Brighton Awaydaze

Our first visit to Brighton and Hove Albion’s shiny new stadium was moved to Friday night (with kick-odd at 7.45pm) on police advice, and then Sky TV decided they were going to televise the game. 

Our official website says that the police wanted the Friday night kick off because "a significant amount of car parking required for our game on the Saturday would be unavailable due to other pressures inside the city." This will of course cause inconvenience for our fans who want to get to the game, as they will have to take time off work to get there on the Friday, and I’ve no doubt quite a few will now be tempted to stay down for the whole weekend.

It's a long story how Brighton came to be playing in their new stadium at Falmer. The Goldstone Ground had been Brighton's home since 1902, but by the 1990s it had fallen into a state of some disrepair and it would have taken a lot of work to bring it up to the standards demanded by the Taylor Report. Instead, the owner of Focus DIY had the bright idea of selling the ground for his own gain and bought his place on the board for just over £50! The Goldstone ground was sold for £7 million by the club and then re-sold again shortly afterwards for £22 million! So hard-up Brighton had to play their home games at Gillingham for two years, before returning to the only available site in the town in 1999 and spending £2m to bring a council-owned athletics stadium at Withdean up to Football League standard.

After a long drawn out battle, the Club finally received planning permission in July 2007 for a new stadium at Falmer, which is a village on the northern edge of Brighton close to the University of Sussex. The move was fiercely resisted by the residents, who thought it would spoil the character of the village, but the club finally got the nod after a public enquiry. The new stadium cost £93m, and now goes under the snappy name of ‘The American Express Community Stadium’.

To get there by car you need to take the M23 and then the A23, until you reach the junction with the A27. You then take this road towards Lewes, and after around four miles you will reach the stadium on your right hand side. But there is no parking at the stadium for away fans (although coaches and minibuses will be allowed to park providing that they have been pre-booked with the Club) and there is a large no parking zone in force around the area of the stadium on matchdays.

So the club are trying to encourage fans to use the Park & Ride services. These run from three different locations, and the easiest one for away fans is Mill Road, just off the A23/A27 junction. It runs from 5.30pm for evening kick offs, and on the return journey the last buses  leave the stadium up to 90 minutes after the end of the game. You will need to get a parking voucher in advance from Brighton & Hove Albion Customer Services on 0845 873 0251 or the Brighton Ticket Office on 0845 496 1901. These cost £2.50 (including postage). Vehicles must be removed no later than two hours after the game has ended.

The nearest railway station is Falmer, which is right next to the stadium, and it’s on the line heading east from Brighton towards Lewes. There is a train from the main Brighton station approximately every ten minutes, but all the same there have been reports of overcrowding on the trains, with fans having a long wait to get onto the station after the game. Another option is to get a bus from the centre of Brighton, on route number 25, 28 or 29.

There aren’t many pubs close to the stadium, only the Swan Inn in Falmer village. So you might need to stop for a pint or two in Brighton itself, with one decent option being the CAMRA- recommended Evening Star, which is on Surrey Street near the main railway station. They usually sell booze within the stadium (though it remains to be seen whether they do so for our visit) and the bars are open after the game. So you can wait behind while all the traffic dies down, and they also show the times of the trains on the screens so that you know when you need to leave.

Away fans get up to 2,575 seats in the south stand, out of a total capacity of 22,500. As you would expect from a new stadium, the view and leg room are both good, and apparently we also get padded seats!  Another plus is that the concourse is wide enough to prevent overcrowding and there is also a good selection of food by football ground standards.  And the price of all this luxury is £24 for adults, £17 for Senior Citizens, £12 for Under 18's, and £6 for Under 10's. If you haven’t managed to get a ticket from Leeds you’ll definitely be struggling to get in, because  Brighton have sold over 18,000 season ticket holders, leaving only 1,500 tickets available for the ‘home’ parts of the stadium on a match by match basis.

And if the exciting times continue on the south coast, they might take up the option of expanding the stadium capacity. They can do this by adding another tier to the east stand and filling in the corners, which would bring the total capacity up to 30,000.

Some of this stuff came from http://www.footballgroundguide.com/ where some of the contributors were less than impressed with the transport and parking arrangements. Hopefully they will get this all sorted out soon, otherwise things will only get worse if they increase the capacity in the future.