Cullip, ponchos and losing to the worst team in the Football League

People think being a ball boy is easy. They assume that it’s a case of having one of the best seats in the house, watching world class athletes from close quarters and occasionally having to throw them a football.

That might be the case at some clubs. But it certainly wasn’t for those brave souls who took on ball boy duties at Withdean Stadium during Brighton’s 12 year tenure.

I did the job for the first two seasons at the Theatre of Trees. Needless to say, there were no world class athletes on show unless you’ve got a very warped opinion on the talents of Dave Cameron, Jamie Campbell and Darren Carr.

You had to work bloody hard as well. An errant shot from Aidan Newhouse at the west end of the ground might see you having to run so far to retrieve the ball that you ended up in a Worthing postcode.

The openness of either end at Withdean in those first few seasons meant that the club employed a “multi ball” policy in order to try and reduce the amount of gaps in play. So, if you weren’t the ball boy chasing after a stray pass, then you’d be charged with throwing a new ball as quickly as possible to keep playing moving. But only if it was a Brighton throw. Give the away team the chance to get things going quickly and Micky Adams would want your head on a plate.

That’s not an exaggeration either. There was one occasion when Adams paid us a visit in our ball boy HQ (an unused squash court in the leisure centre next to the North Stand) before a game. He wanted to make it very clear that if a ball went out of play, we had a matter of seconds to get another one to a Brighton player. No pressure.

Being a ball boy at Withdean involved other tasks as well, which brings us nicely onto the clash with Chester City on September 18th 1999. Brighton had played three games at their new home by that point and all had been blessed with dry weather. The visit of Division Three’s bottom team was set to be different though – rain was forecast.

And so us ball boys got a call on the Friday night. Can you get to the ground two hours earlier than normal as we’ve got a special task for you? That task turned out to be placing nearly 6,000 free ponchos onto every single seat in the stadium.

It was carefully choreographed as well. Way before the Amex was turned into a mass of blue and white stripes with flags, Withdean was the same as each block was given an alternate colour. The effect was actually quite striking as the South Stand resembled a sea of stripes throughout the game, even if those wearing white did look like members of the Ku Klux Klan from a distance.

The humble poncho wasn’t the only thing making it’s Brighton debut that would go onto achieve legendary status. At the heart of the Albion defence was a certain Danny Cullip, signed on loan from Brentford 48 hours previously and who had just celebrated his 23rd birthday the day before.

It was apparent from the moment that Cullip delivered his first “LETS ‘AVE A WINNER” battle cry that he was a class above anything else that Brighton had. A month later and Dick Knight was forking out £50,000 to bring him to Withdean on a permanent basis. That was all of Adams’ 1999-00 transfer budget gone on one player – we didn’t pay another transfer fee until Bobby Zamora’s £100,000 arrival 10 months later – but Cullip was that good that nobody cared.

Given the circus that was going on around Cullip during his first game, it was actually something of a surprise that he wanted to stay. Chester arrived bottom of the Football League with two points from their opening seven games, which meant this really should have been a home banker. In typical Albion style, we ended up losing 3-2.

The first half was dominated by Brighton, but the Seagulls had nothing to show for their efforts until 55 minutes in when Gary Hart latched onto a through ball, rounded Chester goalkeeper Wayne Brown and rolled into an empty net. Luke Beckett, one of the better lower league journeyman of the early 2000’s, equalised on 69 and four minutes later one of the great comedy goals of the Withdean years took place.

Everyone recalls the Colin Hawkins own goal against Hartlepool United and the Adam Hinshelwood back pass against Colchester United, but this is up there. A bit of a melee broke out in the Brighton box with the ball eventually heading back to the esteemed figure of Mark Walton via Paul Watson.

There seemed to be little danger, all Walton had to do was kick the ball into touch. Sadly, he was unable to complete this simple task and instead smashed the ball straight into Watson’s back, from where it spun straight other the head of Walton and into the back of the net. Incredibly, somebody has actually uploaded the goals to YouTube, so you can see it in all its glory. Walton’s disbelieving hands-on-hips reaction is a particular highlight.

Cullip endeared himself to the Albion faithful by equalising with a bullet header from a trademark Watson free kick with seven minutes remaining, but there was further drama to come as Chester had a debutant of their own on the score sheet with Junior Agogo scoring an injury time winner.

Adams was furious afterwards, saying, “The players have let the fans down. Everyone thought we would win it, and I’m at a loss to explain why we didn’t.” The defeat became even more mystifying by the end of the campaign. Not only did the Albion go and win the return game 7-1 at the Deva Stadium the following February, but Chester ended the campaign being relegated out of the Football League.

Brighton’s future was much rosier, helped hugely by their debutant defender. Cullip would go onto play 238 times for the Albion, scoring 11 goals. He won three promotions and remains the only player to have captained Brighton to victory in a play off final.

As for the ponchos, well they did even better. People were still sporting them 12 years later in Withdean’s final season, although by then you had to pay £1 for the pleasure of owning one. A couple even made headlines for turning up to the Amex in a set for a Premier League game last season.

This being the 21st century, Twitter derided them for their terrible fashion sense without actually realising the important part that those ridiculous pieces of plastic played in Albion history. Indeed, it’s a surprise Paul Barber hasn’t commissioned a nostalgia range of ponchos costing £20 each.

The fact that said couple still had their originals is less surprising. There’s probably thousands of the things discarded in lofts and basements across Sussex, all stemming from the day that Chester came to town.