True Gritt: Steve was the on-the-pitch saviour of Brighton

A couple of things must have ran through the mind of Steve Gritt when he arrived at the Goldstone Ground on the morning of his first game in charge of Brighton.

The first was that Albion fans cannot spell. At some point overnight, someone had graffitied on the wall outside the West Stand: “Grit believes Bellotti bulshit”.

Gritt was spelt wrong. Bullshit was spelt wrong. Bellotti however was spelt right and the sentiment towards the new manager was clear – Brighton fans think you are a stooge for the board who are running our club out of business and we hate you for it before you have even started.

That must have led the second thought to cross Gritt’s mind – what have I signed up for here, where the supporters despise me even before I’ve had the chance to lose a game of football?

Gritt would have known some of the problems when he took the job. The whole of football knew, thanks to the war being waged on the south coast between fans and board.

In the summer of 1995, Bill Archer, Greg Stanley and David Bellotti had removed the clause in the club’s articles of association saying no individuals could profit if the club went under. Any money left had to be distributed to Sussex based sports clubs or charities.

They then sold the Goldstone with no prospect of a replacement stadium and spent the following 18 months trying to run the Albion into the ground so they could pocket all the money for themselves.

The Albion were therefore homeless, broke and probably heading out of business whilst sitting bottom of the Football League, 11 points adrift of safety.

That was the positive version. The problems that Gritt would have been aware of. Those hardy souls who were still rocking up to the Goldstone week in, week out knew that things were far worse.

You could feel the hatred pouring off the terraces at each match home and away as every eye focussed on the director’s box rather than on the pitch.

There was an element of fear as nobody knew what would happen next. All it needed was a spark – the sight of Archer or Bellotti in the West Stand for example – and the place could have gone off like a tinderbox. Brighton fans were angry, scared and getting to the point of desperation. A dangerous combination of feelings.

And all of this was transmitting to the players. Jimmy Case could neither motivate them nor divert their attention from what was happening off-the-pitch.

As they tumbled to 24th spot out of 24 in Nationwide League Division Three, it was almost as if they had given up. The likelihood was that the Albion would not be around to employ them beyond the end of the season, so what was the point in fighting to keep the club away from the clutches of non league football?

The real depth of the problems would have become apparent to Gritt during that first match at the helm. For his hostile reception did not just start and end with incorrectly spelt graffiti.

He was shouted at, booed and whistled. Quite literally whistled, as every person in the 3,762 crowd had been given a plastic whistle and asked to blow it relentlessly throughout the game.

The aim of this was to cause so much confusion that the game was disrupted. Pitch invasions had gained attention for the asset stripping going on at Brighton but they were illegal and therefore came with the risk of arrest or worse, points deductions.

There is nothing to say that you cannot take your own whistle to a game however, and so that is what greeted Gritt on his debut in the Brighton dugout; graffiti – there was also a less-famous, correctly spelt and much simpler message of “Gritt is shit” also adorning the West Stand – boos, being called a wanker and whistles.

What happened over the next 90 minutes was extraordinary. The referee’s whistle was a slightly higher pitch than those being blown by the crowd and so there ended up being no disruption for the players.

Instead, the whistles from the terraces created an intimidating noise of support for the Albion which the Hull players could not cope with it.

Paul McDonald put the Seagulls ahead inside of two minute. Stuart Storer added a second early in the second half and Craig Maskell rounded off the scoring late on. By full time, the Steve Gritt era had begun with a 3-0 win and the best Brighton performance of the season.

Too much more of that and Gritt would be in danger of becoming popular. That certainly was not what Archer, Bellotti and Stanley wanted when they had appointed him.

Despite the shambolic situation at the Goldstone Ground, the Brighton job had attracted some surprisingly high calibre applicants following the sacking of Jimmy Case.

Amongst those was Dave Merrington, who had kept Southampton in the Premier League six months earlier before being unceremoniously replaced by Graeme Souness. A top flight boss willing to drop down to the bottom of Division Three clearly made him the standout candidate.

The Brighton board though instead turned to Gritt, a man who had been out of work for 18 months. His last role had been as joint boss alongside Alan Curbishley at Charlton Athletic, a club he had served for 18 years as a player and then manager before being removed as the Addicks decided to give Curbishley sole charge.

Archer, Bellotti and Stanley must have been thinking that in ignoring a CV like Merrington’s and appointing Gritt, they were condemning the Albion to relegation.

