Batman Brighton beat Burnley in Hinshelwood’s first game in charge

There were two major questions as Brighton & Hove Albion took to the field for the opening game of the 2002-03 Division One season away at Burnley on Saturday 10th August 2002.

Number one – what the hell were the Albion wearing? And number two – had Martin Hinshelwood lost the plot before he had taken charge of even one competitive game, given his bizarre team selection?

We will start with the first of those. Burnley away in 2002 was the first time that many Brighton supporters had been seen the famous ‘Batman’ away shirt and it really was one of those “What the f**k is that?” moments.

Dick Knight took great pride in working alongside Errea to personally design the Albion’s kits during his time as chairman. This of course led to many ridiculous kit based situations.

There was the time the 2004-05 shirt turned up in the wrong shade of blue and we spent two seasons looking like a low-budget Argentina tribute side.

Or in the 2008-09 season when Knight did not foresee a problem with having a blue and white home shit, a yellow and blue away shirt and a light blue third shirt – whilst playing in a division in which 11 other League One sides wore blue.

With stunning predictability, that meant having to wear a “one-off” white shirt on more than one occasion, as well as being forced into the situation of borrowing Leicester City’s yellow away kit for the trip to the Walkers Stadium in January 2009 because the referee wasn’t happy with Leicester blue taking on Brighton blue.

Prior to the 2002-03 season, Knight had actually made a decent job at designing kits. The first shirts at Withdean oozed coolness and are still considered classics 20 years on. The Centenary Home Shirt was smart and will always remain popular as the Albion lifted two league championships wearing it.

Burnley away in 2002 was the first glimpse we got that Knight could go off-piste when it came to Brighton kits. The Albion had never had an all black kit before and while black can be smart, it has to be done right.

And it certainly is not done right when you decide to plaster the outline of a bloody big Seagull across the chest. Depending on your viewpoint, the Seagull either looked heavily pregnant or was in fact a bat.

We subscribed to the latter, which meant that as Brighton strode onto the Turf Moor pitch for the opening game of the 2002-03 season, the Albion players looked like 11 men who were heading to a fancy dress party in half-arsed Batman costumes. Bruce Wayne, this lot certainly were not.

It was the identity of the 11 men taking to the field for Hinshelwood’s first game in charge that led to the second question regarding his sanity as he sprung three major surprises with his team selection.

Steve Melton, a bit-part player over the course of the Division Two and Division Three title winning campaigns under Micky Adams and then Peter Taylor, was given a rare start in midfield.

Hinshelwood’s choice of centre backs proved to be even more extraordinary. Robbie Pethick had spent the previous season as backup to Paul Watson and had, as far as anyone could tell, never played as a central defender in his life.

Brighton’s first game in the second tier for 10 years hardly seemed like a time to be experimenting with a new position for a 31-year-old whose only notable contribution the previous year was to die his hair bright blonde like Eminem, presumably as part of some midlife crisis.

Even more incredible than Pethick’s selection was the identity of his partner. In a move which the majority of the 1,173 travelling Brighton supporters saw as pure nepotism, Hinshelwood gave a debut to his 17-year-old nephew alongside Pethick at the heart of the defence.

“He’s picking his bloody family,” somebody shouted on the concourse as the teams were announced. Some Albion fans were already suspicious of any internal appointments after the disasters of Jeff Wood and Jimmy Case’s promotions to the top job in the previous seven years, and Hinshelwood selecting Hinshelwood did little to alleviate those fears.

Admittedly, the new manager’s hands had been tied a little. He’d only been appointed a month earlier, late into pre-season after a bungled search for Taylor’s successor saw Knight reject Steve Coppell after interviewing him and then attempt to appoint Cameroon’s manager from the 2002 World Cup, Winfried Schäfer.

When Schäfer got cold feet just before he was due to be announced, Knight turned instead to his Director of Youth Hinshelwood and offered him the job – sparking the lovely little rumour that Hinshelwood was only appointed because Knight didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of having to cancel a press conference.

