Ha, bloody ha. Evidence that Bellotti possibly didn’t take fans’ sensitivity about moving home fixtures away from Brighton particularly seriously. This is from the match programme against Swansea in April 1994.
And yet, was he once ‘one of us’?
In the programme against Doncaster in April 1997, the last at the Goldstone, the chief executive regales tales of how he became a fan:
My first visit to the Goldstone was back in 1973. Having moved to Sussex to a new job and being mad on football at the time the first thing I did was buy a season ticket. Sitting in the back row of E block the stadium looked huge. The first game I watched at the Goldstone we lost 2-0 to Bournemouth. Later that season Brian Clough arrived and we were knocked out of the Cup 4-0 by Walton and Hersham and thrashed in the League at home by Bristol Rovers 8-2! The horror of those games remain in my memory. However we did get revenge in 1989 beating Rovers 2-1 to secure promotion to the Second Division. My greatest memory was the very first game in the First Division against Arsenal at the Goldstone. There were tears of joy all around me in the stand. We may have lost 4-0 but we were there.
Ian Hine is doing a wonderful joke scanning Albion programmes from yesteryear at www.seagullsprogrammes.co.uk. He has also started a thread on Bellotti’s missives on North Stand Chat.
The Goldstone Wrap 