His appointment certainly came as a surprise and, this being the days before wall-to-wall media coverage of football, there were some Brighton fans who had never even heard of Steve Gritt.

What the Albion board actually did was choose the perfect man for the circumstances, with Gritt having already experienced crisis, homelessness and a battle to keep a club alive during his time at Charlton.

Brighton would never lose a game at the Goldstone under Steve Gritt. From the first whistle against Hull (and the 3,762 blowing relentlessly for the following 90 minutes), the Albion were unbeatable at home.

10 wins. Two draws. Zero defeats. It was turning the Goldstone into a fortress which kept Brighton in the Football League and in business.

Gritt managed to focus the players on football rather than the circus going on at boardroom level. And as results began to pick up, so did support. Attendances rose and the terraces gradually started to mix protesting against the owners with getting behind the team.

The turning point in that regard came with the Fans United game against Hartlepool United in February. The Goldstone was packed to the rafters. It was a carnival atmosphere and the Albion duly responded by hammering the sorry visitors 5-0.

Maskell bagged a hat-trick. Ian Baird and Gary Hobson also netted with McDonald claiming assists for four of the five goals. Nobody was spraying misspelt abuse about Gritt outside the Goldstone any more.

The Fans United victory helped Gritt to win Division Three Manager of the Month for February. Around the same time, he turned up to a public meeting about ousting Archer, Bellotti and Stanley and received a standing ovation for telling fans that he now realised the passion that existed for Brighton & Hove Albion.

By the time the final weeks of the season rolled around, that 11 point gap Gritt had inherited had been whittled down to just a couple of points. Brighton had Hereford United and Hartlepool in their sights. The greatest of great escapes was on.

Some of the results and performances under Gritt to get to that position were befitting of a side chasing the title, not stuck at the bottom.

Eventual champions Wigan Athletic were beaten 1-0 by a Maskell goal. Eventual playoff winners Northampton Town were defeated 2-1 thanks to Robbie Reinelt and Jason Peake.

Swansea City and Cardiff City both joined Northampton in participating in the end-of-season lottery having lost at the Goldstone in the regular season.

The Swans were turned over 3-2 in a ding-dong game featuring a Baird brace and a Maskell winner. Cardiff were comfortably seen off 2-0 via a McDonald penalty and Baird again.

Mostly, things went Brighton’s way at the Goldstone under Gritt. There were times though when they had to show character to achieve results, none more so than in the second of his two home draws when Leyton Orient came to Hove at the start of March in one of the most crazy games in Albion history.

Maskell had the Seagulls 2-0 ahead inside of seven minutes. Three Orient goals in the space of the opening 12 minutes of the second half turned things around and the visitors led 3-2.

Baird made it 3-3 on 74. Parity was short lived as Scott McGleish put Orient 4-3 ahead within 60 seconds, gesturing to the North Stand “You’re going down and out of business” as he celebrated.

In doing so, McGleish caused a couple of supporters to run onto the pitch to try and attack him. His Orient teammate Ray Wilkins took the brunt of the anger before the police and stewards dealt with the situation.

There were still 15 minutes of football to play and the Albion could ill afford to lose. It says much about the transformation under Steve Gritt that Brighton managed to find a way back into it, McDonald showing a remarkably cool head to slot home a contentious 85th minute penalty as it finished 4-4.

What made the turnaround under Gritt all the more impressive was that it was achieved with almost exactly the same squad which had struggled so much under Case.

Gritt made only three signings of note. One was Reinelt, whose impact needs no introduction. 36-year-old right back John Humphrey had played alongside Gritt at Charlton and was brought in to add experience and a calm head to the defence for the run in.

Humphrey had seen it all in a long career involving three promotions and six relegations. Of the 11 games he played at the end of the 1996-97 season, Brighton lost only three,

The capture of Dave Martin on loan from Northampton Town just before the March deadline day was even shrewder. Martin was pony on the pitch, playing for just 79 minutes in a 1-0 defeat at Scunthorpe United.

Gritt though had brought him in for what he could offer in the changing room. Martin was a character, a clown and a great motivator. Gritt knew he needed someone to lift the spirits and help release the pressure building as the campaign reached its dramatic climax.

Martin was that man and the Albion lost just two of their final seven matches in which he was around the squad – the defeat at Glanford Park in which he played and a 2-1 reversal at Chester City a couple of days after his arrival.

Whilst Brighton home form under Gritt had been magnificent, results on the road were terrible. The Albion picked up only four points from 12 matches away from home but crucially, two of those came from their final two trips.

