The Bournemouth v Brighton pitch invasion protest

In 1995, football outside of the top flight was rarely shown on television. There was none of this travelling to Newcastle United for a 5.30pm kick off or Arsenal away on a Sunday nonsense. It was strictly Saturday, 3pm.

Not that Brighton ever played the likes of Newcastle or Arsenal in those days. Or thought they ever would again, for that matter. The Albion were heading out of Division Two and out of business. And nobody seemed to care or even know about the plight.

Which is why September 24th 1995 was a golden opportunity to highlight the plight of the Albion to a larger audience. Bournemouth v Brighton was to be broadcast live, which meant that any form of protest – such as a pitch invasion – would gain a lot of attention from the watching audience.

The game was shown as that weekend’s “Meridian Match”. The Meridian Match was an irregular programme that bought live football involving five of the south east’s Football League clubs – Bournemouth, Brighton, Gillingham, Portsmouth and Reading – directly into the regions living rooms on a Sunday afternoon.

Brighton had never featured as the live game before their trip to Bournemouth and needless to say after the pitch invasion, they didn’t feature again. ITV lost the rights to the Football League at the end of the 1995-96 season with Sky Sports entering the game and the rest, as they say, is history. Watching football would never quite be the same.

Brighton had last appeared live on television 12 years previously when the second tier Seagulls shocked league champions Liverpool 2-0 in the FA Cup Fourth Round on ITV’s “The Big Match Live” thanks to two goals in two second half minutes from Gerry Ryan and Terry Connor.

That came less than a year after the Albion had walked out at Wembley in the final of the greatest competition in the world. And here we were, 13 years on from being a Gary Bailey leg away from lifting the FA Cup, now with no home ground, asset stripping owners and a board who wanted to kill off Sussex’s only professional football club in order to line their pockets.

There had already been one small pitch invasion in the home game against Notts County three weeks previously, a group of fans entering the playing surface at half time and sitting in the centre circle. Manager Liam Brady came out, had a word and everyone returned to the stands so the second half could get underway.

This was different though. The wonderfully-named Brighton Beach End at Dean Court was littered with brooding Albion fans holding up red cards, singing songs about the three men in charge of the club and with home made banners stating “Sack the Board” and “We’ll never go to Pompey” on display for the cameras.

In the end, the football was a sideshow. Brighton were crap as they were throughout the entirety of the 1995-96 season. Brady and his coaching team all took wage cuts that summer in order to fund new signings, but even with that sacrifice, the squad wasn’t really good enough for third tier football. We went to Dean Court 23rd in the Division Two table and that is where we would end up finishing eight months later.

Bournemouth ended up running out 3-1 winners through Steve Jones and two goals from Steve Robinson with Ian Chapman grabbing the Albion consolation.

Midway through the second half and a group of supporters began climbing the fencing at the front of the away terrace. The police and stewards could clearly see what was about to happen and made no issue to stop it.

In fact, the Bournemouth chairman had apparently said he was happy for Brighton protests to take place, even if that meant an invasion of the pitch.

As several of those interviewed in the brilliant Build a Bonfire book said, it really was too good an opportunity to miss. “Here’s an opportunity: we’re live on television; Brighton and very rarely on television; here’s an opportunity to protest and have our problems aired and voice.”

And with that, just after the Cherries scored their third of the afternoon, people began pouring from the away end onto the pitch as a huge chorus of “Sack the board” went up.

Some Albion fans headed for the Bournemouth sections to goad home supporters which didn’t help the cause, but the vast majority just wanted to delay the game and highlight what was going on.

To that degree, it worked. Meridian’s commentator David Smith may have described the scenes as “distressing” and bleated on about it not being the right way to go about things, but he also informed viewers why it was happening. If anyone in the south east didn’t know that Brighton’s owners had sold the ground with nowhere to go, they did now.

That afternoon at Dean Court was just a flavour of what was to come. At the end of the season, the Goldstone was smashed up after the penultimate home game against Carlisle United and then came the famous “riot” against York City in which the crossbars were snapped with less than 20 minutes played and the game was abandoned.

The Bournemouth game helped highlight the plight of the Albion, but it was that York game that really grabbed the attention of the nation, especially with Euro 96 just six weeks away.

But this wasn’t football hooliganism. This was supporters fighting to save the club that they loved. And in the end, it worked.