How one incident in 1976 created an unlikely bitter rivalry
ON Saturday afternoon, the visiting Brighton fans spent much of their first trip to Old Trafford in the Premier League era focusing on another encounter altogether. Never mind the elevated opposition, they had other things on their mind.
“Crystal Palace, we’re coming for you,” they chanted in excitement at the approach of tonight’s fixture. In what must have constituted the first name-check of Palace by a third party at United’s stadium, the Brighton followers gave vivid demonstration of the depth of one of football’s strangest antipathies. This is rivalry on a grand scale. And as far as mutual hatred goes, it is only right to point out that those Palace fans heading down the M23 to watch the game at the Amex will be equally as fired up.
“Absence makes the heart grow angrier,” says the comedian Stephen Grant, a lifelong Brighton fan, of a fixture which has not taken place since 2013. “I never enjoy the games. They are always so stressful. Sure, win and it’s lovely. But lose, and it’s a decade of misery. So, in the build-up, you are completely eaten up by the fear that you might lose.”
Football is riven with neighbourhood scraps in which the result matters far more than any other. In Glasgow, Manchester and north London, between Chester and Wrexham, Sunderland and Newcastle, Swindon and Oxford, local antipathy is embedded in decades of geographical division and suspicion. But it is not like that between Palace and Brighton. And not just because at 37 miles apart they hardly constitute nearneighbours. This is something very different, something unique in football history. This is a hatred born of a single incident.
“I’ve heard people say the Palace-Brighton thing goes back years, to the days of rival razor gangs in the 1930s,” says Kevin Day, the comedian and Palace fan. “But I’ve discovered absolutely nothing that corroborates that. Truth is, we barely noticed each other. Until 1976.”
That season, the clubs were vying for promotion from the old third division, now League One. To add to the competitive surge, they were under the direction of two former team-mates. Brighton’s Alan Mullery and Terry Venables, of Palace, had once shared a dressing room at Tottenham.
If we are to be polite about their history, they never got on. And things became heated when they were drawn together in the first round of the FA Cup in November 1976. Unable to be separated after two fractious games, a second replay was arranged at a neutral venue, Stamford Bridge.
“It was the first away game I’d been to,” recalls Day. “It was awful weather, absolutely pouring. I was really excited it was at Stamford Bridge. I can’t remember much of the match. But I vividly remember what happened afterwards.”
Brian Horton was even closer to the action that evening: he was playing in the Brighton midfield.
“I remember it like yesterday,” he says. “We were awarded a penalty, I took it and scored. But one of their players had very cleverly pushed Peter Ward into the area. So, the ref made me take it again, for encroaching. I missed, we went on to lose 1-0 and at the end Mullers went absolutely mad. With the ref, the opposition, the Palace fans. There was a right old argy bargy.”
Day tells of how Mullery argued loudly with Palace fans, before chucking a handful of coins into the opposition dressing room, implying they had bought the referee, then tearing up a bank note in the press conference, saying he would not give a fiver for Palace’s supporters. It was a tour de force.
The Palace fans’ antipathy towards Mullery, however, was matched by the Brighton supporters’ fury at the referee. When the clubs met later in the season at Selhurst Park in the league, the clashes took the police, who had not earmarked it as a trouble spot, by surprise.
The following season, with both clubs promoted, Palace ire was further fuelled when Brighton changed their nickname from the Dolphins to the Seagulls.
ANGER
Though Day, for one, is unsure why that should be a source of anger. “We shouldn’t get upset by that,” he says. “An eagle is a soaring, glorious, dignified creature, a seagull is a chip-stealing rat. All they do is terrify toddlers into dropping their ice creams.”
What further fuelled the antipathy was when Mullery was appointed Palace manager in 1982. Day remembers joining in the chorus of boos from the moment he arrived. He was not at Selhurst long.
Then, after the late 1980s, with Brighton suffering from cackhanded ownership, losing possession of their stadium and tumbling down the divisions, the encounters became less frequent (there was an 11-year gap encompassing the entire 1990s). But when they did take place, the games seemed to be of particular significance, like the 2013 meeting in the Championship play-offs. And now comes the first fixture in the top f light in 37 years.
“It’s a really important game this because it could decide who leads in terms of overall wins,” says Grant. “We’re even, so whoever wins takes a big step ahead. And it will be horrible. It’s a bit like your dad, a lovely, peaceable welcoming chap, who once a year loses it and destroys the garden shed. It’s the game none of us can miss.”
Though one person who will be absent is Alan Mullery. When asked about his role in the great M23 derby, he was unequivocal. “No way am I talking about that,” he said. “It’s been going on for 40 years and I couldn’t be more fed up of it.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)