Brighton v. Preston North End
March 11, 2006
Copyright 2006 Stephen P. Spence
It was my first high level football match. Not a Premiership game (the highest level of soccer in England), but one level below - a league that twenty years ago was called Division Two and only two years ago was referred to as Division One, and now called by its commercial moniker, the Coca Cola Championship League.
Brighton, just up the south coast of England from Worthing where I was staying, is the home team for today’s match, and by holding down the second-last position in the table had the inevitable prospect of being relegated at season end to Division One. Is it just me, or is there something just a little odd about the naming conventions of a football program when a team can be demoted to the third level of the professional game and still be in “Division One”. By next year it is quite possible that Division One will itself have a new commercial name. If so, Brighton could be playing next season in the “Melba Toast” League or the “Wheatabix” Division, or maybe even the esteemed new “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter” Football League.
Today’s competition for Brighton is Preston North End, a team by holding onto the seventh position in the table is within shooting distance of promotion to the venerable Barclays English Premiership. In the “Championship”, as it’s called for short, the top two finishing teams advance automatically to the Premiership for the next season while the next four teams engage in a playoff with the winner being awarded the third and final promotion to the Premiership.
In what seems to be my usual pathetic routine, out of fear of getting lost, I left Worthing at about 9:30 am following breakfast for a game that didn’t start until 3:00 pm. To be fair to myself, I had to run a few errands. I needed petrol for my rented super-charged Ford Focus and I needed a coffee and of course there was no way to know for certain how long it would take me to get out of Worthing on a Sunday morning. But sure enough, just three or four minutes after leaving my hotel I ended up on the A27 that would lead me to Brighton, and less than 30 minutes later, pulled off the A27 onto Mill Road where much later in the day, the Park and Ride bus would take me to “Withdean”, the temporary home of the Seagulls of Brighton.
The next three hours of my life were far from memorable and not really worthy of any sort of description other than under the broad characterization of wasted time.
At the allotted time and the assigned location, I parked my super-charged Ford and boarded the luxurious Park and Ride bus, without realizing until it was too late, that I sat in a seat that was reserved for the elderly and otherwise disadvantaged. This would explain some of the disapproving looks I received from other bus patrons, which I had mistakenly assumed was because they had somehow figured out I was Canadian and not really a Seagulls fan. Since Withdean park was located in a residential neighborhood there was no parking at or near the stadium. Therefore, a well-organized Park and Ride program was used to move thousands of visitors to and from the park. On game day, at approximately 1:00 pm a 1-2 kilometer stretch of Mill Road that runs parallels to the A27 was blocked for traffic. Instead, football fans parked their cars on the side of the road and then hopped on a bus for the trip to Withdean.
I was one of the first cars to be parked and therefore one of the first to step on the bus that carried me and 25 or 30 other Pathetically Early fans to the park. We arrived at Withdean at least 90 minutes before kick off. After tracking down the Ticket Collection window and collecting my ticket, I soon realized I would have to wait with other Pathetically Early football fans before being allowed into the stadium. Looking around, I saw that the Pathetically Early crowd was indeed an odd group. Some were singing to themselves, some clearly wanted to borrow money or cigarettes, and some looked like they were there early because the wife hadn’t allowed them back in the house after a night at the pub. Cleverly avoiding contact with anyone other than those in uniform or the nice chap who sold me a match program, I settled in to read my program and gain a sense for the home team, while beginning in earnest what would eventually be a good two hours of shivering in the cold misty Brighton seaside air.
From the Presidents message on the inside of the program I had the distinct feeling that in recent home games fans had been openly expressing their dissatisfaction with the Seagulls lowly performance. His text pleaded with the fans to support the boys through thick and thin and after reading the President’s message, I feared the match might decidedly be a one sided affair.
When I and the rest of the Pathetically Early fan club were finally allowed into the park, I had the notable distinction, recognized by the old gentlemen who took my ticket, of being the first one into the south side stands. I rushed in quickly, partially out of a desire to seek out my first ever seat in a League Championship park, and partly because I needed desperately to visit the toilet.
Withdean was a temporary home for the Seagulls. Having lost access to their original park many years previously and still struggling to gain city approval for a new park, the Seagulls instead played their home fixtures in a makeshift community park that had been heavily fitted up to suit the needs of a professional football team. Unfortunately much of the appeal to me personally of classic English football parks was absent from Withdean. In particular the south side stands had plenty of plastic and metal but sadly little wood and bricks. The character of an English football park is defined by the wood and brick of its structure.
Where in most parks, spectators could sit as close as a meter or two from the edge of touchline on all four sides, at Withdean the stands were set back from the pitch because of a running track that formed a physical as well as spiritual chasm between the fans and the on-field action. The playing surface itself was another disappointment. I heard it referred to by a fellow southside dweller as “The Beach” which I frankly thought was unfair….to the Beach. There was so little grass on this playing surface that there was talk of a possible Greenpeace protest.
