The history of Brighton & Hove Albion v Cardiff City

There aren’t many visiting clubs out there who would miss Cardiff City’s former Ninian Park home. A proper, old-school football ground it may have been, but it was also one of the nastiest places in the Football League to go.

Even in it’s final years when the scourge of hooliganism was meant to be a fad confined to the 1980’s, you would still find yourself being pelted by coins, hot coffee thrown over the segregation fence or Fanta bottles filled with urine as you left. Not pleasant.

Brighton and Hove Albion had more reason to most to head to the Welsh capital with trepidation. Not only would it be a horrible experience off the pitch, but it was normally equally painful on it. The Albion visited Ninian Park 33 times, and only left with seven victories. Between September 1937 and January 1959, Brghton played their on five occasion, losing all five and conceding 17 times along the way at an average of over three goals flying in.

It was at Ninian Park on Good Friday of the 1977-78 season that Alan Mullery’s hopes of leading the Seagulls into the top flight suffered a fatal blow with a 1-0 defeat against a Bluebirds outfit who would avoid relegation to the third tier by only a point.

Even when Brian Horton, Peter Ward, Gerry Ryan and co were promoted the following season, Cardiff were still nearly responsible for blowing it. Mullery’s men were top of the table when they went to Ninian Park for the second Easter in succession, only to crash 3-1 with Ward netting the consolation.

Since Cardiff’s move to the imaginatively named Cardiff City Stadium, Brighton have at least won on two of their six visits. The first of those came at the start of the 2011-12 campaign when Ashley Barnes scored twice along with Will Hoskins in a stunning 3-1 win for Gus Poyet’s Championship newcomers. The second came the following season as Andrea Orlandi and Leonardo Ulloa scored in a 2-0 win over Malky Mackay’s eventual champions in that period when wannabe Bond villain Vincent Tan changed their colours to red.

The majority of the games between the two clubs have come in the second tier although the most memorable battles probably came at the start of the century when both the Albion and City rose quickly from Division Three to Division One. There was plenty of familiarity between the two thanks to Micky Adams’ assistant Alan Cork leaving to take over the Bluebirds, and he was desperate to have Bobby Zamora join him. With the two battling for promotion out of Division Three, Cardiff tabled a £1.2m for Zamora’s services in February 2001. Then they came back with a £2m bid once both sides were promoted to Division Two the seven months later.

In fact, every time that then-Bluebirds chairman Sam Hamman would submit an offer, Brighton would play Cardiff and Zamora would score. He netted in three consecutive games against the Bluebirds to earn the Albion seven points between February 2001 and 2002, much to the City supporters obvious disdain.

While Zamora might have enjoyed playing against Cardiff, one player who didn’t was centre half Jack Hollington. A then-record crowd of 20,260 packed the Goldstone for the visit of the high-flying second tier Bluebirds in the second round of the FA Cup. In the first half, Bollington broke his leg with a crack so sickening that you could hear it across the ground. Poor Bollington never played again as the game went to a replay, a 0-0 draw in Hove being followed by City winning 1-0 at Ninian Park four days later.