TSLR058 by The Seagull Love Review

TSLR

The Albion Fanzine TSLR058 April 2014

TSLR 2008 - 2014 IS THAT THE PROGRAMME, MATE?

£1

Inside: TSLR: So Many Tears, Boohoo The Amex Rocket Man What is the Albion Fan of the Future Going Mad in The Championship

the TSLR SHOP

Albion tat boutique www.tslr.bigcartel.com

Inside TSLR058

4. Editorial

TSLR058 The Seagull Love Review is an independent Brighton and Hove Albion magazine. Issue 59 / April 2014 The views expressed in the publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors, or The Seagull Love Review. Thanks this issue to BM, SW, BM, RM, NB, GE, BP, JT, TC and everyone else since 2008

5. What’s Hot, What’s Not 6. Calendar 8. Haywards Heath Ledger 11. Marco Van Bastard 12. Not Worth That 18. Reviews 22. Midfield Diamond

Edited by Sam Swaffield and Stefan Swift

24. Bitter ‘n’ Twisted

Artwork/Photos by SS and DL

26. Parker

Digital Publishing by BP

tslr@hotmail.co.uk @tslr

28. Mad Championship 30. Carter

Six years, 56 issues, two parties, 1k unethically sourced badges, a league title, disappointing losses to Palace, two stadia, Colin Hawkins and Fran Sandaza. How else would you sum up six seasons of TSLR? With a heavy heart we’ve decided to give up this whole paper fanzine thing and consign TSLR to the www, with the occasional blog if we can be bothered and the ongoing TSLR shop where you can buy unofficial Albion tat. Thanks for all your quids, contributions and kind words down the years - we will miss it in many respects. Getting looked at like we’re selling crack by 22k people? Not so much. Don’t despair, if we make the play-offs, there might just be special edition. Up The Albion. S+S

What’s Hot!

What’s Not!

We are amazing, we play exciting attacking football. 3 games, 7 goals, Oscar Garcia is class. Goals.

We are shit, we are playing boring negative football. 3 games, 0 goals, Oscar Garcia is shite. Blanks

Everyone loves a stat. Brighton & Hove Albion have never lost a game in which David Rodriguez has scored. He should play every game. Rod.

Why it happened, no one knows? Who’s idea was it, no one knows? Stupid, ridiculous and tinpot are words to describe it. The huddle. Why, why oh why? It’s about as useful a Southern Train to Brighton on a Monday morning. Pointless

The fans moaned about the manager being negative playing with just one winger. Oscar Garcia’s response, to go away to league leaders Leicester and play with THREE wingers. The result, 4 goals and loads of confused fans. Tictacs. Two thirds of Planet Earth is covered by water. The other third is covered by Rohan Ince. Legs. It was great to see homophobia at football being treated seriously by The Police. Kazim-Colin KazimRichards-Kazim-Kazim was the first footballer to be charged with homophobic gestures to a crowd. The authorities hit him right where it hurts, fining £750 of his £20k a week wages. Prosecuted.

@BrettMendoza

We travelled to league leaders, Premier League new boys Leicester City and couldn’t keep a clean sheet. We let shite like Taylor-Fletcher score. Thought we were supposed to be the best defence in the league. Moan We hit a bad run of form at the business end of the season, defeats to Ipswich, Boro and a bore draw at Barnsley, it was so bad, depressing and boring that we forgot we had beaten THE QPR, and took 12 points from 12. Amnesia As they say, all good things must come to an end. For TSLR, that time has come. It was an epic journey; tears like we had when Nathan Elder left our great club. Joy like when we heard Jonny Dixon had signed, and more ups than Obika’s overhead kick and Ulloa’s Boro penny put together. Cheers for letting me write nonsense, Cheers for reading, it’s been more beautiful than Andrea Orlandi’s face. Emotional

March 2013

tslr calendar

17 March The previous issue will forever be known for its cover - the one, we claim, that made Jon Obika leave the club. For those that haven’t been bored by the blog - or the countless times we’ve told this story - after the Reading match, we managed to get a photo of Obika holding a copy of TSLR057, including the cover joke at his own expense. Seemingly, so upset was he by the derogatory comment, within nine days dear Jon had engineered a loan move to a club where they don’t take the piss out of him. Whilst it’s good that Obika left, it has proved slightly disappointing - it made our cover irrelevantly outdated even earlier than usual last month and, since he’s left, Albion haven’t actually won a football match. 20 March After much leakage, we were finally told that Nike will be in charge of creating the Albion’s football kit next season. At first, we lauded the progress made by the club since Falmer became such a mainstay of our lives: from Errea and Brighton and Hove jobs dot com to Nike and American Express - two huge worldwide brands. That was exciting up until the moment we realised the former is a serial child labour beneficiary whilst AmEx pioneered zero hour contracts for their Brighton-based workforce during the 1990s. So, having surrendered any moral compass us Albionites thought we may have had, we backtracked. The club may make a few more quid on selling shirts but ultimately that won’t atone for what is roughly £2.6m less per match on

