Brighton v Southampton: History & head-to-head of Seagulls v Saints

Many people outside of Sussex and Hampshire assume there is some sort of rivalry between Brighton and Southampton due to the fact that we both share a stretch of coastline, but the reality is that there has never really been a history of beef between the Albion and the Saints going back over 100 years and 98 matches.

There were two brief periods when it looked as though the two clubs might develop an intense disliking of each other. The first came back in Brighton’s fledgling days as a Southern League club.

Matches against Portsmouth and Southampton were seen as the biggest of the season in the early part of the 20th century. They would always draw the largest crowds to the Goldstone Ground, with Seagulls facing Saints in 13 consecutive Southern League Division One seasons between 1902 and 1920.

Things were fairly even between the two rivals. Brighton won 19 and Southampton 11 of the 26 Division One meetings with five draws.

Southampton won two Southern League titles during the Albion’s time in the division while Brighton lifted one in the 1908-09 season under manager Jack Robson, the most successful boss trophy-wise in Brighton history.

Robson was something of a pioneer too. While squad rotation may seem like a relatively new concept in the history of football, Brighton were actually doing it against Southampton as long ago as the 1912-13 season.

With a big FA Cup game to come against Everton a couple of days later, Robson played his entire reserve side in a Southern Professional Charity Cup first round replay against Southampton at the Goldstone on Wednesday 29th January 1913.

Brighton’s stiffs surprised everyone by hammering the Saints 4-1 and Robson decided to play them in every round from that point on. The reserves ended up going all the way to the final, only to be beaten by an experienced Queens Park Rangers side at The Den.

That 1912-13 season saw Brighton and Southampton face off six times in a single campaign. There were two regular Southern League matches, the Charity Cup replay and its original tie and two meetings in the Southern Alliance League, a midweek competition which both Seagulls and Saints entered to increase the number of matches they played and with it, the amount of cash they could make through home gate revenue. Paul Barber likes this.

The Alliance League lasted for two seasons between 1912 and 1914. Five seasons earlier and the clubs also competed in the Western League in addition to their Southern League commitments for similar money making reasons.

Little could separate Brighton and Southampton in the midweek competitions with two wins apiece and two draws from the six games which took place.

Meetings with Southampton lost their frequency when both clubs joined the Football League in 1920. Southampton soon rose out of the old Division Three South while Brighton spent the next 38 years of their history in the regional section.

World War II brought Brighton and Southampton back together in the War League South, where they shared one of the strangest games of in the history of wartime football on Saturday 12th October 1940.

Two German air raids took place during the game, meaning that the first half was only 20 minutes long and the second was cut short to 25 minutes. Despite this, the 0-0 result was allowed to stand!

500 turned up to Hove that day, a far cry from attendances against Saints over the next thirty years as we started to face off again in Division Three South and then Division Two.

Saturday 27th March 1954 saw the Goldstone host the first 30,000 plus league crowd in its history as Brighton defeated Southampton 2-1 to maintain their third tier promotion bid and one of the biggest ever attendances at the Goldstone came for the Saints’ visit in the 1977-78 season with both clubs fighting for a place in the top flight.

An all ticket crowd of 32,979 saw 10-man Albion battle to a 1-1 draw on Monday 2nd January 1978 despite having Andy Rollings sent off for two bad fouls. Mark Lawrenson was the Brighton scorer, cancelling out Alan Ball’s opener.

Over 5,000 Brighton fans had made the journey along the coast for the opening game of the season at the Dell five months earlier, a 1-1 draw with John Ruggiero on target.

The Saints ended up winning promotion at Brighton’s expense, although it was not without controversy. Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur met on the final day of the season; a draw would guarantee they were both promoted but if one side won, Brighton would climb above the loser and claim a place in Division One for the first time in their history.

Alan Mullery’s Albion did their part, beating Blackpool 2-1. There was little shock at the result from The Dell, where things finished 0-0 and neither side had a shot on target all afternoon. A contrived result to deny Brighton promotion.

Not that Mullery’s men could be kept down for long. They duly bounced back a year later, joining the Saints in the top flight for four seasons between 1979 and 1983.

The most memorable game of that spell came on Tuesday 8th December 1981 at the Dell. Steve Foster was rumoured to be in contention for a first England call up and he did his chances no harm when marking Kevin Keegan out of the game as the Albion secured a famous 2-0 win, their first in Southampton for 26 years. The goals that night came from Andy Ritchie and Steve Gatting.

23 years would pass between Brighton’s relegation from the Division One in 1983 and their next league meeting with Southampton which came when the Saints dropped into the Championship for the 2005-06 season.

It wasn’t a great experience either for Mark McGhee, Leon Knight or any of the Brighton fans who made the trip to Southampton and the new St Mary’s Stadium to watch the Albion there for the first time in their history.

McGhee seemingly hit the whiskey a little too hard; on the way to the game, he tried to throw Leon Knight off the team coach in the middle of the New Forest having decided to drop Michel Kuipers in favour of Florent Chaigneau, play Kerry Mayo in central midfield, and give debuts to youth team players Joel Lynch and Joe Gatting.

To be fair to Mayo, he did score – the only bright spot in an otherwise disappointing 2-1 defeat. The Albion never really recovered from that bizarre team selection and ended up relegated at the end of the season, bottom of the table. McGhee was gone shortly after.

Three-and-a-half years later and Gus Poyet made his debut in the Brighton dugout for an away game at Southampton. The Albion went into that match looking in deep relegation trouble following the sacking of Russell Slade.

In a sign of what was to come under the enigmatic Uruguayan, they shocked everyone by comprehensively winning 3-1 at St Mary’s thanks to a Glenn Murray brace and one from Andrew Crofts.

You could feel something change that day in the way Brighton played, the attitude of the players and the connection that Poyet was already fostering with the Albion support. As we know now, things would never be the same again on the pitch.

Poyet revolutionised the football club and he also did his level best to turn Brighton versus Southampton into the biggest rivalry in Albion history – even more so than Brighton v Crystal Palace.

To be fair, Poyet versus Nigel Adkins did make for entertaining fare during the 2010-11 League One season but it was more a pantomime feel than the deep seated hatred many Albion fans have for Palace.

Adkins and Southampton had the budget and arguably the better individual players when you look at what the likes of Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana, Jose Fonte and the rest went onto achieve.

But they could not get close to Brighton in the table as Poyet’s side swept all before them to win the title ahead of the Saints with four games of the season still to play. Adkins’ comments of “Brighton can win the title if they can keep up with us” were made to look very silly.

Southampton and Adkins perhaps had the last laugh, winning back-to-back promotions to go straight from League One to the Premier League as the Poyet Era turned sour to the point where Brighton now won’t even mention one of the greatest managers in their history by name.

It took the Albion another five years to join the Saints in the top flight and since Chris Hughton took us there, it has been Southampton who have dominated the fixture.

Brighton have only beaten their ‘South Coast Rivals’ in a Premier League game once, March 2021’s 2-1 victory at St Mary’s. The other eight matches have seen five draws and three Saints wins.