Potter’s prominence sowing the seeds for Sussex’s non-league supremacy “People go to Brighton for various reasons. For a holiday, for a day-trip, for a place to retire, for a Tory Party conference, or for a dirty weekend. With all due respect to the club and its fans, you don't go there for the football,” insists the naturally insolent and former Seagulls boss Brian Clough in his autobiography. “Brighton is not a big-time club and is never likely to be,” he adds.
Well, this is awkward. Six successive seasons of top-flight football have secured Sussex’s sunlit seaside resort a footballing haven as The Seagulls undergo a seismic shift. Fronted by Graham Potter, a man so deftly discerning as he makes his way to Stamford Bridge having steering his silky seabirds to territory unexplored, unimagined.
In August, Potter became the first Brighton manager to win at Old Trafford. On Sunday, Potter watched on as Brighton scored five goals for the first time in 364 top-flight matches. As things stand, Brighton are perched in fourth position, ahead of Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool. The Blues appear to have chosen wisely, but there’s a couple of things to take from this. The first, and most obvious, is: what on earth? And the second, vitally, is: what has this increasing success meant for its football community?
A little over a decade ago Clough’s remarks would still carry some weight on the colourful streets of Brighton with the club striving for security as they yearned for a route out of the third tier. Since the unveiling of the AMEX Stadium the area has undergone a football revival - it’s tenants at the beating heart of this defibrillation, the influx of football supporters spirited to sport the seagull has trickled over into its non-league scene. Worthing, Lewes, Whitehawk - three sides all within a 10-mile radius of Sussex’s colosseum, competing in tiers six, seven and eight respectively, have all welcomed this shift in eminence.
As the 2012/13 campaign commenced a year after Brighton moved into their new £93 million residence, attendances in other parts of the county were dismal - man and his dog territory, but slowly beginning to climb. By the end of this season The Hawks were crowned champions of Ryman League Premier Division with the rather sparse average herd of 200. Lewes, in the same league, was higher, with 527 whilst Worthing, atrophying in the division below, stood at just 198.
And now, the upsurge: a sustained proliferation in backing has enhanced the district’s footballing reverence. Whitehawk, with their staunch message of anti-bigotry in sport, welcomed an average throng of 323 over the course of last season, with highs of 613. The Dripping Pan? 848. There was history in the women’s game, too, as a record 2,347 fans observed Lewes LFC’s 2-1 triumph over Liverpool on the WSL 2 season finale in May.
Then there’s Worthing: The Rebels sailing to National League South to the harmonious tune of an average 1,172 onlookers, a staggering 492% increase from a decade ago. Sure, Brighton’s still a fair way off the footballing temples of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, where the game appears to be the only topic of conversation worth entertaining. Yet the potential to transform this southerly part of the country into a sporting hotspot is now less a notion than it is fact.
At Brighton’s nadir in the mid-nineties the club’s psyche was still to shift into its city. Who wants to watch Division Three football? Gillingham’s lovely of course, though it is quite the jaunt to the Medway town on a drenching Tuesday evening. But now there’s a vibrancy: young supporters donning the Donatello, bearing the blue and white stripes. Here’s your premier club, my good friend. Be a part of it.
In 1996 the club were languishing at the dregs of Division Three, drowning under its increasingly precarious financial situation. The Goldstone Ground was a mere memory, reduce to rubble as Gillingham permitted the ground share. Two years of 70-mile ventures for ‘home’ matches ceased with the commencement of the Withdean Era. A scaffolded foundation for stability, the side’s saviour came in the name of Tony Bloom.
Itinerant no longer, the side had yo-yoed between English football’s top three divisions during the 2000s with the growing of a lingering malaise blowing from seat to stand. 2011 came around and so did the Championship, Gus Poyet leading the charge in the Withdean’s culminating campaign. That’s it: the moment they never looked back.
Today you can still visit the Withdean’s cordial charm as it takes on a new occupant as the home of ninth-tier side AFC Varndeanians. It’s much the same: binoculars remain a recommendation and you can still catch a glimpse of the action in the adjacent woods. As for the scaffolding, well, most of that has been recycled to the grounds of nearby Whitehawk and Newhaven, perpetuating its existence in view of a football field.
Perhaps there’s something symbolic in that: The Seagulls have done their time in the doldrums, battling for every point and pound on their way to Premier League salvation. A little piece, a token, even, of a proud past is passed onto clubs with ambitions once akin to their own. Like an aged willow tree scattering its seeds for a younger, sanguine sallow; the roots of a footballing city have sprouted.
And as for Clough — the one with the self-righteous mind who won just about all you could possibly win — there was one thing he failed to register: the rich spirit of Brighton. Only in some dizzying chimera would the febrile followers who flocked in support to the Goldstone Ground envisioned a life this exotic, a team this rousing, and a manager this adroit. Potter moves on having coalesced not just a club, but a coastline. The time to stamp this a city with a searing ardour for football has arrived, and everyone is reaping the rewards.
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