ticket sales alone than those at the top of the top division. Just so long as we make a few extra quid on shirt sales at the expense of some Bangladeshi minors, right? Oh shit, which countries do we source those TSLR shop items from again? 25 March When asked by some inebriated Brentford fans en route to Hillsborough what exactly we expected to achieve out of the match, all TSLRites in attendance agreed that the best outcome would be a 0-0 draw and some wonderful supping in Kelham Island. We got the latter at least. Fair play to the stewards as well - though they (as ever) prevented us from flogging fanzines inside the away end, they did at least share a joke with us and partake in a photo opportunity. It meant that we were forced to sacrifice 30 odd issues to confetti ready to celebrate our certain second half winner. Needless to say, we launched the celebratory paper shortly after the award of an Albion goal kick. 26 March Solly March’s agent, 1990s Albion player sometimes legendary, mainly not - City boy, and all round party lad, Robert Codner, never touched drugs of any kind. He was arrested, however, for allegedly touching a woman in the face down a West Street discotheque... with his clenched fists. 29 March Before the Middlesbrough match, Jesse Lingard yet again promised a regular TSLR reader that he would break his goalscoring duck that afternoon. Far from

break it, the duck’s still very much quacking. That afternoon offered some consolation - it was great to see that Gus Poyet’s legacy lives on down Falmer Way. Leonardo Ulloa’s dreadful penalty against Middlesbrough brought back memories of a time when all Albion players took them like that - the year we ended up winning the third division title. Perhaps it’s just the tonic for Albion to win the last five games and make the play-offs after all. 31 March The only thing to soften the bitter blow of our current piss poor run of form is hearing of Nottingham Forest’s actual implosion from contenders to, er, about our level. The Nottingham Post is so upset about it they are seemingly mainly concerned with their play-off rivals. Well, we suppose it’s better than hearing about Stuart Pearce becoming their manager (did they not hear that David Platt was available?) And failing reports of their play-off rivals, why not monitor their mid-table rivals? ‘Albion have suffered a costly dip in form, the Post reported. 1 April No April Fools at TSLR this year because, frankly, it’s been done, but that didn’t stop other pranksters winding up certain Co-Editors on the baltic terraces of Ewood Park during Albions strangely dull 3-3 draw with Blackburn Rovers. Upon arriving at the sparsely populated Darwen End stand, we found ourselves in the company of Jesse Lindgard’s WAG and his own Mother. A northerner by the sounds of it, the brunette

stunner made TSLRites look like the soft shandy drinkers we are by wearing a dashing pair of open toe sandal type heels and, wait for it, NO SOCKS. We were dressed like eskimos but she looked quite comfortable sipping on a white wine and lemonade in the concourse. Upon taking to the stands she TOOK HER COAT OFF much to the amazement of us as we stood there shivvering. The next day Jesse’s mum, not girlfriend, started following us on Twitter. 4 April Albion ball boys rejoiced after hearing reports that Tomasz Kuszczakazak is in talks with top flight clubs for a move away from Falmer this summer. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Surrey Mirror reported that Albion have worked out a way of beating C*****l P****e, albeit in 15 years time. Yep, we’ve only gone and signed a 7-year-old from under their noses… roll on 2029. 5 April Hilariously the most attacking footballing display all season finally arrived at Falmer: courtesy of England’s ladies and their 9-0 smashing of Montenegro. The International match was also responsible for another first since Poyet left: a welcome return of his favourite clackers. Lets hope we’ve still got a few boxes left of those illfated noise emitting Vuvuzela imposters, just in time for a trip from Sunderland next season. 6 April Thank goodness for that, the season’s almost over so now the real fun can begin. Already we’ve been linked

to signing Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Bobby bloody brilliant Zamora this summer even though the transfer window hasn’t opened yet. Michael Owen anyone? A contributor’s brother saw Owen in the Sealife Centre, so it’s a distinct possibility. 7 April Colin Hawkins, for the record, is currently manager of Shamrock Rovers B. The greatest managers were never the best of players. 8 April TSLR Towers is in the process of being repossessed. Seriously though, we can’t be bothered with doing a fanzine next season so we’d just like to thank you for reading this inane column for six years. You’ll still find us online, and in various pubs near Albion matches. 9 April Former fanzine presses a shit ton of new tshirts for fans who don’t like the stuff in the club shop :)

DO WE STILL HAVE THE TIGER SPIRIT, DO WE EVEN WANT IT? @HHLedger

n the 8th April 2014 the results of a referendum of Hull City fans were announced, surprising many in delivering a narrow defeat for the well-organised and vocal opposition to the Hull Tigers name change. What the news suggested was that for all the passionate obstinacy of the most vocal group of fans – fans who cast themselves as defenders and spokesmen for the game’s history and soul itself – there’s a sizeable and relatively silent demographic with less dogmatic attitude towards the traditional symbolism of the game. The root question here for Hull fans (and all fans) is how to value tradition? The club’s insignia can be easily fixed and traced backwards whilst the more ephemeral elements of a clubs identity subtly evolve or are scrapped wholesale: managers, playing philosophies, players, fans, the songs they sing and even grounds. So is the that basic club heraldry - name (and

nickname), colours and badge – all bar the continuation of the same account books that make the Hull or Brighton of this season the same as the Hull or Brighton of 1914? Or 1964? It’s a question we view as a club from a different standpoint to Hull. While Tony Bloom is still in charge we know we’re relatively secure in our traditions. But nevertheless there are points of contention today – try and unpack the underlying meaning and implications of the term ‘plastic’ for instance, that gets thrown around at sections of our support both by other clubs and sections of our own. We’re an exceptional case of course, in that we’ve faced a longer and harder struggle against financial and geographical instability than almost any other surviving league team. In fact we were struggling for so long that the club came to be symbolically attached to the struggle

