Stand or Fall to dramatise Brighton fans’ journey from the Goldstone Ground to the Amex
A new play, Stand or Fall, written by Brighton fan Mark Brailsford, will stage the supporters’ struggle from the last days at the Goldstone Ground through exile in Gillingham and life at the Withdean before the move to the Amex Stadium, and will run for four nights from 23 September at the city’s Theatre Royal to coincide with the club’s 125th anniversary.
The production revisits a nomadic and fractious period in Brighton & Hove Albion’s history that began after a tip-off in July 1995 alerted fans to the sale of the Goldstone Ground. Ian Hart, a funeral director from Worthing and co-editor of the fanzine Gull’s Eye, confronted chief executive David Bellotti after receiving information from Gordon Lucking, a Crystal Palace director, and has written about the episode in Brighton & Hove Albion: From Every Angle, released last year.
Hart describes how a disparate action group formed in the aftermath, bringing together supporters from varied backgrounds, including the punk poet John Baine, better known as Attila the Stockbroker: “We were all thrown together, all different demographics: a funeral director, a punk performance poet, a chartered accountant, plasterers and labourers,” Hart says. “A few days after everyone found out the Goldstone Ground was being sold, we had a fans’ meeting at [the pub] Chapman’s, which is now the Railway, in Worthing. There were probably 40 or 50 people from all walks of life and it grew from there. “A year later, there were 500 people who couldn’t get inside listening on loudspeakers outside the Concorde [nightclub] when things were getting really serious.”
The protests escalated into direct action: in April 1996, 600 spectators ran on to the Goldstone pitch after a win against Carlisle, calling for Bellotti’s resignation, and some fans tore up seats in the directors’ box as attempts were made to storm the boardroom. A subsequent match against York became part of Brighton folklore when supporters waited until the 16th minute to invade the pitch, forcing the game to be abandoned. “It was not a riot, it was a legitimate protest,” Hart says. “The FA and the Football League were a bit like Neville Chamberlain at Munich, waving a piece of paper saying everything was going to be fine. They thought they could give us a load of bullshit and we would just take it.”
The Goldstone Ground was demolished a year later after Brighton came within 27 minutes of relegation from the Football League, only to be saved by Robbie Reinelt’s equaliser against Hereford; at one stage the club had been 13 points adrift at the bottom of Division Three (now League Two). Brighton finished 91st in the Football League again the following year and played home games in Gillingham after Portsmouth reneged on their offer to groundshare.
Recovery began when local businessman Dick Knight paid £100 to take control of the club via a supporter‑led consortium and the team returned to the city, occupying the Withdean athletics stadium. Tony Bloom took over as chair in 2009, Brighton moved into the Amex Stadium two years later and were promoted to the Premier League in 2017; the club reached the last 16 of the Europa League in their first European campaign in 2024 and will compete in the Conference League this season.
Hart is a producer on the play and has spoken of the emotional arc the staging seeks to capture. “It would be brilliant and Tony did promise us a trophy at the 1983 [FA Cup final] reunion dinner a few years ago,” he says. “We were having a drink with him in Tromsø [before the Conference League playoff in Norway last month] and as much as he promised us a trophy I don’t want to get weighed down by expectation. “The great thing about the play is that there are highs and lows, but you can’t really celebrate the highs unless you have the lows. It makes the whole story even more incredible.”
An exhibition also titled Stand or Fall, which Hart describes as detailing the club’s civil war, opened at Brighton Museum in August and continues until the end of the year.