Death in Grimsby: 50 Years Following Brighton & Hove Albion

Death in Grimsby - 50 Years Following Brighton & Hove Albion is one person's life-long passion for his home town football club. A passion that any supporter of any football club might recognise as similar to their own. The author explains: I have been following my home town football club of Brighton & Hove Albion for a full 52 years and witnessed many highs and lows, and thankfully very few periods of mid-table mediocrity. Like a fan of any club, whether that be Arsenal, Accrington Stanley, Aston Villa or Alloa Athletic, football is tribal, loyal, consuming and most of all, passionate. My own passion was conceived on a sunny Saturday afternoon in September 1967 when I was just 11 years old, as I stood wide-eyed at the front of the North Stand of the Goldstone Ground watching these huge men battle for a crisp, white ball on the green turf before me. It is a passion which has never dimmed with greying hair, crows' feet etched lines and free bus pass just three years away. This book is a collection of short stories which charts the first 50 years I have supported my beloved Albion, starting with that first game at the Goldstone in 1967 and finishing with a match against Wolves at Molineux in April 2017, when we all but mathematically secured promotion to the Premier League. Each chapter is a separate story related to 21 different games and events, including my first night game against Portsmouth in 1969, a record 8-2 defeat against Bristol Rovers in 1973, winning promotion at St James Park in 1979, the FA Cup Final in 1983, National Falmer Day in 2004 and much more. These are knitted with many personal recollections such as meeting Ernie Wise in Leeds, trying to explain the Foot and Mouth Disease funeral pyres to my young daughters before our match against Carlisle United in 2001, interviewing the England legend Paul Gascoigne and being hospitalised with hypothermia after a game at Grimsby in 2004. Here among 50,000 words and 115 images, I hope the reader finds something to inspire, laugh at or cry... and recapture their own memories of a game which as the great Bill Shankly said: "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that."