itself. For both its fans and the wider public, Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club became intrinsically linked with a narrative of adversity – a simple story that we fed the media and they swallowed, reinforcing it in our own minds in the process. It took place over a period of over twenty years, from the beginning of the decline in the 80s to the moment that we knew for sure that Tony Bloom was going to fund the new stadium we’d finally been given permission to build. That’s twenty years during which football changed immeasurably. Now we’ve reached the end of the tunnel even if we could forget what we went through as a club, we could never go back to being the same Brighton – because the sport and time that the pre-struggle Brighton belonged to is gone for good, and we spent the period that other clubs spent gradually adjusting to the change focussing on our own specific journey and goal.

How long will the legacy of struggle continue to be our overarching narrative though? With each passing season there’s both more genuine forgetfulness of how far we’ve come and how lucky we are, and also more anxiety and suspicion about forgetting. If the club continues to grow and progress relatively smoothly (and all signs are good at the moment) then it will probably be an unspoken and uncontroversial process through which we as fans we agree to preserve certain memories and symbols of the fight into club folklore, and embrace the changes that come. We won’t even notice the gradual shift in the way we think about, talk about and sing about our club, but gradually we’ll start to tell ourselves a new story about who we are and what makes us, as Brighton, special. TSLR

Robert Eaton Memorial Fund Challenge Match Adults £5.00 U16s £2.00 (free if accompanied by an adult)

The Dripping Pan, Lewes

Friday, 2 May 2014

Kick-off 7.45pm

BRIGHTON SUPPORTERS v CRYSTAL PALACE SUPPORTERS

All proceeds go to Robert Eaton Memorial Fund

Marco Van Bastard Pragmatism is in short supply when garnering the opinions of Albion fans on the state of the club right now. Marco goes in the deep end with a balanced, realists view of goings on. The nutter @FraggleMiller

If Oscar’s arrival last summer had all the style of an Armada sailing in on a sea of old pictures of a swarthy Spaniard in his Barca shirt, it’s fair to say we’ve all been left feeling a tad shortchanged. Installing Nathan Jones as his assistant was like finding out your double date would be Mrs Brady from Viz, and even Oscar’s much-lauded dress sense was swiftly drowned out by a succession of numbing catchphrases such as “we are pleased”, “we must do better” and the eternally enlightening “we will try to win the next game”. Football fans, being as we are the types to throw wads of our meagre cash at an essentially nonsensical drama, seek out clear narratives, goodies and baddies. The board might have yearned for an easy life from a faceless coaching staff, but their apparent desire to get into the top six has seemed as far off as the front of the beer queues when the pie ovens are full. Perhaps that’s been the most frustrating aspect of Oscar’s debut attempt to direct our complicated marionettes: he’s got a list of extenuating circumstances which would have seen most managers hulking their egos out of Falmer quicker than Max Clifford at a cock-measuring orgy, making it hard to measure our malaise. The loss of Bridders, Crofts and angry Ashley has left the rest of the midfield working harder than Marilyn Manson’s makeup artist. We desperately needed a Vicente type to unlock defences, but as it turned out we got Keith Andrews throwing pebbles at the windows, with Buckley doing his Timothy Cratchit impression, LuaLua grumbling faux-provocatively on Twitter and Orlandi

increasingly becoming a mythical figure. With the possible exception of Stephen Ward, whose form might be encouraging if we hadn’t lost Bridge down the other side, the signings have been as inspiring as a Tory MP on a council estate: even Obika’s bicycle kick, which should have taken its rightful place as one of the highlights of the season in front of goal, will be forgotten once Big Leo’s penalty returns from orbit. The board can’t really pin this litany of poorly-deployed recruits on a man they were keen to appoint as coach rather than transfer policy-decider, and given the season ticket sales figures you have to assume the Os-car won’t be sent to the scrapyard yet. So what can we look forward to? The suspense is guaranteed to last until at least the pre-season fans’ forum, when Garcia will reveal his masterplan to win games, score goals and make the fans happy. Who’s to say he hasn’t had tips from Tony in keeping his cards close to his chest? A man who wears brogues, high-fives ballboys and learnt from Cruyff could be ready to unleash his personality at any moment. Everyone thought Nigel Pearson was a dreary old trout at the end of last year, and look what Leicester have done. Enjoy the World Cup, enjoy the summer and roll on next season. TSLR

CHRONICLE OF THE ALBION FAN Funny little things, fanzines. They are at the same time tatty and cheap, yet hold a degree of worth depending on who is holding it. @NotWorthThat looks into how Albion fans have changed over the last 6 years.

he subtle hints were there: The Albion acid house smiley having his eyes poked out on the fanzine’s Twitter handle; The 50th issue commemorative cartoon from Modern Toss which pondered whether or not there “would be enough shit to moan about next season,”; the email from Sam and Stef saying they were calling it a day. In hindsight that last one was a giveaway. So now, dear reader – for you surely have become a dear friend of his fanzine over the last few season – you hold in your hands the last ever edition of The Seagulls Love Review. Since its launch six long years ago this fanzine has helped encapsulate the thoughts, feelings and fervour of us Seagulls supporters. History will surely judge the last few seasons as among the club’s greatest. A barnstorming League One title campaign, a move to a new home, a new style of football, the signing of a former Spanish international, a fourth place finish in the second tier – from its vantage point stuffed in the back pocket of Albion fans, TSLR has seen them all.