The crowd grew quickly and by match time, 6,000 spectators stood in unison for the kick off. Then surprising and just as quickly they then, again in unison, sat back down for the rest of the match. Personally, I like to watch soccer matches standing but after a quick look around the park to see if there were any standing areas, I realized that in this park this would not offer me this option.
I settled in for an enjoyable 90 minutes of action hoping it would not be a blow out. I quickly noted and admired the skill of the players and the speed of the play. Not since attending the international Francophone Games soccer matches in Ottawa in 2002 had I seen soccer played at this level. But, I felt that I didn’t belong. I was enjoying the action far too much. All around me, I could hear nothing but a constant drone of complaints and whines about the wretched performance of the Seagulls.
A man in his mid-fourties who sat just in front of me and next to his 10-11 year old son repeated yelled angry expletives at the players and whined often to his friend on the other side, mostly that he just understand why the Seagull’s Manager Mark McGee would do this or that. The right of being a football fan is the license to hate your team almost as much as you love them. A women sitting behind me talked endlessly to her husband sitting beside her about her disappointment in the team but then her husband jokingly reminded her that her mother had told him that her first spoken word was “Seagulls”.
Although, it was clear from the beginning of the match that Brighton was outclassed, they worked hard and managed to win a small victory by preventing the much stronger, more fluid Preston North End squad from scoring early.
The Brighton defenders – their back four – bunkered down and were remarkably adept at holding off Preston’s repeated attacking thrusts. Attack after attack was stymied by the Seagulls back four, often with spectacular tackles that I am sure would have impressed any Premiership manager. It was a good thing their defenders were so capable since the Brighton midfielders seemed invisible for most of the game and their keeper, Wayne Henderson appeared to prefer the comfort of his sandy goal-line over venturing out to retrieve balls played into his box. I would later learn to my great surprise that Henderson the previous week had played his first senior international match for his homeland in friendly between Ireland and Sweden. Maybe in his mind he was still celebrating the Irish win in a Dublin pub because he certainly didn’t appear to be at Withdean that day.
Preston’s inevitable first goal was deferred minute after minute as each attack was successfully foiled by the pesky Seagull defenders. Brighton themselves even had a few good scoring chances but each one ended in a shot that went disappointedly inches wide or inches high.
The only other player on the pitch with international experience, Preston midfielder David Nugent, showed his prowess with each touch of the ball. He ran continually at the Brighton defenders time after time while the Seagulls midfielders enjoyed a soothing hot cocoa on the sideline. But each Nugent run ended with either a spectacular tackle by a Seagull defender or a harmless through-ball picked up by a mentally and physically distant, Henderson.
Brighton clearly outmatched, held firm. At half time, Brighton took to the locker room for much needed warmth, surely satisfied with their first half performance and a 0-0 score.
The second half of play was not all that different from the first. Preston pushed deep into Brighton’s defending third of the pitch while Brighton’s midfielders switched from cocoa to cigars and cognac, leaving once again their defensive back-four to take care of business and thwart the increasingly frustrated Preston attackers. Seagull fans tried to encourage their team by loudly chanting “Seeeee-gulll”, while collectively thrusting their hands toward the pitch with a pointed index finger and a protruded thumb and pinky wide so the hand took on the abstract appearance of a flying gull. But no matter how loud the 6.000 Brighton fans chanted, they could not approach the noise level of the few hundred traveling Preston fans that sat in the west end stands and sang loudly for the entire match.
As the game neared its conclusion, the crowd noise increased and the Seagulls came ever so close to popping in the winner. With each close miss, Seagull fans through their heads back and grabbed their hair in frantic frustration.
The game ended in a 0-0 draw and although the stadium, the playing surface and the absence of goals dampened the thrill just a little, to me it was an invigorating and thoroughly enjoyable first ever visit to a League Championship game.
As we all rose to applaud the team, the gentlemen with the son in front of me stood and applauded the squad enthusiastically, proudly yelling “good match boys, good match”. Is there a more telling sign of the painful mix of anguish and support that is being a die-hard club supporter?
Outside Withdean I found my Park and Ride bus - well to be completely truthful, I found the back of a 150 meter queue to board an as yet unseen bus that would take me back to Mill Road and my super-charged rented Ford Focus. On the short ride to Mill Road, I sat beside an old couple who were clearly life-long Preston North End fans who discussed the match in detail. Their discussions eventually led to their remaining glimmer of hope of a spot in the next season’s Premiership for Preston. But after four or five seconds of unusual silence, the woman finally said, “Who are we kidding? How can we survive in the Premiership when we can’t even beat Brighton.”
