Brighton 3-2 Leicester – a lesson in how not to leave a game early

What is it with Brighton fans and leaving games early? Barely a home match at the Amex can pass without some supporters losing their minds at the fact that people don’t fancy staying until the 95th minute.

There also seems to be this myth that it’s a recent phenomenon, something that’s only been happening since the move to the Amex.

The 6,000 hardy souls who turned up at Withdean come rain or shine would never desert their team before the referee blew his final whistle, unlike those who have only started attending since the Albion have been good.

Which is bollocks. Brighton fans have a long and proud tradition of walking out of games early. If you could speak to a season ticket holder from the 1903-04 season, they’d probably regal you with tales of them buggering off from the Goldstone with 10 minutes still to play when we 3-1 down with 10 minutes still to play at home to New Brompton.

Why stay and watch that crap when you could get a hansom cab back into Brighton which back then had a pub on every corner?

The WAB team have been gleeful early leavers for many years. Our personal record is abandoning ship after 20 minutes away at West Ham United in April 2012.

The Albion were already 3-0 down by that point having seen the hosts score three times in the opening 11 minutes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Ricardo vaz Te was being made to look like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele and Diego Maradona rolled into one.

We therefore felt our time could be put to much better use that afternoon by heading back to the The Queens Pub next to Upton Park tube station and watching the Grand National. This was not exactly a roaring success as our heavily-backed horse Synchronised ended up suffering a fatal injury.

That was followed by a mass brawl breaking out in the pub between Albion and West Ham fans as more and more Seagulls streamed out early as the Hammers’ fourth, fifth and sixth goals went in.

It finished 6-0 and the extra hour in the pub meant that one member of the team was so pissed on the way home that they inadvertently ended up waking up on a train outside Lewes at 1am in the morning.

Of course, extra drinking time and falling up asleep on public transport is not the only risk associated with leaving early. You also never know what you might miss.

Take Brighton 3-2 Leicester City from October 2008, for example. That evening led to the most infamous early departures from a game in Albion history, partly because the comeback was so unlikely and partly because the whole thing played out in glorious technicolour on North Stand Chat.

Leicester were favourites for the League One title when they arrived at Withdean to take on Micky Adams’ struggling Albion side.

Those 5,450 Brighton supporters who bothered to rock up to the Theatre of Trees on a cold, wet Tuesday night did so more in hope than expectations.

Among those 5,450 fans was Pornomagboy, an NSC user with a name that would probably set alarm bells ringing at Operation Yewtree HQ these days. This was 2008 though, a less enlightened time before Jimmy Saville, #MeToo and there being 29 different genders.

It was also a time when Brighton were, for want of a better word, shit. Adams had returned to much fanfare five months earlier, replacing Dean Wilkins as manager and promising to build on the seventh placed finish achieved by Wilkins the previous season.

That was going well as Brighton sat 18th in the table. Defeat against Leicester coupled with victories for Cheltenham Town and Yeovil Town would have seen the Albion drop into the relegation zone for the first time. Adams was seemingly taking the Seagulls into League Two rather than the Championship.

Leicester meanwhile were in third, behind only Scunthorpe United. The Foxes would eventually go onto win the league with an astonishing 96 points, seven clear of second placed Peterborough United.

Quite what Pornomagboy was expecting given the obvious gulf between the two sides, God knows. As referee Alan Wiley blew for half time with the Albion trailing 2-0 to a Matty Fryatt brace, Pornomagboy wasn’t a happy bunny though and so decided to walk out Withdean.

To be fair, he wasn’t the only one. Lots of fans could be seen heading for the South Stand exit gates and the team were also booed off.

Nobody in their right mind could have expected that 45 minutes more football would result in a final score of Brighton 3-2 Leicester.

The difference between Pornomagboy and the rest of the early leavers was that he also decided to vent his anger on NSC.

Posting just after 9pm in his new thread entitled “Just back from the Leicester game”, Pornomagboy told the world, “What a load of shit it was i left at half hime we was lucky to be 2-0 down, Sulivan who? he reminds me of mark walton allways in no mans land? adams out. there was about 100 or even more who left at half time.”

Whilst Pornomagboy was busy getting this off his chest at 9.06pm, he was blissfully unaware that loan debutant Bradley Johnson had just pulled one back for the Albion. Brighton were back in the Leicester game at 2-1 and the comeback to a 3-2 win was on.