But let us turn the tables. Bear with me this one last time. Imagine that instead of flicking through the pages of this fine final edition you WERE the pages. Imagine yourself looking back at the fan, enjoying a last glimpse of the Albion support before being condemned to the cupboard of life. What would you see then? The answer is probably something very different to your first glimpse on your print debut back amid the leafy surroundings of Withdean. Back then the Seagulls faithful were a war-weary bunch. Drained by years of stadium campaigning and mediocre football. Devoid of hope. Happy to have a club. Happy to be watching them in Brighton. Happy to be competitive in whatever division they found themselves. You would probably have found your pages marked with chip grease fingerprints, soaked to near pulp by torrential rain and held by fingers wrinkled by regular downpours weathered without a roof. But were the Withdean regulars really such a wretched lot? No. A thousand

times no. They were the heartbeat of this club. An army – albeit a small one – who kept coming, kept supporting purely because that was what they had always done. It was what the club needed. The irreverence found within your pages was merely a reflection of the gallows humour emanating from the stands. It didn’t matter if you had not been proof read properly, just like it didn’t matter if the team was going places. It was enough to simply be. Then along came General Gustavo and you noticed the fans develop a swagger to mirror their new inspirational leader. The fans, like the players, began walking a little taller. A new stadium was on its way. New life had been breathed into the collective lungs of the longsuffering Seagulls supporters. They started to believe. More than that, they started to feel pride. This was a club on the up. No longer was the Albion a club deserving no more than respect for battling through its well-documented trials and tribulations. This was a club and a team which, to coin a popular chant, was fucking brilliant. And from your pages you saw the smiles return. Like the end of CS Lewis’ The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe – the bit when the Queen dies and summer returns. THAT was what it felt like. The years of stagnation were over. The frost over the club was

thawing. And you saw what it meant to people – to the people you had seen down-trodden and brow-beaten through your formative years. The Albion were no longer a badge of honour worn by a committed few thousand. The club became a magnet on and off the field. And by the time The Amex was officially opened, it was a lure few could resist. Back they came. In their thousands. In their tens of thousands. Those who had read you at Withdean began sharing you with friends. And they liked you. They liked the connection to their fellow fans. They liked the upbeat articles you contained. That first game against Doncaster was like a family reunion. You were dumped under a padded seat but you saw the smiles. This time you were wet – but not from rain. This time it was tears. Tears of joy. You didn’t mind the smudging of your print. It was like a family reunion that nobody expected to happen. You certainly hadn’t expected as many long lost cousins to turn up for the football feast. But turn up they did. And they have been here ever since. You might not be the first club’s fanzine they had picked up, but you didn’t mind. The more the merrier.

“The one thing you notice though more than any other is how plump the Albion fan has grown. They have been fed on diet of stylish football and lovely stadiums like a pig before roasting”

So fast-forward to today’s game – six years since your opening bow away to Crewe Alexandra – and are those faces as content? Are they as filled with joy? What do YOU see? Most are still happy. Happy to have a home. Happy to have a club. Happy to be part of something. But others perhaps expect too much. Perhaps there is even a little less interest in you and you’re old fashioned appearance. Your undeniable link to the football of yesteryear. Some embrace you as a reminder of football before revenue streams. Other see you as an embarrassing reminder of their absence during the troubled times. Some want more than to be home. They want Premier League football, no waiting in line for food, top players, no excuses and footballers who never fail. You can’t blame them. They pay a lot to watch matches. They have every right to demand a return on their annual investment. They’re customers, not fans. And they are always right. But you do pity them. Ever so slightly. Not all of them. The fans you first saw at Withdean are still there. Back then though they were vital. They were treasured. The club needed them. Now they are diluted among a thousand and one consumers. All are needed at the Al-

bion. To pretend otherwise would be naïve. All are welcome. Even those with shared allegiances should be embraced. The one thing you notice though more than any other is how plump the Albion fan has grown. They have been fed on diet of stylish football and lovely stadiums like a pig before roasting. The Premier League is the Promised Land. It will be reached. You just hope those same supporters grown fat on The Amex years are not simply being fed up before they are sold en masse to the butcher of commercialism and increased ticket prices. As you close yourself for the final time, you hope simply that the fans you have got to know so well survive longer than you. They deserve it. TSLR

This seasons been rubbish. The fact we are still in with a chance of the play off places should be a damning indictment of the quality in this division. The two games against Ipswich and Middlesbrough encapsulated this dullest of years. Slow pedestrian football with little sense of urgency or guile. Dominating possession whilst achieving markedly little. Hardly any shots on target. Ulloa moaning. Breakaway opposition goals. Again and again and again. Bah. Still at least it has been quite Brightony - recent years of relative success have perhaps spoiled us a little and we probably expect too much considering this is Oscars first year in England and the really quite ridiculous run of injuries we’ve endured. However it’s not really good enough. It’s been a boring year devoid of many games of note or incident. And ‘his’ signings have been on the whole absolutely gash. Considering this is the final issue I was planning on being a little more upbeat but hohum. I didn’t even goto the Middlesbrough match anyway. Or listen on the radio. Or watch the goals or anything. The co-editor tells me it was the same game as Ipswich so we probably played pretty but futile football. Gordon Greer also presumably attempted his trademark 60 yard pass to the oppositions full back far too many times. “You’re not Franz Beckenbauer, you’re Gordon fucking Greer” is my favourite exasperated ranting of the season. On the plus side the pies have generally been lovely, the beer queues are quicker and the north stand concourse floor less slippy and treacherous to clumsy fools like me. So this season hasn’t been a total failure. Bit disappointing though when my best memory of this past 8 months is the steward letting me out for a fag after 90 minutes of the Newport game. Anyway big up all who’ve worked so hard on TSLR over the years. To run for this long is a mighty fine accomplishment so well done to Stefan and Sam especially. You are my football fanzine editing heroes. (FFSSte)