Copyright 2006 Stephen P. Spence
It was my first high level football match. Not a Premiership game (the highest level of soccer in England), but one level below - a league that twenty years ago was called Division Two and only two years ago was referred to as Division One, and now called by its commercial moniker, the Coca Cola Championship League.
Brighton, just up the south coast of England from Worthing where I was staying, is the home team for today’s match, and by holding down the second-last position in the table had the inevitable prospect of being relegated at season end to Division One. Is it just me, or is there something just a little odd about the naming conventions of a football program when a team can be demoted to the third level of the professional game and still be in “Division One”. By next year it is quite possible that Division One will itself have a new commercial name. If so, Brighton could be playing next season in the “Melba Toast” League or the “Wheatabix” Division, or maybe even the esteemed new “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter” Football League.
Today’s competition for Brighton is Preston North End, a team by holding onto the seventh position in the table is within shooting distance of promotion to the venerable Barclays English Premiership. In the “Championship”, as it’s called for short, the top two finishing teams advance automatically to the Premiership for the next season while the next four teams engage in a playoff with the winner being awarded the third and final promotion to the Premiership.
In what seems to be my usual pathetic routine, out of fear of getting lost, I left Worthing at about 9:30 am following breakfast for a game that didn’t start until 3:00 pm. To be fair to myself, I had to run a few errands. I needed petrol for my rented super-charged Ford Focus and I needed a coffee and of course there was no way to know for certain how long it would take me to get out of Worthing on a Sunday morning. But sure enough, just three or four minutes after leaving my hotel I ended up on the A27 that would lead me to Brighton, and less than 30 minutes later, pulled off the A27 onto Mill Road where much later in the day, the Park and Ride bus would take me to “Withdean”, the temporary home of the Seagulls of Brighton.
The next three hours of my life were far from memorable and not really worthy of any sort of description other than under the broad characterization of wasted time.
At the allotted time and the assigned location, I parked my super-charged Ford and boarded the luxurious Park and Ride bus, without realizing until it was too late, that I sat in a seat that was reserved for the elderly and otherwise disadvantaged. This would explain some of the disapproving looks I received from other bus patrons, which I had mistakenly assumed was because they had somehow figured out I was Canadian and not really a Seagulls fan. Since Withdean park was located in a residential neighborhood there was no parking at or near the stadium. Therefore, a well-organized Park and Ride program was used to move thousands of visitors to and from the park. On game day, at approximately 1:00 pm a 1-2 kilometer stretch of Mill Road that runs parallels to the A27 was blocked for traffic. Instead, football fans parked their cars on the side of the road and then hopped on a bus for the trip to Withdean.
I was one of the first cars to be parked and therefore one of the first to step on the bus that carried me and 25 or 30 other Pathetically Early fans to the park. We arrived at Withdean at least 90 minutes before kick off. After tracking down the Ticket Collection window and collecting my ticket, I soon realized I would have to wait with other Pathetically Early football fans before being allowed into the stadium. Looking around, I saw that the Pathetically Early crowd was indeed an odd group. Some were singing to themselves, some clearly wanted to borrow money or cigarettes, and some looked like they were there early because the wife hadn’t allowed them back in the house after a night at the pub. Cleverly avoiding contact with anyone other than those in uniform or the nice chap who sold me a match program, I settled in to read my program and gain a sense for the home team, while beginning in earnest what would eventually be a good two hours of shivering in the cold misty Brighton seaside air.
From the Presidents message on the inside of the program I had the distinct feeling that in recent home games fans had been openly expressing their dissatisfaction with the Seagulls lowly performance. His text pleaded with the fans to support the boys through thick and thin and after reading the President’s message, I feared the match might decidedly be a one sided affair.
When I and the rest of the Pathetically Early fan club were finally allowed into the park, I had the notable distinction, recognized by the old gentlemen who took my ticket, of being the first one into the south side stands. I rushed in quickly, partially out of a desire to seek out my first ever seat in a League Championship park, and partly because I needed desperately to visit the toilet.
Withdean was a temporary home for the Seagulls. Having lost access to their original park many years previously and still struggling to gain city approval for a new park, the Seagulls instead played their home fixtures in a makeshift community park that had been heavily fitted up to suit the needs of a professional football team. Unfortunately much of the appeal to me personally of classic English football parks was absent from Withdean. In particular the south side stands had plenty of plastic and metal but sadly little wood and bricks. The character of an English football park is defined by the wood and brick of its structure.
Where in most parks, spectators could sit as close as a meter or two from the edge of touchline on all four sides, at Withdean the stands were set back from the pitch because of a running track that formed a physical as well as spiritual chasm between the fans and the on-field action. The playing surface itself was another disappointment. I heard it referred to by a fellow southside dweller as “The Beach” which I frankly thought was unfair….to the Beach. There was so little grass on this playing surface that there was talk of a possible Greenpeace protest.
