze, I put my fist out to punch the ball away, but it glanced off and went further back into the stand and hit a child. If you were that child, I am sorry.
2. One of the visiting goalies had a yellow and black hooped jersey which made him look like a giant bee. At the time it was common for goalkeepers to be taunted with the 'Wooooooaaaaaaaahh! you're sh.. aaaaaaahhh!!' chant which for the giant bee’s benefit we changed to buzzing sound along the lines of 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZ! you're sh.. aaaaaaahh!!'
3. Away games were fun too with the same faces at both home and away games very often. A trip to Scarborough in Aug 98 was great and the away game at Doncaster in 97/98 where Donny played a non-league keeper who did some work for their Chairman in his one and only game. He was overweight, scared and helped us to a critical 3-1 away win in the year that Donny went down and we stayed up. We didn’t win away from home very often or at home for that matter.
4. Brighton v Doncaster 0-0 draw – dubbed ‘The Heart of Football’ – This was turgid turgid turgid turgid turgid fare. It was just the worst game of football ever by two league teams, neither of which could have complained if they were shot afterwards.
5. Stadium catering staff in response to my order for Bovril, turned around and took a big tin of Marmite off the shelf behind them and spooned that into a plastic cup before pouring hot water onto it and handing it to me. As I looked in stunned silence into the cup I could see a solid mass of Marmite sitting resolutely and undissolved at the bottom with a weak solution of still clear hot water sitting proudly above it. If you think the catering is bad at The Amex, think again.
6. Peter Smith regularly tripping over the ball or sometimes his own legs as he tried to run.
7. Brighton v Colchester 4-4 Boxing Day draw, being 3-0 down at Half Time. Others have commented about this on other threads recently. My memory of it was of a battling performance having pretty much gifted the game in the first half with careless and error-strewn passing. It felt like a cup final win when the whistle blew.
8. Very little steward control, so you could start a game in the home end terrace and then walk around the side into the seats and pick a different spot (for no extra charge). They did clamp down on that a little more as the crowds got bigger.
9. My car clutch gave up on the A229 not far from Gillingham on the way to one game. Thanks to help from a friend and the breakdown service I still made it to the game and then back on the back of a recovery truck.
10. That’s almost certainly enough waffling about Priestfield.
This post is not to say I was there and you weren’t. I actually wish more of you could have been, because with hindsight it was character and patience building which has served me well in the 20 years since.
Just remember that whatever happens this season, it will never be as bad as it was 20 years ago and, football is meant to be fun, so don’t shout at the players if we don’t manage to win the League and Cup double this year.
Enjoy the season ahead!
Me: We kept going to games then so that we could have a chance of where we are now. Those games at Priestfield were so bad they barely deserve description and the reward is so much sweeter for having seen them
Bigtomfu: "You're wrong there, it's exactly because those games were so bad that they DO need/deserve description"
… and in contrast to the season ahead, for Bigtomfu’s benefit and anyone else interested this is what it felt like watching home games at Gillingham 20 years ago when we were 91st – 92nd in the league, with no home ground and initially only 2k fans.
I know that others have posted their views of the Priestfield years in another thread recently, but this is my attempt to sum up more of the complete experience that I had. I don’t know whether you’ll get a sense of this, but bleak as it was, it was a real journey of discovery and a hell of a lot more fun than most would have thought possible.
In the last year at the Goldstone when the possibility of our club being wiped out was very real, I was asked what would I do if Brighton no longer existed and my view then was that I would ideally follow a newly formed Brighton club in the lowest league and if that didn’t happen then maybe I would pick another friendly team like Charlton. Better than either option would be that The Albion would survive and I would keep watching us.
That oblivion situation never occurred thankfully, but watching us as the 91st club in the league, playing terrible football a long way from home was the biggest test of loyalty and patience.
96/97 finished and we avoided relegation to The Conference. The club was just about alive as we did at least have access to Priestfield to play our games and surely 97/98 would be a season of recovery and a chance to make our way back up the league.
Well it wasn't like that at all. 97/98 was the absolute pits on the pitch. Statistically worse than 96/97 and it showed. We had a collection of cheaply assembled journeymen players, some with higher league experience and others just starting their career and many with little evident skill.
The initial 1-2k of fans who went to the first few games were to a man, woman and child, born optimists. The lack of numbers and the desperate state of playing so far from home affected the players though and so many of them panicked and could not complete even the simplest of passes to each other. It really wasn't much better than county football and if you want to see just how bad we were then I recommend that you get a copy of The Priestfield Tapes.
I had been to Gillingham before, but for the first home game it was totally different. It was a home game and I was now a home fan there, so I really should have known the best route, where to park, drink, stand, etc… but I didn’t know any of this and I had to start gathering this knowledge from my first game.