Highlight of Sheffield Wednesday? 10 Poppadoms £5.00 1 Prawn Puri £4.00 1 Chicken Tikka £4.50 2 Paneer Tikka £7.60 1 Sag Paneer £3.50 1 Tandoori Mixed Grill £11.00 1 Chicken Biriani £8.00 1 Chicken Dansak £7.50 1 Lamb Madras £5.00 1 Paneer Kofta £3.50 1 Mushroom Bhaji £3.20 1 Tarka Dhal £3.00 3 Mushroom Rice £6.90 10 Cobra £37.00 Total £109.70 Service not included. (Pantani’s Ghost)

As regular customers of this now esteemed publication will know these pages rarely provide an in depth match analysis of on field events. Other, admittedly more respected sources generally provide ones needs when it comes to refreshing the memory of tactics, games plans and match changing decisions/performances. The typical tslr traveling bod (and as such their reports) could be characterised as half snuff snorting, train passenger annoying ruffian / half curry connoisseur, Camra card carrying real ale bore. With this in mind the north west provides said species with a fertile habit for merriment. Rejecting the snuff for something a little stronger and more in keeping with Manchester’s heyday seemed like a good idea just six hours earlier. You know something went wrong with your evening when you’re hanging out in pub car parks, handing over notes to former Albion strikers turned agents. It seemed like a good idea at the time. #Banker Manchester’s marvelous selection of ale houses soon had the cobwebs cleared and the aforementioned hybrid geek excited for his afternoon hit of beer and Albion. Bolton’s famous son, Peter Kay has often been labeled as someone who has forged a career just noticing things around him. The Albion away day geek has been on a similar path since his early years. If ‘Usborn’ did eye-spy spotter’s guides to Albion north west away days they’d probably go something like this. Ale houses packed with splendid beers you’ve never heard of; all at less than £3 a pint, tick...3 points. WAGS, normally at home in their Cheshire set mansions, spotted this time in the away end thanks to Jessie Lingard’s ‘media naranja’, tick...3 points. 15 year olds in their 80s cagouls, giggling uneasily at their own shit homophobic jokes, tick...3 points. 45 year old men, last seen on some northern West St equivalent, wearing jeans and shoes (yes really), also giggling at their own shit homophobic jokes, tick...3 points. A Buckley brace, including a superb opportunistic strike that seemed to defy the law of angles and our general quality of shooting this season. Tick...3 points. The only thing that could possibly have improved this day would have been tslr Buckley masks and being shouted at to “support the team”. It’s been emotional. Forza tslr. (Tomy Supercup)

Classic Albion. Without a win in six we travelled to the league leaders for what turned into a rout. A proper rout. The day had started well - we caught the £7 Megabus train from London to Leicester (last season we paid over £100 for a day return) and made it to the pub well within the time needed to get sufficiently inebriated ahead of the game. Albion hadn’t actually scored in the five previous visits to the new Filbert Street - the last time we did, Micky Adams was their ‘manager’ and Adam Virgo was our ‘striker’. The game was stunning; Albion were wonderful delivering on the sort of promise we’ve been threatening to make all season with astute aplomb. Even during our poor run of games, Stephen Ward - despite his incredibly short run in London’s West End - has been our most attacking threat. We didn’t realised it was him who scored until much, much later but he put us 1-0 up. At 1-0 the Albion played annoyingly like we always knew they could - there was more one-touch passing than in the rest of the season’s games combined. Lingard broke his duck and Ulloa scored twice. 4-0! Blimey. Luckily they scored to make it all a bit more believable and leave us believing we can make the play-offs after all. Oh, but we play loads of teams below us in the remaining games. So thanks to Colin’s disco Audi, we made it back to London just in time to miss the last Tube home. The night bus, for once, was well worth it. (Sean Bence)

The Business End To The Season In an article that will rival our recent FFP piece for financial insight and indepth understanding of soccernomics, Midfield looks at how we have performed at the bank this season. Midfield Diamond

he business end of the season? Or the end of the business season? Time to reflect on the games and performances so far with still-alive-but-fading-fast hopes of the play-offs (one point from the last four games at the time of writing)? Or time to reflect on the effect of FFP on the development of new revenue streams and maximising efficiencies in the way we do business? I know what I’d rather do but I fear that the financial side of the game is becoming the focus more and more in the national game. When those muppets at Man Utd paid for that banner complaining about the ‘failure’ of the manager to be as good in eight months as the previous one was in 27 years, what did the Chief Executive of the Premier League Richard Scudamore say? Something about it being ‘damaging to the EPL brand’. WHAT?! Delusion is not purely a northern pastime though. In Sussex, for instance, I suspect the fans’ view of the last few games is somewhat different to that of the Club’s accountants. Here is their record of the 2013/2014 campaign: We have had a very successful season following the completion of a management restructuring exercise last summer. Outgoings at the time included the cost to repair a ceiling apparently damaged by someone hitting it before leaving the Club. We understand there is a good chance that the person responsible will pop back here next season to visit us, having realised that the ceiling is a similar height in the North East.

