Brighton need to give Glenn Murray a farewell match

May 12, 2021May 12, 2021 WeAreBrighton.com 0 Comments

I never thought there would be a sadder ending to a story than how A Star Is Born finishes. That was until the football career of Glenn Murray appeared to come to a close in an empty City Ground, about as far removed a farewell as Brighton & Hove Albion’s record post-war goal scorer deserves for all he has achieved in the game.

Chances are you have seen the video of full time between Nottingham Forest and Preston North End doing the rounds on Twitter. If you have not, then we have included it at the bottom of this article. You may want to have a box of tissues on standby before watching it to mop up your tears with.

As both teams leave the pitch to bring the curtain down on the 2020-21 season, Murray lingers. He knows it is probably the last time he will walk off as a professional footballer after a 603 game career which yielded 207 goals. Murray does not want to go and it is bloody heart breaking.

This is not how a player of Murray’s ilk should be saying goodbye. In a perfect world, he would have departed in front of 30,000 at the Amex all singing his name, just like Bruno when Manchester City came to town on the final day of the 2018-19 campaign.

Football going behind closed doors meant that Brighton fans never had the chance to bid Glenn Murray farewell and thank him for everything he did for the Albion.

111 goals, a League One title, promotion to the Premier League and then scoring 36 percent of Brighton’s goals to keep the Seagulls in the top flight almost single handedly in their first two season at the highest level make Murray one of the greatest players ever to pull on the stripes.

All being well, football grounds will be opening up again ahead of the 2021-22 season. Paul Barber has already said that the Albion are looking to secure a prestige friendly to mark 10 years since the opening of the Amex and welcome supporters back to a full capacity stadium for the first time in 18 months.

After everything that people have been through during the pandemic and three lockdowns, it will be an emotional occasional. It would also provide the perfect opportunity for Brighton fans to give Murray the farewell he deserves.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that I would rather see Brighton play the King’s Head Reserves of the Sussex Sunday League if it meant Murray was there than the likes of Juventus or Bayern Munich with no chance of paying tribute to Murray.

The good news is that Brighton have precedent for doing this sort of thing. Bruno was given almost the perfect send off against the Citizens – bar the Albion losing 4-1 – and yet he was then granted a testimonial of sorts at the start of the next season when Valencia provided the opposition.

El Capitan obviously played a big part in Brighton rising from Championship to Premier League in his five seasons with the Albion. Murray though achieved even more in the best part of eight seasons as a Seagull. If Bruno was deserving of a tribute match, then Murray certainly is.

It therefore seems pretty obvious what the Albion should do next. Providing Murray does retire this summer, he should be invited back to the Amex with this prestige pre-season friendly played in his honour.

He would not necessarily have to take part in the action if Potter considered a 10 minute cameo too disruptive to Brighton’s plans for the new campaign, although there is precedent for that too from when ~~Gus Poyet~~ He Who Must Not Be Named gave the retired Michel Kuipers a brief run out to mark the Former Dutch Marine’s testimonial against Reading in the 2012.

If Murray did not take to the pitch, he could still be presented to the crowd beforehand. That would give Brighton fans the chance to say farewell to only the second man in Albion history to score a century of goals for the club.

Murray meanwhile can receive the adulation of 30,000 Brighton fans thanking him for firing the club to heights scarcely reached before.

Football going behind closed doors cost fans many things. For Brighton, the biggest miss has been the chance to say goodbye to a player whose achievements for the club – will we ever see a man score over 100 goals again, given it took 90 years for Murray to join Tommy Cook as a centurion? – are the sort that only come along once in a generation.

As soon as the Amex reopens, that is a wrong that the Albion need to put right.