How Sussex by the Sea became a Brighton club anthem

January 3rd 2024 marked the 158th birthday of someone you probably couldn’t name but who has left a huge legacy in terms of the matchday ritual and fan culture of Brighton & Hove Albion via his marching song Sussex by the Sea – a Mr William Ward-Higgs.

Despite being shunted from its usual place as players take the field by the Europa League anthem, I wondered what the fans of Ajax, Athens and Marseille made of our club anthem when they visited the Amex?

Probably a moot question, as the noise made by visiting supporters from the continent will have largely drowned it out in the South Stand at least.

But there can be few if any clubs in Britain or Europe who have a club song that has such a long and illustrious history as GOSBTS.

Here are a few facts and bits of history about the 117-year-old song played before every home game that we know so well.

For starters, did you know it has the alternative name? It is also known as A Horse Galloping. How did Mr Ward-Higgs know that Fran Sandaza would go onto play for the Albion a century after he wrote the song in 1907?

As for Ward-Higgs, he was a Lancastrian lawyer born on January 3rd 1886, who lived in South Bersted for five years and is buried there.

The Sussex by the Sea title was apparently lifted from the final line of Rottingdean and Burwash resident Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 poem Sussex, which ends: “Each to his choice, and I rejoice the lot has fallen to me, in a fair ground, in a fair ground, yea Sussex By The Sea.”

Ward-Higgs had previously set several of Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads to music, so it seems a safe bet that the world famous novelist provided the inspiration.

It is believed that Ward-Higgs initially wrote Sussex by the Sea for the marriage of a relative to a captain in the Royal Sussex Regiment.

Through said captain, it became popular in World War I before later being adopted by the RAF. Somewhat bizarrely, it also ended up a favourite tune of King Hussein, ruler of Jordan between 1952 and 1959. He was not, as far as I’m aware, a huge Albion fan.

According to the Albion website, fans first adopted Sussex by the Sea around the time of Brighton winning the Charity Shield in 1910, becoming unofficial Champions of England in the process.

This means it had been the Albion’s anthem for a half a century by the time other more illustrious teams adopted popular songs as their anthems in the 1960s, such as You’ll Never Walk Alone at Liverpool or Z Cars by their Merseyside neighbours Everton.

It was in the 1960s that club director from 1964-70 and arguably the most famous Albion fan of the era Norman Wisdom penned a set of alternative lyrics that he performed in the centre circle ahead of games:

“We`re the team from Brighton, Brighton by the sea
Eleven players and a crowd that will roar them to victory
So shout you fans let`s hear you roar, clap your hands until you see us score
For were going up to win the cup, it`s Brighton`s now for sure.
Oh we`re the team from Brighton, Hove by Jove that’s us
We`re always fair we never swear but now its shit or bust
So shout you fans let`s hear you roar, clap your hands until we score
For we`re going up to win the cup, it`s Brighton`s now for sure.”

Unsurprisingly, only the line “We’re going up to win the cup” stuck from Wisdom’s version. It was used in the 1970s – when I began going to the Goldstone Ground – and was only replaced by the “Stand or Fall” from Ward-Higgs’ original in the last 15 years or so.

It seems unlikely that Wisdom’s lyrics will make a revival as I doubt “Shit or bust” would go down well with modern-day club management.

One of the many memories I have of the legendary 1983 FA Cup run was of Sussex by the Sea being played by a full military marching band – the purpose it was written for – before the semi final at Highbury.

The full North Carolina State marching band rendition before the Southampton game at the Amex in May last season was pretty special too.

Of course, it is only in the Amex era that the Albion have had big screens to display the words as originally written.

More recently, the lyrics have spread to the electronic advertising boards around the ground, allowing newer fans to join in with the entreaty to “Hark to the merry bugles.”

Before a 2-1 home defeat against Middlesbrough in the grim days of Sami Hyypia’s reign as Brighton boss in 2014, a technical fault silenced the PA system in the middle of Sussex by the Sea.

This led to the fans singing the final lines unaccompanied by the music and with far more gusto than usual. Wisely, the club have repeated this ever since.

In 2024, Sussex by the Sea now represents a big part of the matchday experience and is a more integral part of Brighton culture than it has ever been.

Ward-Higgs died in 1936. I wonder what he would make of his music being played to a crowd of 31,000 and a TV audience of millions around the world?

How would he have felt about his lyrics being on everything from t-shirts to the wall of a multi-million pound sports stadium?

Sussex by the Sea is a song which means so much. No doubt it has been sung to many a new born Seagull as one of the first pieces of music they hear and played at even more Albion fans’ final farewells – as I know it will be at mine.

It has been with us and kept us going through the bad times and the good (to borrow from another adopted song) and I cannot imagine the club ever dropping it.

I hope that you’ve learned at least one thing about our club’s anthem that you didn’t know before – and my apologies if you’ll now be singing this song as you march along for the rest of the day.

Happy birthday, Mr Ward-Higgs. Tell them all. Stand or fall.

Warren Morgan @WarrenBHAFC