We have also learnt from the mistakes of others this season. Newcastle’s Alan Pardew was fined £100,000 for a girly Southern so-called headbutt on Hull’s David Meyler, thereby upsetting Toon fans who thought he should have decked the former Sunderland man. Pardew faces an FA investigation which is almost certain to result in a lengthy ban from the dugouts for the big girl’s blouse. League Managers’ Association chief executive Richard Bevan described Pardew’s action as ‘inappropriate’ but added that, as a former Crystal Palace player, Pardew was naturally a bit of a wuss and that allowances should be made for his southernness. And finally, we heard that fans are being charged £90 for an England 2014 World Cup shirt, the manufacturers of said garment having recently signed up to provide our own nylon wonders next August. That could work out at £30 a game or about 33p a minute of England’s involvement in the competition. At that rate, we could charge £500 for a Brighton shirt and change the design every year, and still offer better value. Shhh. Don’t tell Barber. TSLR

“Perhaps there is even a little less interest in you and you’re old fashioned appearance. Your undeniable link to the football of yesteryear. Some embrace you as a reminder of football before revenue streams. Other see you as an embarrassing reminder of their absence during the troubled times” Page 15

REASONS TO BE ... @Bitter_nTwisted

was instructed not to write a post mortem but…

My brief career as a sports journalist is over. It was a proud boast although I can’t pretend the exaggerated claim produced a single invite to any of Brighton’s more fashionable dinner parties. On the plus side I won’t have the problem any longer of a deadline to fill with my usual verbal diarrhoea. The quality being entirely dependent on my intake of alcohol or that of my teenage offspring. (Does diarrhoea have any meaningful quality I wonder?) Call me old fashioned if you will but I have always considered the magazine the ideal news and comment format. Why do we buy the now grandiosely titled match day magazine? Yes it gives you some basic crib notes on the opposition if your life is too crowded to keep up with the ins and outs of each of the Albion’s opponents. Its main function is to supply short, if somewhat irrel-

evant, pieces of information to which your eyes are directed by colourful images. I don’t spend a great deal of time over the programme (pedants please note correct spelling) still less over the official website. Comment is the very lifeblood of the fan’s experience from the ins and outs of a match unfolding on the pitch to the minutiae of the quality of away clubs’ pub toilets. Message boards, god bless ‘em all, tend not to create coherent, readable discussions but are more akin to ear wigging a pub conversation where the slightly inebriated participants are happy to welcome further contribution from anyone within earshot. The great beauty of a fanzine is that the contributor is forced by circumstance to put together a few hundred words which ideally have a beginning, a middle and an end. This can be done on line but the format leads to jumping between pages without fully digesting anything. Attention span online is a great deal shorter than on paper. On any away trip I always look out for the fanzine and try to engage the vendor in conversation. Is it funny? Do you want to lynch the board? Or only the players? Is there an aspiring David Lacey within its covers? I won’t name any names but I see some very obvious differences between most of those collected and the perhaps final ever copy of the highly respected and august organ you are currently holding. Firstly, there are too many swear words. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy swearing, it is a big part of the reason I attend football and as Nick Hornby would have it, it is a necessary catharsis. I was tutored by my father in

the art. Mild words in the company of women, lazy expletives for lost adjectives or full scale vulgarity, insulting and sexual in tone. In print it is simply inexcusably inarticulate. The lack of expression can also be exaggerated without recourse to expletives, of course. There are writers I have enjoyed on the journey home without the requirement of supporting the same club. I like to think TSLR has brought this quality to the table over the years. Then there is always something to seriously upset our opponent’s fanzine faithful. Dodgy owners, huge debt, relegation or even stasis are sufficient to unleash a tirade of invective. In contrast after many years campaigning in the Withers wilderness the Albion have a supporter chairman with long standing ties to the club. Living within our means and comfortable in our new stadium we sit waiting for the inevitable move to the big boys’ playground. It may not be this year but it won’t be long in coming. The mogadon is kicking in. Let me conclude by putting in a word for long suffering editors of fanzines everywhere. Good, bad, indifferent, long standing or short lived they are at the ground before everyone else but never get to see the kick off. Raise your glasses gentleman, please. TSLR