The crowd grew quickly and by match time, 6,000 spectators stood in unison for the kick off. Then surprising and just as quickly they then, again in unison, sat back down for the rest of the match. Personally, I like to watch soccer matches standing but after a quick look around the park to see if there were any standing areas, I realized that in this park this would not offer me this option.
I settled in for an enjoyable 90 minutes of action hoping it would not be a blow out. I quickly noted and admired the skill of the players and the speed of the play. Not since attending the international Francophone Games soccer matches in Ottawa in 2002 had I seen soccer played at this level. But, I felt that I didn’t belong. I was enjoying the action far too much. All around me, I could hear nothing but a constant drone of complaints and whines about the wretched performance of the Seagulls.
A man in his mid-fourties who sat just in front of me and next to his 10-11 year old son repeated yelled angry expletives at the players and whined often to his friend on the other side, mostly that he just understand why the Seagull’s Manager Mark McGee would do this or that. The right of being a football fan is the license to hate your team almost as much as you love them. A women sitting behind me talked endlessly to her husband sitting beside her about her disappointment in the team but then her husband jokingly reminded her that her mother had told him that her first spoken word was “Seagulls”.
Although, it was clear from the beginning of the match that Brighton was outclassed, they worked hard and managed to win a small victory by preventing the much stronger, more fluid Preston North End squad from scoring early.
The Brighton defenders – their back four – bunkered down and were remarkably adept at holding off Preston’s repeated attacking thrusts. Attack after attack was stymied by the Seagulls back four, often with spectacular tackles that I am sure would have impressed any Premiership manager. It was a good thing their defenders were so capable since the Brighton midfielders seemed invisible for most of the game and their keeper, Wayne Henderson appeared to prefer the comfort of his sandy goal-line over venturing out to retrieve balls played into his box. I would later learn to my great surprise that Henderson the previous week had played his first senior international match for his homeland in friendly between Ireland and Sweden. Maybe in his mind he was still celebrating the Irish win in a Dublin pub because he certainly didn’t appear to be at Withdean that day.
Preston’s inevitable first goal was deferred minute after minute as each attack was successfully foiled by the pesky Seagull defenders. Brighton themselves even had a few good scoring chances but each one ended in a shot that went disappointedly inches wide or inches high.
The only other player on the pitch with international experience, Preston midfielder David Nugent, showed his prowess with each touch of the ball. He ran continually at the Brighton defenders time after time while the Seagulls midfielders enjoyed a soothing hot cocoa on the sideline. But each Nugent run ended with either a spectacular tackle by a Seagull defender or a harmless through-ball picked up by a mentally and physically distant, Henderson.
Brighton clearly outmatched, held firm. At half time, Brighton took to the locker room for much needed warmth, surely satisfied with their first half performance and a 0-0 score.
The second half of play was not all that different from the first. Preston pushed deep into Brighton’s defending third of the pitch while Brighton’s midfielders switched from cocoa to cigars and cognac, leaving once again their defensive back-four to take care of business and thwart the increasingly frustrated Preston attackers. Seagull fans tried to encourage their team by loudly chanting “Seeeee-gulll”, while collectively thrusting their hands toward the pitch with a pointed index finger and a protruded thumb and pinky wide so the hand took on the abstract appearance of a flying gull. But no matter how loud the 6.000 Brighton fans chanted, they could not approach the noise level of the few hundred traveling Preston fans that sat in the west end stands and sang loudly for the entire match.
As the game neared its conclusion, the crowd noise increased and the Seagulls came ever so close to popping in the winner. With each close miss, Seagull fans through their heads back and grabbed their hair in frantic frustration.
The game ended in a 0-0 draw and although the stadium, the playing surface and the absence of goals dampened the thrill just a little, to me it was an invigorating and thoroughly enjoyable first ever visit to a League Championship game.
As we all rose to applaud the team, the gentlemen with the son in front of me stood and applauded the squad enthusiastically, proudly yelling “good match boys, good match”. Is there a more telling sign of the painful mix of anguish and support that is being a die-hard club supporter?
Outside Withdean I found my Park and Ride bus - well to be completely truthful, I found the back of a 150 meter queue to board an as yet unseen bus that would take me back to Mill Road and my super-charged rented Ford Focus. On the short ride to Mill Road, I sat beside an old couple who were clearly life-long Preston North End fans who discussed the match in detail. Their discussions eventually led to their remaining glimmer of hope of a spot in the next season’s Premiership for Preston. But after four or five seconds of unusual silence, the woman finally said, “Who are we kidding? How can we survive in the Premiership when we can’t even beat Brighton.”
posted by Stephen Spence at
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