He also didn’t know that Adams had made a pretty bold substitution at the break. Robbie Savage had arrived on-loan from Derby County amid much fanfare a month earlier – to be greeted at the training ground by Bob Booker dressed as a woman in a story that doesn’t get anywhere near the level of attention it deserves – but not even he could spark an upturn in results.

The feeling was that Savage was too good for his teammates. He was seeing through balls and playing passes that no other Albion player could predict or latch onto.

As a result, Savage achieved very little in his month at Withdean other than giving Booker an excuse to whip out a dress.

This was the final game of his loan spell and it came to a premature end as Adams hauled him in favour of another loan player, Kevin Thornton. Take five points if you remember him.

The beleaguered boss was not done there as he also replaced Kevin McLeod with Dean Cox in a double swap. Suddenly, the Albion had two players on the pitch who wanted to take the take the game to Leicester.

John Sullivan also began to grow in confidence in the second half, making a mockery of Pornomagboy’s decision to compare him to Mark Walton after just 45 minutes of his professional debut. Indeed, he was many people’s idea of man-of-the-match by the end of Brighton 3-2 Leicester.

Johnson’s goal was an excellent one, a wicked shot from about 25 yards which left David Martin in the Foxes goal with no chance.

The loanee midfielder then repeated the trick with six minutes to go, another distance effort from Johnson levelling things up and leaving the Foxes shocked.

Not many midfielders have marked their Albion debuts with a brace. It was not a surprise that Johnson’s spell at Withdean only lasted a couple of months before he was recalled by The Leeds United and put straight back into the Champions of Europe’s starting line up. He was far too good for Brighton.

Not that Pornomagboy knew any of this. He was now trying to flog his season ticket to other NSC posters, fed up with the shit football being delivered by the shit football team who were now not only drawing with, but also outplaying the division’s best outfit.

This started the sort of willy waving competition on NSC which, along with leaving early, is another speciality of Albion fans.

Those who hadn’t bothered to go to the game were now sitting at home on their computers criticising someone who had made the effort but left at half time.

Sadly, the whole Superfan debate had not been going on for very long before Pornomagboy went on the defensive, telling his detractors, “You are all twats who, sit at your pc at home, pretending your brighton fans, you mate me sick.”

He was going to feel a whole lot sicker a few minutes later when news filtered through of yet another goal at Withdean to make it Brighton 3-2 Leicester. In the 89th minute, Joe Anyinsah (another loan player) got away down the right to deliver a low cross.

With the Foxes desperately hanging on for a point, visiting defender Jack Hobbs stretched to try and turn the danger away.

He only succeeded in diverting Anyinsah’s cross into his own goal, gifting the Albion all three points in the process. Brighton 3-2 Leicester. You had to pinch yourself.

It was an astonishing comeback. Over on NSC, nobody seemed that bothered by the fact that Brighton had recovered from 2-0 down to defeat a team as good as Leicester 3-2. The real story was the soap opera involving Pornomagboy and the lesson he was getting in leaving early.

When the Albion went onto beat another of the promotion hopefuls Millwall 4-1 four days later, it looked like we might have finally turned a corner under Adams. Would Pornomagboy and his Adams Out demands go onto look nearly as silly as his thread about leaving early?

No was the resounding answer. After hammering the Lions, the Albion only won once in their next 13 league games. Adams was eventually relieved of his duties four months later with the club deep in relegation trouble and having been eliminated from the Johnstone Paint Trophy by bottom of the entire Football League Luton Town.

As for Pornomagboy? Well, a couple of days after the Leicester comeback, he was back on NSC. Despite the fact that he’d been called a prick, a wanker and much worse by vast swathes of the Albion’s Superfans, he saw the funny side of what what happened.

“This is the funniest thing i have ever seen thanks nsc, every one who stuck up for me thanks, as said on tis wonderfull thread i am a **** for leaving but i had my reasons we was 2-0 down at half time, was looking like being in the bottem four at the end of the night and tbh i couldnt take any more.”

An important lesson was learnt by Pornomagboy and Albion fans everywhere on this evening about leaving early – never walk out until the Seagulls are at least 3-0 down. And when you do, do not tell anyone about it until the game is over.