Rocket Man Withdean folklore is a rich tapestry of bacon, badgers, bats and fireworks. What The Amex needs is another Rocket Man. Parker

or a very brief time in the days before people bothered too much about the Albion, when we didn’t have to worry about FFP or the price of a pint on the concourse, in the midst of those simpler quieter days, a mystery figure emerged from someplace behind the Withdean woods to lighten up our lives. Well our Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons anyway. Step forward, the one and only Rocket Man. Who was Rocket Man? Fleetingly, gloriously, he (or she?) casted a sort of gentlemanly spectre from his hilltop Withdean silo. A mystery figure but a polite one; I don’t recall him releasing any wayward mid-match rockets or celebrating something as vulgar as a penalty or red card. His home fire-work was, in its own idiosyncratic way, the antithesis of that most horrid of modern football horrors: goal music. With his stash hidden amongst the potted green beans and grow-bags in his shed, Rocket Man was a gentle renegade. A homegrown rocketeer, a Volvo driving wellington-booted pyrotechnician. ‘Just popping out to tend the marrows dear’ ‘right you are love, don’t forget your bibs and braces’. Semi-retired accountant by day, unbeknownst pyro Ultra by night. Why hasn’t anybody honoured Rocket Man at Falmer, or continued in his muddied footsteps? Upscaled to suit the surroundings, of course, and preferably tied into a commercial partnership with a prominent local business. Forfars empress and Falmer resident (and prominent anti-Falmer campaigner) Council-

lor Melanie Cutress… I’m looking at you. What better way to fend off the reconstituted salt-soaked soft-centred charms of Greggs as they advance across the UK than a home-county baked goods blitzkrieg over Falmer air space on matchdays? This could really work. Airborne advertising. Pies in the sky or simply pie-in-the-sky? We’re certainly a hungry captive audience. It’s a sales pitch I’m sure Forfars would struggle to resist once the Albion commercial team worked up the stats… our fanbase demographic pie-chart breaks us down by flavours not incomes. So when Saturday comes I picture Cutress proudly resplendent in Forfars tabard and Lewes District Council councillors jacket in her plush Falmer garden. A huge Forfars branded canon wheeled out of the lower shed, locked and loaded, safety off, stuffed full of Sussex’s finest pies, pastries and loafs. It’s Rocket Man for the Amex era: the idiosyncratic privateer replaced by Forfars’ fresh-baked aerial barrage. A high-velocity tableaux of wholesome goodness: split-tins, bloomers and sourdough loafs, fondant fancies cinnamon swirls and Viennese whirls, sausage rolls, cheese straws, soft baps macaroons and iced buns (copyright 2014 Fat Les World Cup release) hot from the oven and then BOOM she lights the fuse, a spectacle to shock and awe you straight through the door of your friendly local baker. Put your hands up for Brighton… put your eyes up there too whilst you’re at it, you never know what you might see. TSLR

Obika And now to publish an article that we didn’t want to while he was here. But he’s gone now, and we doubt he reads this. Midfield Diamond

onathan Chiedozie Obika (born 12 September 1990) is an English footballer who is on almost perpetual loan from Spurs. Having been recently released from his spell at Brighton, he currently plays for Charlton. He nominally plays as a striker but his primary role at each of his Clubs has been to be utterly useless, thereby incurring fines imposed by the rest of the squad. The regime of fines imposed within player circles typically includes severe financial penalties for such incidents as ‘mis-controlling the ball further than most people can kick it’, ‘carelessly allowing the ball to roll under your foot’ and ‘celebrating in a manner that causes fans of both teams to think you’re a tosser.’ As a result of such fines, Obika’s contribution enabled the full cost of Brighton’s lavish end-ofseason players’ party to be gathered a full six weeks ahead of schedule, leading to his premature release. Early in his career, Obika paid into the fines kitty at Yeovil Town during both the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 seasons. Obika then began a season-long loan at Crystal Palace in August 2010 but, although he was seriously no good, he didn’t stand out as being any more useless than the rest of the squad there. His loan was therefore terminated after just five months and Tottenham arranged for Obika to pay money to the fines treasurer at bigger Clubs for the rest of the season. This included spells at Peterborough and then Swindon. Obika returned to Yeovil Town on loan for the 2011/12 season and then went on

loan to Charlton in February 2013. At both of these Clubs, Obika was coached by Nathan Jones who helped enormously in the development of his footballing inability, according to Obika. When Jones returned to Brighton as a coach in the summer of 2012 having played for the Club eight years earlier, he was a key factor in persuading Obika to join the Albion squad during the January transfer window. Obika was immediately welcomed by everyone at the Club, Chief Executive Paul Barber saying that establishing an alternative funding stream for the party in Nottingham in May was vitally important for Financial Fair Play purposes. Obika was the latest in a long line of complete duffers to play for Brighton. A few fans still remember the notoriously bandy Barry ‘Shut your legs, the ball’s coming’ Bridges from the 1970s but he was completely outclassed in the incompetence stakes in subsequent years. Ashley Neal, Mark Farrington and Richard Tiltman each set new performance lows although Obika threatened to exceed their achievements with his incredible lack of skill. However, some Brighton fans maintain that Damian Hilton is still the worst player ever to don the stripes for the first team. Obika was awarded ‘Comedy Overhead Kick Of The Season 2013/2014’ for his effort while playing for Brighton against Wigan in February 2014. It was considered so amusing that the judges decided that it couldn’t be beaten, even with 15 games remaining. TSLR

THE MADNESS OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP @BHAFConlyathome brightononlyathome.wordpress.com

