Resilience has Lewis Dunk on verge of 400 Brighton appearances

Watch Lewis Dunk play for Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League and he makes everything look easy. You could be forgiven for thinking that he has been performing at this level his whole life and his career has been as smooth as a professional footballer could ever hope for.

As Dunk prepares to become only the 10th player in Brighton history to make 400 appearances for the club, much will be written and spoken about him.

Those words will focus on Dunk’s defensive talents. The last ditch tackles. His reading of the game. How he is always in the right place at the right time.

That calmness under pressure that often see him coolly chest the ball towards his own goalkeeper. His ability on the ball. The way he can pick a pass from five yards to 80 yards to get the Albion moving.

The leadership he has shown since taking over the captaincy from Bruno. That he is the captain who led Brighton to their highest ever league finish – one that may well be eclipsed in three months time.

How it is a scandal he only has one England cap to his name, unless he ran over Gareth Southgate’s cat or something which we do not know about.

Dunk though has another characteristic that is not really spoken of. Resilience. It is his own fault that it rarely gets mentioned; he looks so composed playing Premier League football in 2022 that it is hard to imagine him needing too much resilience to reach this point.

It has not always been this way though. What makes Dunk’s entrance into the 400 club most remarkable is that the first five years of his Albion career were dogged with various issues, any of which could have seen him leave the club long before he went from Withdean to Wembley and attained Captain, Leader, Legend status.

To overcome those, Dunk had to have remarkable resilience and determination. He has had to fight and battle to make it this far.

That is why he is deserving of all the praise that has already come his way along with the plaudits he will receive with that treasured 400th appearance.

First there was the court case which hung over his head from January 2012 until May 2013 when Dunk, Anton Rodgers, George Barker and Steve Cook were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Dunk was a first team regular at the time he was arrested, making the most of injuries to Adam El-Abd and Tommy Elphick to establish himself as Gordon Greer‘s centre back partner in the first season at the Amex.

Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named had no qualms in throwing 19-year-old Dunk into the Championship for his first taste of regular football.

There were however a few hairy moments, born out in Dunk’s 2011-12 card total. He accumulated 10 yellows before Christmas and ended the campaign with 13 bookings from 36 appearances.

The 2012-13 season proved to be a difficult one for Dunk. El-Abd was back to full fitness and Poyet You Know Who signed Matthew Upson in January to increase competition at centre back.

Dunk played just nine times. One of those appearances resulted in a red card after eight minutes as Brighton lost 3-0 at Crystal Palace.

The other saw Poyet The Dark Lord switch to a back three of Dunk, El-Abd and Greer for the visit of Millwall to the Amex. This proved to be such a disaster that Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named ditched the formation with only 39 minutes played, hauling Dunk and bringing on Kazenga LuaLua.

2013-14 was not much better. A month on loan with Bristol City was meant to help Dunk kick start his career in October.

That did not go to plan either as he made just two League One appearances and one in the Paint Pot with the Robins opting not to extend his stay at Ashton Gate.

Despite a nightmare two-and-a-half years that would have have had a detrimental impact on other young players, Dunk kept going.

His resilience was rewarded when Sami Hyypia made him a regular for the first time in three seasons; turns out it was not all doom and gloom during Hyypia’s reign of terror.

Lewis Dunk was one of the few bright spots as Brighton avoided relegation to the Championship by the skin of their teeth at the end of the 2014-15 season.

In a sign of just how bad things were that year, Dunk’s seven goals meant he finished the campaign as top scorer. The first non-striker to do so since Kerry Mayo – another member of the Brighton 400 club – in the 1997-98 season.

Dunk’s performances and scoring feats attracted the interest of the Albion’s fellow Championship side Fulham. The Cottagers launched a series of bids through the summer of 2015, the highest of which was 2015.

Most Brighton fans would prefer to airbrush history what Lewis Dunk did in response. He handed in a transfer request and then refused to play in a League Cup tie away at Southend United, earning a fine of two weeks wages from Chris Hughton.

To say Dunk’s attempts to force through a move backfired slightly would be an understatement. He lost his place in the team to £2.5 million signing Uwe Hunemeier and sat on the bench for eight of the first 10 league games as Brighton began what would end up being a club-record unbeaten start to a season of 21 matches.

Dunk again had to show determination to earn back his place in the starting XI and more importantly, the trust of Hughton.

A injury to Hunemeier in October gave Dunk his opportunity and there has been no looking back, with Dunk an automatic choice ever since under Hughton, Graham Potter and Roberto De Zerbi.

Even when Dunk has been playing regularly, it was not always plain sailing in those early years. The keepy-up own goal at Liverpool in the FA Cup has entered Brighton folklore; not many 20-year-olds could bounce back from such a moment in front of the Kop as well as Dunk.

Dunk was normally good for a ridiculous red card in high pressure games too. His eight minutes work at Selhurst Park has already been mentioned; he was also sent off in the penultimate game of the 2015-16 season against Derby County, which meant Brighton going into the promotion showdown with Middlesbrough without one of their most important players.

A season later and a frustrating 3-1 defeat in what was at the time a huge game at the top of the Championship at Huddersfield was summed up nicely when Dunk saw red with 25 minutes still to play.

Even in the Premier League where Dunk has looked so unflappable, there have been disappointments to overcome. England being one; Dunk would not be human if he was not more than a little miffed about why he is consistently overlooked by Gareth Southgate.

And yet whenever Southgate announces yet another squad with the names Tyrone Mings and Conor Coady included but no Lewis Dunk, he just gets on with the day job of playing Brighton.

Dunk has been heavily linked in the past with moves to Leicester City when they looked the club from outside the European Super League Elite most likely to gate crash the top four, as well as Chelsea.

As a boyhood Blues fan who idolised John Terry, Chelsea would have been a dream move for Dunk. Had either of those transfers to the King Power Stadium or Stamford Bridge materialised when they were rumoured, Dunk would now have an FA Cup or Champions League winners medal.

But just like his lack of England caps, Dunk has never allowed no big-money move to a club fighting for silverware impact him.

Again, it is resilience and determination that mean he keeps turning in performances of the highest quality for the Albion.

Having played a huge role in getting Lewis Dunk into the Brighton 400 club, the obvious question to ask is how much further can those qualities take him?

Only one player has ever made more than 500 appearances for Brighton – Tug Wilson almost a century ago. If Dunk stays injury free and remains a first team regular for the next three seasons, he will join Wilson in an even-more exclusive club.

As for Wilson’s record, that stands at 566 matches. To eclipse that, Dunk would need to stay in the Brighton starting XI for another four-and-a-half seasons through to the end of the 2026-27 campaign.

By the summer of 2026, he would be 35-years-old. Greer remained an Albion player until he was 36. Upson was 35 when he had such a good 2013-14 season for Brighton that he was signed by Premier League Leicester.

When Upson departed for the Foxes nine years ago, you would have got long odds on Lewis Dunk going onto play 400 times for Brighton.

His resilience in the face of a court case, red cards, own goals, being dropped, a disappointing loan spell, a failed transfer request, no big money move materialising and lack of England recognition has carried him this far.

Why not to the magic 567 number? From Withdean to Wembley to beating Wilson’s record would turn Dunk for a Brighton great to the Albion’s greatest.