A 1-1 draw at Cambridge United thanks to a vital Reinelt goal meant that the Albion knew that victory over Doncaster Rovers in the final game at the Goldstone – combined with a defeat for Hereford at Orient – would mean Brighton climbing off the bottom of the Football League for the first time since November.

More than any other game up until that point, Steve Gritt had to ensure that his Brighton players focussed on the task ahead.

An emotional atmosphere gripped the Goldstone and the Seagulls’ cause was not helped when Baird was sent off alongside Doncaster’s Darren Moore after 19 minutes for fighting.

The Albion though found a way to win, Stuart Storer crashing home a 67th minute volley in front of the South Stand for the only goal of the game.

As Brighton fans removed seats and turf and left the Goldstone for the final time, news filtered through that Hereford had lost 2-1 to Orient. Avoiding defeat in the final day showdown at Edgar Street would mean Hereford were relegated and the Seagulls would survive.

No Brighton fan needs telling what happened on Saturday 3rd May 1997. An unfortunate own goal from teenager Kerry Mayo had the Albion in trouble, trailing 1-0 at the break.

Gritt turned to his bench nine minutes into the second half, removing McDonald, throwing on Reinelt and switching to a front three.

Less than 10 minutes later and Reinelt did what all good strikers do, following up a Maskell effort which cannoned off the post, leaving him in the right place at the time time to steer the loose ball into the empty net despite the best efforts of a Bulls defender to get there first.

The most agonising 30 minutes of many Brighton fans football-supporting lives followed. Hereford went through right at the death and should have won it, only for Mark Ormerod to make an excellent save from Adrian Foster.

That stop does not get the credit it deserves, nor does Gritt’s bold move to install 20-year-old rookie Ormerod as his number one early in his reign in place of Nicky Rust, who had been an ever-present for the previous three-and-a-half seasons and on the cusp of the England Under 21 squad at one point.

The celebrations when the full time whistle blew on Hereford 1-1 Brighton were more of relief than anything else. Nothing sums that up better than the famous photo of Gritt, normally such a calm and composed figure, letting out an almighty roar as he was about to be pounced upon by assistant Jeff Wood.

From an absolutely hopeless position, Steve Gritt had installed discipline, belief, given Brighton their identity back and somehow kept the club out of the Vauxhall Conference.

Dick Knight‘s first task after succeeding Archer as chairman was to convince Gritt to stay beyond the summer of 1997 with other, more stable clubs unsurprisingly interested in the Albion’s miracle working manager.

Gritt eventually committed, providing that the off-the-field problems were a thing of the past. And whilst the battle for control of the club had been won by supporters and Knight’s consortium, perhaps Gritt would not have remained if he realised the arduous year that lay ahead.

Keeping Brighton in the Football League had been tough enough. For the 1997-98 season, Gritt faced an even bigger challenge – repeating the trick without a home ground.

A packed, emotional Goldstone crowd making the most of their final few experiences of the place the Albion had called home for 95 years was replaced by one thousand people rattling around an empty Priestfield Stadium having spent their Saturday making a 150 mile round trip to Gillingham.

Needless to say, the home form which had made Brighton under Steve Gritt so formidable deserted them at Gillingham.

A further blow was delivered when Knight told Gritt he had to release Maskell, Baird, McDonald, Humphrey and Mark Morris – five of the stars of the great escape but also the club’s five highest earners. Gillingham was sapping finances and the Albion had to operate on a shoestring.

Unsurprisingly, Brighton won just four matches between August and the end of February. Only one of those – a 2-1 win over Rochdale in September – came at home.

The only reason that the Albion were not bottom of Division Three was because Doncaster were enduring an even worse time of it, under the ownership of a bloke who tried to burn down the main stand at Belle Vue to claim the insurance money. At least that thought never crossed Archer’s mind…

Things came to a head following a 2-1 defeat at Exeter City on Tuesday 24th February 1998 when Knight decided enough was enough.

Less than a year after he had performed miracles and despite being hamstrung by circumstances like no other manager in Brighton history, Steve Gritt was sacked.

No great analysis is needed of the part his 14 months at the helm played in the history of the Albion. Without him, Brighton would have dropped into non league with a whimper. And if relegation had happened, the likelihood is that the club would not have survived in the Conference.

Knight saved Brighton off the pitch, Gritt saved Brighton on it. Nobody would dare misspell his name on a wall now, because he is the manager who kept the Albion in business.