The new Brighton boss managed to sign only one new player before the opening day of the 2002-03 season at Burnley, backup goalkeeper Andy Petterson.

Hinshelwood tried to put a positive spin on it, saying that he wanted to give the players who had earned consecutive promotions the chance to prove themselves at Division One level. The reality though was that Hinshelwood was working with a weaker squad than even Adams had back in Division Three two seasons previously.

Of Taylor’s side that had won promotion four months earlier, Simon Morgan had retired, Junior Lewes returned to Leicester after the Albion failed to turn his loan deal into a permanent move and Lee Steele had been released.

Still, there were options for Hinshelwood other than the rarely seen trio of Melton, Pethick and his nephew. Club captain Paul Rogers was sat on the bench and Adam Virgo had looked a real prospect when deputising for Morgan at centre back under Taylor.

Virgo was a year older than Hinshelwood Junior and already many people’s idea of a future Albion captain. Family ties had seemingly pushed him down the pecking order, which is why the selection was greeted with such controversy. If anyone was going to replace the ill Danny Cullip, it should have been Virgo.

By full time though, it was a very different story. Even the fact that Melton, Pethick, Hinshelwood and the rest looked like they should be prowling the streets of Gotham rather than beating the likes of Burnley could be forgotten as Brighton kicked off the 2002-03 season with a stunning 3-1 success.

All of Hinshelwood’s selections paid of. Melton opened the scoring with a rasping low drive from the edge of the area with 29 minutes played.

Young Hinshelwood was so good at the heart of the makeshift defence that he ended up being named in Sports First‘s Division One Team of the Week.

And Pethick suddenly became more than a man in his 30s who still bleached his hair, going onto be one of Brighton’s better performers in the opening weeks of a campaign that sadly went off the rails once the Albion had returned from Lancashire.

Bobby Zamora had the ball in the net inside of seven minutes as Division One got its first glimpse of the damage that Watson and Zamora could cause in tandem. Luckily for the hosts, Zamora’s header past Nik Michopoulos from a Watson free kick was deemed offside.

Zamora played his part in the first legal goal of the afternoon, producing the pass which teed up Melton for the opener. Unfortunately for Melton, he got injured when taking that strike and was replaced immediately by Rogers.

The early substitution couldn’t derail Brighton though. Burnley’s Arthur Gnohere was sent off five minutes into the second half for headbutting Gary Hart and from that moment on, the Clarets looked done.

Perhaps that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given that dissent and acrimony were in the air at Turf Moor with the club having listed their entire squad for transfer.

Within 10 minutes of that red card, Paul Brooker embarked on a dazzling run down the left which ended with a brilliant individual goal. Three minutes after that and Zamora added a third and it was game over.

Teenage substitute Shaun Wilkinson had the ball in the back of the net following his 69th minute introduction for Hart but that effort too was disallowed for offside. Without those two unfriendly flags going up, Hinshelwood could have started life in the dugout with an even bigger victory.

Michel Kuipers would not have a quieter afternoon all season. Burnley only managed to break through Hinshelwood and Pethick on two occasions; Paul Weller grazing Kuipers’ crossbar before Lee Briscoe slotted home a last minute consolation for the Clarets on from Gareth Taylor’s cushioned header.

Hinshelwood spoke afterwards about his disappointment for the defence that they couldn’t hold on for a deserved clean sheet. Nobody in the away end at Turf Moor seemed bothered about the lack of shut out; based on what we’d just seen, this Division One lark was going to be easy, even with a rookie manager and a weak squad.

“Hello, hello, hello, and it’s gonna be three in a row” sand the Albion supporters as the players trooped off at the final whistle, a tongue-in-cheek reference to expectations of a third divisional championship in succession.

But why not dream? Hinshelwood’s Batman Brighton had eviscerated as if they were Bruce Wayne taking on the Scarecrow. Anything seemed possible. If only we knew the storm that was coming.