’m writing this straight after the 3-3 draw at Blackburn. This followed a run of nearly 300 minutes without scoring at all. During that run I began to question the ability of our setup as it looked like we were going backwards but I am well aware that earlier this season I praised Oscar and the club. My Twitter feed from last night looks like it was written by two people (or one manic depressive). Up and down like Gary Hart on a sloping pitch. Just like all the teams in The Championship, I have not been consistent. I believe it’s justified. It is a basket case of a league. Three seasons in and I have enjoyed it, if I am to be honest, less and less. I don’t mean the match day experience. That I still cannot believe. Walking up from Falmer station and seeing this giant, spaceship like building rising from the hill. Programme sellers everywhere. S & S flogging the latest TSLR. Wide eyed children being led in to the club shop to purchase some man made fibre. Good ale and pie on the concourse and a concourse full of old friends and familiar faces. The seat and the view

are Premier League quality, the infrastructure of the club undoubtedly “Premier League Ready”. And it’s noisy. Just because I don’t go away any more doesn’t mean I didn’t once and there are few grounds that sounded as good when they get going, Where else do significant portions of two stands and two corners provide noise when it’s needed (at least sometimes)? No, the bit I almost never enjoy is the actual game. There are exceptions of course. Palace at home on St Patrick’s Day, Wolves and Blackpool at home the same season. This season only Leicester and Burnley stand out (the latter because it was when my son finally got “the Albion bug”). But if you looked at the table you would assume that these would be two of our hardest games and in fact they were two of the easiest. Meanwhile we made an absolute meal of some of the supposedly easier ones. When you’ve walked up the Falmer ramp and bought your programme and your fanzine and you’ve had a pie and pint and your sat in your seat , that’s when

being able to predict anything goes out of the window. Let’s examine the Championship versus the Premier League. In the Premier League there are roughly five to six teams with a realistic chance of winning the title and these vary depending on who is managing Liverpool. There are sides whose only ambition is survival and, again, there are perhaps five of those. The other ten try to get in the top group and stay out of the bottom group. The stadia are by and large modern and nice. Palace (who have the only old skool one) beating Chelsea was a massive shock. In the Championship the grounds cover the whole scale from Soulless Bowl to Wreck and having a wreck doesn’t matter, since Watford and Palace contested the last playoff final. In The Championship you can’t predict the results. In The Championship there are probably five or six sides who, realistically harbour no ambition of going up. Of these perhaps one or two will be relegation certainties. For the rest, anything

goes. The promised land, the gravy train, is painfully visible and they will do anything to achieve it. They will pick and choose their victims, settling to park the bus at other away games. They will dive, foul, whinge and intimidate just as much as their Premier League chums. They will studiously campaign for, and observe, Financial Fair Play or they will studiously (and obviously) break those rules. Some will gamble millions a year on an old reject from the Prem and some will sign players specifically to kick other specific players. It’s like watching a gang of bankers, wired on methamphetamine, racing for the last three seats on the 6.15 to London Bridge. In such conditions consistency is impossible, both in playing games and watching / writing about them. One week Oscar is God, the next he’s an idiot. One week we have bought sensibly, the next we are totally lightweight up front. One week I talk sense and the next, madness. TSLR

Carter On ... Computer Aided Design What does it say about a man who spends his spare time recreating computer based models of The Goldstone? @CarterBrighton

ot for the first time in my life, I’ve been spending time getting to grips with a difficult erection. To elaborate, and at risk of what street cred I have left disappearing faster than Liverpool shirts from JJB Sports, I’ve started working on my project of modelling the Goldstone in 3D using software called SketchUp. I realise this subject is potentially duller than actually watching us play, but I’m going somewhere with this. On SketchUp’s online repository of stadiums from around the World, there’s an Amex, there’s a Withdean, there’s more than one version of frigging Priestfield. You can open up existing models of these grounds and edit them and do any improvements you see fit - like applying the eraser tool all over Selhurst Park. Sadly though, I couldn’t find the Goldstone. I’m attempting to put that right, but I’m currently looking less likely to finish than Jon Obika. The process involves laying down digital foundations by tracing over an aerial shot of the ground, which I believe was taken around 1994. Even with the studying of various photos from different angles, there’s still plenty of hidden corners where a bit of guesswork has to be applied – such as the height of some toilet blocks in the East Stand, which must have been horrific and my memory has blocked out ever using. Still, arguably better than the slight Amex awkwardness of having to go whilst a Hat-Trick scratch card holding CMS beams out

at you from a poster above the urinal. More unfinished business from the Goldstone jumped out at me whilst lurking on NSC recently. I read with interest the thread highlighting that a Player of the Season wasn’t awarded for 1996/7. It’s all so far detached from today’s slick Albiontopia of big screens, Porsche Player of the Months and shirts stitched by Indonesian seamstresses. Life has gone on without Stuart Storer or Ian Baird ever receiving a prize for their endeavours seventeen years ago, but it’s left me feeling a bit unsettled. It’s similar to the feeling that is troubling me as I deal with the knowledge that I may be writing some of the final lines in TSLR and perhaps even the last in a printed Albion fanzine. As much as the pixelated terraces and walls of my Goldstone project can never hope to really bring the incredible events that happened there to life, my words can never come close to paying tribute to the Seagull love and 6 years of graft contained in the pages of this little mag. But, whatever fate has in store for us this season - slipping into the play-offs, or slipping into a coma waiting for a shot on target – there is one thought that should resonate through the ages with all Albion fans: ‘Scott McGleish is a wanker’ TSLR Many thanks to Tom who has contributed to every single issue of The Seagull Love Review since 2008

“Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared” OK, this isn’t in the ‘zine. Voltaire said it. Adios amigos, we’re off to find Vicente. @Swiftenburg & @Albionino

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