I could not convince any of my albion mates to make the long journey with me often (they didn’t have the stomach for it and I honestly could not blame them). Driving across the border into Kent, it always seemed (to me) as if the skies were greyer and it rained more. Maybe our desperate state influenced my view of the weather, but Kent never felt like the ‘Garden of England’ to me.
Finding a good place to park would be a challenge (or so I thought from my experiences elsewhere), but with so few fans travelling it was easy to park within two streets of the ground and it remained that way for most of 97/98.
The club shop was comical. As far as I could tell it was a quickly purchased burger van type of set-up, parked outside Priestfield, with very little room for more than a few programmes, a few trinkets left over from the Goldstone shop and when they eventually got some, a few football shirts with huge stick-on felt-like white panels with Sandtex plastered on the front. I still have mine.
Wins and even goals were scarce and after a few months of poor football and with the realisation that the quality was going to be worse than ever before, the 'gallows humour' set in. I think the Wardy Wonderland song stemmed from Priestfield as we dreamed of a better team. Someone may correct me if it started at The Goldstone, but we certainly sang it a lot at Priestfield.
Heroes were rare. Nicky Rust Rust Rust was lauded anytime he got near the ball. Peter Smith (fast / gangly), Jeffrey Thompson Minton and Rod Thomas were averagely skilled and treated like superstars just because they weren’t completely rubbish. Barker and Hart when they arrived made more of a difference up front and slowly over the two years we started to re-build spirit on the pitch and off it. Having an Albion Stalwart in Brian Horton as manager helped a lot as I think many of us had faith that somehow he would make it work and he sort of did.
In 98/99 the football improved and our attendances rose above 4K by the end of the season. Parking became slightly harder and I often ended up 6-7 streets away, nearer The Cricketers pub, which became the regular pre-match haunt. This was, I think, the biggest pub in the area and with the most bar space and a garden, it attracted lots of our fans. Queuing 4-5 deep around the large bar became common and helped build the camaraderie.
Other highlights that stick in the memory, were:
1. Standing to the left of the goal during pre-match warm-up with my girlfriend (now wife) at her first game in 1998 and the players were raining shots at Nicky Rust (I think) in goal and missing the target regularly. One wayward attempt was heading straight towards my girlfriend's face and as she froze, I put my fist out to punch the ball away, but it glanced off and went further back into the stand and hit a child. If you were that child, I am sorry.
2. One of the visiting goalies had a yellow and black hooped jersey which made him look like a giant bee. At the time it was common for goalkeepers to be taunted with the 'Wooooooaaaaaaaahh! you're sh.. aaaaaaahhh!!' chant which for the giant bee’s benefit we changed to buzzing sound along the lines of 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZ! you're sh.. aaaaaaahh!!'
3. Away games were fun too with the same faces at both home and away games very often. A trip to Scarborough in Aug 98 was great and the away game at Doncaster in 97/98 where Donny played a non-league keeper who did some work for their Chairman in his one and only game. He was overweight, scared and helped us to a critical 3-1 away win in the year that Donny went down and we stayed up. We didn’t win away from home very often or at home for that matter.
4. Brighton v Doncaster 0-0 draw – dubbed ‘The Heart of Football’ – This was turgid turgid turgid turgid turgid fare. It was just the worst game of football ever by two league teams, neither of which could have complained if they were shot afterwards.
5. Stadium catering staff in response to my order for Bovril, turned around and took a big tin of Marmite off the shelf behind them and spooned that into a plastic cup before pouring hot water onto it and handing it to me. As I looked in stunned silence into the cup I could see a solid mass of Marmite sitting resolutely and undissolved at the bottom with a weak solution of still clear hot water sitting proudly above it. If you think the catering is bad at The Amex, think again.
6. Peter Smith regularly tripping over the ball or sometimes his own legs as he tried to run.
7. Brighton v Colchester 4-4 Boxing Day draw, being 3-0 down at Half Time. Others have commented about this on other threads recently. My memory of it was of a battling performance having pretty much gifted the game in the first half with careless and error-strewn passing. It felt like a cup final win when the whistle blew.
8. Very little steward control, so you could start a game in the home end terrace and then walk around the side into the seats and pick a different spot (for no extra charge). They did clamp down on that a little more as the crowds got bigger.
9. My car clutch gave up on the A229 not far from Gillingham on the way to one game. Thanks to help from a friend and the breakdown service I still made it to the game and then back on the back of a recovery truck.
10. That’s almost certainly enough waffling about Priestfield.
This post is not to say I was there and you weren’t. I actually wish more of you could have been, because with hindsight it was character and patience building which has served me well in the 20 years since.
Just remember that whatever happens this season, it will never be as bad as it was 20 years ago and, football is meant to be fun, so don’t shout at the players if we don’t manage to win the League and Cup double this year.
Enjoy the season ahead!
I loved it and hated it. For sure I don't wan't it back but it is part of us, and I look back with a smile
