Was playoff defeat to Sheffield Wednesday a good thing for Brighton?

Hands up, were you one of those Brighton fans who took a great amount of enjoyment out of seeing Sheffield Wednesday eliminated in the League One playoff semi final at the hands of Sunderland?

I am not ashamed to say I was. Any misery that Wednesday supporters go through seems justified after our own playoff experience at their hands in the 2015-16 Championship semi finals.

Brighton losing 2-0 at Hillsborough in the first leg was not the problem. Neither was the Albion’s wretched bad luck in seeing four players go off injured, leaving the visitors to complete the game with only 10 men on the pitch.

No, the reason Albion fans still experience such glee when Wednesday fail is because of the reaction of the home supporters that night.

They showed all the dignity and class of a dead camel. Insults hurled at the travelling contingent including comments like “Don’t know why you bothered coming” and “F**k off home” were interspersed with the odd smattering of homophobia.

“Enjoy the Championship next season” displayed a sense of self-entitled arrogance rarely seen outside of Leeds. Especially when Wednesday still had to negotiate the second leg at the Amex and then beat either Hull City or Derby County at Wembley.

Brighton fans were deflated enough coming out of Hillsborough without Wednesday fans sticking the boot in ahead of a 230 mile trip home on a Friday night.

Or in the case of the WAB party, the much shorter journey to the Sheffield Bierkeller, followed by Popworld, followed by a lot of sick and even more regret in the Travelodge the next morning.

Well, he who laughs last laughs loudest. Sheffield Wednesday acted like beating injury-plagued, 10-man Brighton in the first leg of the Championship playoff final was the equivalent of winning the jackpot at CasinoCraic. Call it poetic justice if you like that the Owls are now in the third tier.

Brighton meanwhile regrouped over the summer of 2016, came back stronger and won automatic promotion a year later. Five years on and the Albion are an established Premier League club on course for their highest ever finish.

48 hours before Wednesday were eliminated from the League One playoffs by Sunderland, Brighton were busy hammering the mighty Manchester United 4-0 at the Amex. A penny for the thoughts of those Wednesday fans who mocked the Albion on Friday 13th May 2016 now?

And do you know what is the best thing about the opposite directions the clubs have travelled in since? Brighton owe a lot of their current success to Wednesday being victorious that night.

Had the Albion won promotion at the end of the 2015-16 season, they would have faced an almost impossible battle to survive in the Premier League.

A year previously and Brighton had avoided relegation out of the Championship only because Blackpool, Millwall and Wigan Athletic were three of the worst teams to play second tier football this century.

Chris Hughton did a remarkable job in turning the Albion’s fortunes around over the next 12 months. Some shrewd acquisitions and clever management meant Brighton went from 20th to third, only missing out on automatic promotion to Middlesbrough on the final day of the campaign.

To then make the jump to top flight football would have been a promotion too soon for that Albion squad. It would not have been strong enough, either in attack or defence, to avoid relegation – even with significant amounts of money spent on it.

Sheffield Wednesday beating Brighton in the playoff semi finals meant that by the time the Seagulls were promoted, they had Glenn Murray scoring goals at one end and Shane Duffy helping to keep them out at the other.

Once Brighton did reach the Premier League, Murray and Duffy became two of the most important figures in keeping them there in those first two top flight seasons under Hughton.

Murray scored 36 percent of the Albion’s top flight goals in that period. No top flight club had been so reliant on one player scoring for them since Sky Sports invented football in 1992.

Duffy meanwhile was a model of consistency alongside Lewis Dunk as Brighton relied on clean sheets to keep them up. That culminated in Molly Malone’s favourite patron winning Player of the Season at the end of the 2018-19 campaign.

Imagine the Albion attempting to adjust to life in the toughest league in the world without Murray or Duffy? It would not have happened. Had Brighton won promotion in 2016, neither probably would have ended up at the Amex.

A 33-year-old striker would not have been seen as the man to fire the Albion’s Premier League survival bid (remember some thought Murray was too old for the Championship when he re-joined). And defensive reinforcement from foreign lands would surely have been preferred to Duffy of Blackburn Rovers.

The delay in reaching the Premier League also gave players like Dunk and Solly March – once he recovered from nearly a year out injured – the chance to gain more Championship experience.

Because of how great Dunk has been over the past six seasons, it is easy to forget that up until the 2016-17 season he was good for a ridiculous red card or a careless moment once every couple of months.

An additional year in the second tier in which he also grew into the role of vice-captain to Bruno helped turn Dunk into the model of consistency he has been since stepping foot into the Premier League.

What else would have been different with promotion in 2016 rather than 2017? We would have been denied the fun and glory of Anthony Knockaert tearing up the Championship. Steve Sidwell would never have scored from inside his own half at Bristol City.

Brilliant victories like Fulham away, QPR away, Wolves away and hammering Norwich City 5-0 would be missing from the Albion history books. And we would not have seen David Stockdale score two own goals in 21 minutes, arguably the highlight of the 2016-17 season.

At the time, defeat to Wednesday hurt like hell. With Brighton not selling out the away end, I was able to get a ticket for a friend who is an Arsenal season ticket holder.

Even he felt absolutely gutted the following morning and he does not support the Albion. He was in Popworld though, so maybe it was that?

Looking back now though, Brighton losing to Sheffield Wednesday in the playoff semi finals is one of the most important moments in recent Albion history.

Maybe we should even be thanking Wednesday fans for delaying our promotion by a year, enabling us to become better equipped to survive when we did reach the Premier League, resulting in the Albion now scaling heights they never previously have?

All whilst Wednesday can look forward to playing Cheltenham Town, Morecambe, Accrington Stanley and Forest Green Rovers in 2022-23.

To paraphrase that charming Wednesday fan outside Hillsborough half-a-decade ago, “Enjoy League One next season.”